Look Up

I wonder how many nerds pass through security at Manchester Airport's delightful renewal of its second terminal, and are instantly transported to its 1960s heyday?

"Oh, what transports of delight..." I commented to one among its functionaries!

For here, and tastefully incorporated in a new artwork, were some among thirteen hundred lead crystal 'droplets' which formed the mise-en-scene at a place so loved by plane-spotters.

The original was installed by an emigre architect who had the royal seal of approval and died this century at the age of ninety-three.

Most we hope for nowadays is some or other piece of crap by Thomas Heatherwick.

Ed. Thomas failed to reply to one of his emails.

Take A Bow, Frank.

Stay curious. I spend a deal of time around sea-ports and what caught my eye here was the unusual profile of this pilot boat's prow. Inverted bows ~ sloping the wrong way ~ have a longer history than you'd think and this appears to be a combination of two types to produce what's called a 'wave-piercing' hull.

Such profiles drop in and out of fashion among large naval ships, but here the work (and the fabulous photo) is that of Frank Kowalski and his ship-yard in Ireland that appears to have sown up the fast and rugged boat market with innovative GRP hulls born of his own experience.

So take a bow, Frank Kowalski. The takeaway from all of which is that markets can be cornered by an innovative design stemming from the single-handed actions of a pioneer that will evolve to form a team involved in ongoing production.

Not always sure that's a good thing, as it requires me to do something about it.

Pilot boats are used to transport those with local knowledge of their own harbour to assist in the docking of altogether larger vessels.

Amphibian Ambition

Read with sadness how after 70 years the Land Rover ~ designed as a farming tool at the outset ~ is to be retired by the military, and how fifty were once adapted as amphibious landing craft.

And eventually rejected as unfeasible, since when there's never been anything like the DUKWs provided by Chevrolet during WW2.

The story since does however lend credence to Dominic Cummings' view (along with that of parliament) that UK procurement is not fit for purpose in peacetime let alone war.

Following Google's trail for instance I discover a competition from a few years ago in search of novel means of amphibious landing:

With a set of barely credible requirements ~ principally regarding range combined with speed:

Emerging from which are the safest bet, in the shape of 'the naval architects you know' who have previously provided pretty pictures of how ships might soon look:

Guaranteeing taxpayer funds to pay salaries whilst building a scale prototype:

And afterward going bust:

Leaving the only amphibious survivor stemming from the UK and provided to the US Marines by BAE Systems... as one designed and built by IVECO in Italy:

(Note suggested range in water is rather less than 350 nautical miles at just 12... coinciding of course with international waters.)

It should be me writing these tenders, few of whose clauses will ever be met.

They would include the following:

    *    Troops should also be provided red suits which squirt spider's thread

Fear I may be the last man here working on amphibious craft ~ albeit without those passengers about to get shot at.

Ed. The author apologises for any hurt feelings, pointing out God loves a tryer.

Saronic's No Hedgehog

And here is said Saronic, some among whose vessels are shorter than what's sat on my garage-floor, albeit with a greater displacement.

It's encouraging ~ I can't say it's not ~ and I like the fact they say it can be used for customer-defined capabilities, because it is most often the way innovation works viz. customers coming up with users that inventors never dreamt of.

I'm under no illusions and whilst these drones are nowadays the sinews of maritime presence, what make them useful is AI-reliant comms of the sort that BAE Systems produces.

But my boat brings all the boys to the yard and they're like, it's better than theirs.

(Damn right it's better than theirs... I can teach them, but I have to charge.)

YC/DC

Changing times, California's best known VCs migrating from apps that ensure pizza arrives before it goes cold migrating toward things that move over the sea at speed.

Fresh from Regent then there is Splash, which recently succeeded in an exercise for the Marines that involving delivering not much of a package to a beach in the Indo-Pacific ~ requiring the recipient 'not to get their feet wet'. Watching the footage the guy nearly did, whereas up and running the flat-cat should be able to fly it down the street to the nearest pizza parlour too.

Besides Regent's electrified wing-in-ground effect aircraft and Splash, YCombinator has also backed Saronic, as has the US Navy to the tune of nearly $400 million for the deployment of two dozen larger maritime drones.

Unlike the US however in the UK procurement operates on more of a 'who you know not what you know basis' as described by Boris Johnson's brain, which was known as Dominic Cummings. The only intelligent life-form involved with his government, he would be turfed out because Boris' girlfriend didn't like him: the way it's worked since Anthony and Cleopatra.

Nonetheless as Victor Hugo wrote, nothing can stop an idea whose time has come... even if it's in China instead of here.

Ed. He didn't add the China bit, we did that.

New Wave

Followed WIGs (wing-in-ground-effect) since the days of Janes Surface Skimmers, when the editor beside I and three others were the only ones who persisted in this strange obsession; the hopes for hovercraft having devolved to hobbyists who raced them at weekends for fun.

Accordingly I can sum up the eventual failure of WIGs by pointing out they were so like aircraft that you may as well as have the aircraft; or like boats to the extent it made you figure it was worth buying the boat instead.

For in each case airplanes and boats were more adaptable than WIGs, seaplanes evolved to the extent places like Alaska relied on them; and unlike WIGs did not crash on a regular basis due contact between wing-tip and water at speed.

Likewise boats that used airfoil sections in order to skim the water were a novelty when there were few waves around, but existing boats were usable in any event.

WIGs like hovercraft therefore proved that jacks-of-all-trade were the better choice, despite not being the master of any one in particular. WIGs meantime were masters of flying over water that was not too choppy, and not much else*.

For sadly the sea had a habit of being wavy, with only one way to get over it and that was to build at scale... which becomes so expensive as to limit such craft to inland seas, where as often as not they are eventually beached.

The problem Regent have in building such drones for the US military is that, being small, they rely upon scaled-down waves of the sort nature only occasionally obliges with on the day: all photos of either the Soviet or US experiments appear in photos in which the sea looks like it does on the airline safety card.

The fact WIGs may yet exceed escape-velocity in the case of electrified craft in the current (!) age, however, is that (a) multiple motors are not so expensive to fit and operate and (b) wave-height computers allow for surface-following to substitute for the previous resort to sheer scale.

This combination of factors means Regent craft can operate slowly in displacement mode, faster on hydrofoils and fastest in ground-effect flight over water.

The alternative too having the resources (and energy) available to Regent is to draft a craft that appears it can plane at a variety of speeds, besides eventual elevation into ground-effect as and when sea-state permits.

At the same time we're banking on a further USP that derives from the fact that a 2-D form of catamaran can be scaled for a fraction of the time, effort and cost that is required traditionally to enlarge the sort of craft appearing up top.

Bear in mind in all of this too that the greater part of military activity being pursued at the time of writing... is being pursued in parts of the world where seas really are generally that glassy.

All things considered, it might appear that perhaps WIGs are finally coming of age?

* Flying taxis have a similar problem, electrified or not, in that cars can be parked anywhere beside getting you there in the first place.

Mobile, Launched.

Ride out with the new tail-gate adapter... only narrowly escaping when I detected we'd been locked-on.