Fifth Estate?

Another effort at airplanes that fly at sea-level and this in the shape of a two-metre prototype from Sail'n'Fly, an outfit in France that comprises naval and aeronautical expertise among its founding fathers. We wish them Godspeed as previous attempts at this sort of thing have invariably led to a crash that wiped out the build and took the investors and cash with it.

Regent in the US too has experienced crashes, but of the sort less likely nowadays to dent the confidence of inventors and investors. The difference is threefold, being (a) the world is awash with capital looking for a home (b) electric motors are wholly more user-friendly for prototyping and (c) processing power allows aircraft to draw on artificial means to stabilise flight just above the surface to maximum effect.

As good a description as any of the state of the ground-effect nation appears on the Regent website, and drafted by its CEO...

https://www.regentcraft.com/news/how-the-seaglider-wing-is-different-from-the-ekranoplan-wing

...and what he points out is that until now there have been three principal types of WIG or wing-in-ground-effect. The crux of his argument is that as aircraft approach the surface the downwash flattens out and reduces the effectiveness of the tailplane so that the nose drives into the ground, or water. Efforts to ameliorate this so as to fly in ground-effect unperturbed included a very long tail (at left) as exemplified by the Soviets, at the expense of a deal of extra weight.

The next (at centre) includes a wing optimised for flight near the sea, though this is of those types that keep catching a wing-tip and crashing: GAME OVER.

The third (at right) was pioneered by Flarecraft but like hydroplanes only worked at all well on rivers or inland waters and thus died a death ~ though is being electrified as are so many others as I write and you, dear reader, read.

Billy, not to be confused with an IKEA bookcase, says the problem with these wings is that they are so inefficient as to neutralise the efficiency gains of flight in ground-effect. I'd argue that is only half the point, the other being to avoid the deadening touch of the regulators... which like that of the reaper leads to instant death.

He goes on to write how Regent have effectively invented a fourth means of flight in ground-effect, viz. a conventional aerodynamic wing of great efficiency with a way of computerising its flight at a safe remove, from which it will still benefit from gains expected of WIGs. If you're a financial analyst, put that in your PowerPoint and bow to my effigy later.

You and I, dear reader, might add a fifth and historic means of stabilising flight by watercraft (moreso than 'aircraft') above the surface with our own dear cat, if only we could get out of our pyjamas of a morning.

Hold that thought, and fetch yourself another croissant.

N...MIGHTY

We enjoyed our day out in Hereford immensely, didn't we, but there was more to it than met the eye on your laptop or stolen smart device! I was there for an open day at one of the UK's newest ~ if not the newest ~ universities, or at least something of the kind viz. NMITE or the New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering.

I must admit I cried when UMIST was incorporated in the University of Manchester proper, because it pioneered computing in the way MIT took it onward and upward with the transistor. Plus everyone wanted to go there, as they do MIT just for the initials.

The great thing about NMITE is its hands-on approach that practically guarantees a job for its graduates, beside employing and entertaining them in the best possible way whilst they are there. In fact they said that it was so much like having started work already that the transition was seamless; although it was then that I recalled how I went to university to avoid work for so long as it was humanly possible.

A less great thing about NMITE is that looking at it you would think that it would be pronounced 'enmity', which is the last thing you'd want of a seat of learning. At the same time, the last new 'model' anything we had here was Cromwell's New Model Army in less happy times. I'd prefer MITEN, pronounced 'mitten', with its warm and comforting connotations albeit with an 'N' on the end that would have to stand for something like Nanoscience?

I offer this consultancy on branding wholly gratis, incidentally, in support of student welfare and along with a suggested logo that I stole from Google's Images:

Highlight of the day for me however, beside the buffet lunch, was not so much the talk on drone autonomy ~ although that was epic ~ as the out-of-town campus that is called the CATT or Centre for Advanced Timber Technology. Architects are doing amazing things with wood when it comes to building and in my dream world I, much like the Flintstones, would live in an all-wood house with a decking driveway for our wooden drone.

It was great to get down and dirty discussing various aspects of expanded foams of one sort or another. Amongst all of this was the model seen up top, advertising the best possible use of such materials for insulation. May I take you by your mitten to discuss elements of these? (Am minded in fact of that episode where Alan Partridge interviews a lady in a lesbian relationship who works as a dry-stone waller and thus he opens with 'Let's talk dry-stone walls...').

Well down there at the base you've doubtless a foamed concrete that is lighter and more eco-minded than ever and it's topped with a membrane and our old favourite polyurethane or PU, which I've been intimately associated with in the past, having used it for boat-building.

PU's open-celled version is not to be used for boats, principally because it soaks up water faster than the Titanic and so is used for flower arranging. I used a closed-cell version supplied by Trident Foams for a boat that I built in Southampton to feature at a defence awards ceremony in London, before being trailered to Glasgow where I flew for a travel company.

What physical dimension do foams work best in? Yes! Compression, and in this role they are even used as the basis for off-ramps on highways in the US.

Moving on, the next layer looks like more of the same, but what is that around the corner stuck to the wall? Nothing less than EPS, our old friend Extruded Polystyrene that we use to build the flat-cat, albeit with a scrim of cement over a Kevlar matrix! 

Inside the cavity-wall though is what looks like a natural fibre or mineral wool type of insulation that I cannot be sure about without a touch and a lick, which is something nerds like me do with foam instead of women.

My favourite cavity-wall insulation ~ I know you've one too ~ has to be Rockwool, a brand so called because it's wool made of rock. This I know as I used to collect the product from a plant in North Wales, where they decant rocks into a furnace to be spun like candy-cotton: a process originated in North America but commercialised in Denmark by Finn Henriksen and the Kahler family, who for years were up there with the Osmonds.

If you wish to know more about cavity-wall insulation there is always my TED talk, available exclusively on vinyl with a complementary tee-shirt on our merch pages.

Linked Out

(Very) occasionally people search my LinkedIn profile and as yet, this is all there is: my profile picture. As anyone on YouTube may have noticed, I'm not that big on the socials... being barely interested in my own life, let alone any other.

Did once put a CV up there, detailing all of those posts from which I'd been fired or all of those colleagues I'd punched or spat on, but then everyone started to do it thinking they were clever-clever and so I took it down. Imitation, as Oscar said, the purest form of flattery.

And now I must go and check the football results...

Strike Two

Inside a week there've been two reports of possible collisions with drones by airlines operating out of Houston (at around 8000') and into San Diego (at around 3000'). In the first inst the aircraft returned to base... inconvenient for the airline and PAX.

What we used to hit on a fairly regular basis was birds, an incident called 'birdstrike' although no equivalent name as been devised for the newer form of collision, Russia having trademarked 'dronestrike' for what it is doing with Ukraine.

Once saw one whilst departing Manchester, badgering ATC to drop the speed and grant an early turn. Spotted something below us out of the lefthand window as we climbed through 8500' and close enough for its colour ~ red and black ~ to be seen.

With a drone of the same colour also reported by a Virgin flight around the time, it would appear the plane-spotting had been elevated to new levels by someone who may or may not have been after that best possible shot on video.

Nothing much further heard, possibly because the same sort of geek would be able to listen in to ATC, but expect many more such events as drones begin to fill every corner of the sky.

And see how the roads in Houston both radiate and form a natural grid? We've none of that in the UK and I blame the Romans.

Big Macs

Bring it home: Wigan's Hayley McCauley defends her World Flatpack Championship title, here interviewed by Grand Designs' Kevin McCloud. Contestants at London's Excel centre are required to assemble a BILLY bookcase before moving on to do the same with a bedside table before a live audience. Hayley smashed it, as I generally do when assembling IKEA but with a hammer, doing so in eight minutes and twenty seconds and shaving a minute off her previous record of 2025. She was awarded a golden Allen key and a lifetime's free horse meatballs by the store.

Ed. Note to IKEA, he made me do it Sir.

Colin's Cut-Out Container Guide

Nobody really should live life without an intimate knowledge of containers, as ninety percent or more of what we needlessly buy arrives in one. Accordingly let me take you by the digital hand to walk you through what that says on the back whilst you whisper "Captain, oh my captain".

I hope you recognised this mighty 45G1 straightway: the most numerous on Earth. The original container, invented by a US haulier to ship down the Eastern seaboard, measured 20' by 8' by 8'6" though why the extra height? Maybe to get a handle on which way is up? This one is twice the length though, and stretches to 9'6" in height so as to be known as a 'high cube'.

Max Gross is not a wrestler as I first thought, but a measure of how much the entire container should weigh including contents. Among the heaviest I have known have been marble kitchen worktops, several hundred off. TARE derives from Arabic (and later French) for 'that which can be ignored' in any sale, like the carrier bag used to contain what you pay for by weight like potatoes i.e. weight of container, here four metric tonnes.

Finally volumetric capacity, which is vast and a reason they may make apartments. The floor though is not metal but wood, usually bamboo, that is stretched over metal joists. Meanwhile the numbering is preceded by the lessor's code, and runs to six digits plus a form of check-digit at the end. With this it can be tracked around the world, which is exciting and something I organise for the family to pass the time on holiday weekends... a gentler pastime than dragging women out of cars and shooting them in GTA, as I tell my son.

Stickers on the side warn firefighters what's inside, in this case a mildly flammable resin, so that they can dig out extinguishers marked 'For mildly flammable resins and inflammation in adults'. That's a problem with containers, what is inside them unknown and provided with a manifest often so vague as to be pointless, like 'rolls' of either sausage or steel.

Another problem being there is no knowing how or indeed whether the load is secure. Rounding a bend once in the turn onto the M57 motorway I was interested to feel the steering lighten and see the container start to roll at a precipitous angle in the mirror. Whether all off-side wheels cleared the tarmac the way Red Bull steer cars down narrow passages I do not know, though it stopped the truck on the inside dead in its tracks. Hashtag gosh... roll on a car and it's road-kill.

One tale of note includes wine, which you may think arrives in bottles from across the world but is more sensibly bottled locally. In some cases the container would be filled with a giant plastic bag in which 2700 cubic feet could be transported for decanting on arrival. Drivers at Liverpool's docks would gladly take it home later to hang on the line and decant the litre or two remaining.

Alma Gantry

Great excitement over at my philanthropic arm the Colin and Gromit Foundation, for my alma mater has ~ in recognition of the fifty quid toward students not needing to dumpster-dive for a living ~ invited me to an evening of canapés and cocktails with the great and the good.

Commenting the chairman (me) said: I am delighted that the tireless work of our foundation in alleviating student poverty with generous grants, and with tackling the scourge of mosquitoes with rolled-up newspapers has finally been recognised. Were he here alongside me today, I am sure that Gromit himself would say 'Woof'.

Readers of the blog will know that during finals in 1980 I took a punt on a reunited Germany in an essay that I was marked down for... the Germans dicking around for ten more years before getting in done. But I'm not a bitter man, merely pounding a pillow every night in frustration, and this could well be an opportunity for amending past hurts and grievances?

Accordingly I shall wheel the dinner-jacket out of the wardrobe if anyone out there be discreet enough to let them know that a doctorate would be gratefully received on the night?

Or failing that, a Nobel Peace Prize.

Ed. Brace yourselves, as there could be another 'Big Day Out:' in the series.