H.U.G.E. #15

First impressions, centre-deck could be parked farther aft but who's complaining?

Would also look better with the laterals extended farther forward and brought to a point in the form of a prow... so let's do that.

This would make it about as tall stood on end as me stood on end, which is the sort of thing that I imagine would have appealed to Brunel.

Canopy am pleased with, although it could be a little larger, as it's half a bottle of Prosecco... have to be the magnum next time, I guess.

H.U.G.E. #14

The hub. This is all a bit dull, but then much of life is.

Probably heavier than it need be, as all that is required is a means of drawing the lateral spars together in order to support the upward flexure of the skis, a thinner length of timber altogether likely to suffice.

All however will become apparent in due time.

H.U.G.E. #13

Here's the template on the planking. I've shifted it over by five mil so as not to end the cut at the very corner of the timber and then marked the footprint of the pair of skis before adding the same type of chamfer to the opposite side. All being well we shall be able to put the wedge-shaped off-cuts to good use when it comes to fixing the forward end of the skis.

We could use the one remains square of backer-board for all of this but timber has to be quicker and sturdier. These hubs where lats and skis meet however are ideally suited to 3-D printing in the longer term.

H.U.G.E. #12

What I've done here is chop the lateral spars back to five feet or 1525mm and cut the hydroskis so as to leave an extra four inches (100mm) or so for now, in order to make construction more manageable. Normally I design for zero waste and so it felt like cutting a limb off.

I've drawn one of the lats toward the outer extent of the ski and used that to trace an angle on a length of planking of the same thickness as those lateral spars... else more or less, because this one was kicking around the workshop.

One of those days its raining outside and you feel like doing little or nothing; a form of lethargy that is probably to blame for the fact I foreshortened one of the laterals by around two inches too much. Thus it is that we'll be carrying out repairs to a job that is yet to be finished, although I suspect it was ever thus with boatbuilding.

Maritime Power, Source.

A worthwhile insight into how reliant we are on subsea cables and pipelines.

The first transoceanic cable ~ you may be surprised to read ~ was installed while Queen Victoria was early on in her reign in 1858, following successful installations in the English Channel.

Now a global network delivers oil, gas, electricity and data until such time as it might not, depending on where and when war breaks out in Europe... again. And here's the thing: the UK relies on such cables for somewhere between 95% and 99% of what it uses on the internet.

Upon which, you might have noticed, we rely for just about every aspect of modern life. It's been going on for some time, not just to disrupt everyday living but also it would seem for the value of the scrap metal involved ~ high-voltage DC cables are as thick as your arm.

Increasingly communication cables are buried when laid at shallower depths such as the continental shelf, and duplicated for seamless operation. Beside any number of 'fishing' and 'research' vessels able to drag anchors at such depths in ways more careless than expected, increasingly superpowers are building uncrewed surface and subsea vessels on a tiny scale able to operate at greater depths altogether; echoing developments in the atmosphere above, and beyond in space.

There's likely then to be calls for (a) inexpensive (b) small (c) fast (d) independent watercraft to combat threats both on and beneath the surface, and that rather rules out petrol-powered types in many roles, for unlike electrical craft they are unable to loiter in the sunshine in order to replenish their power supplies.

War's likely to be ~ as they sing in Disneyland ~ a small small small small world.

The ecological damage caused by the current employment of drones is inestimable and the prize for the greatest yet probably goes to Ukraine for monumental release of methane from the Nord 2 pipeline supplying Europe... and for which one among their number is to appear in court in Germany, which largely owned the facility.

H.U.G.E. #11

And this is the way up it will go.

H.U.G.E. #10

Don't know whether you can make that out but to save time I popped a line of glue along the lower edges of mainplane and tail-fins so as to drop the hydroskis on and next day I'll flip it over and filet the edges.

Note how tail assembly, lateral spars and hydroskis all terminate at the same place in order to satisfy one of Colin's golden rules viz. Person or persons building a drone shall ensure it can be stood upright, inverted or on a tail-end for maintenance or for storage at pain of imprisonment or fine not exceeding two-dozen Eccles cakes.