Dissolution of the Monateries

Hear ye, hear ye. Let it be known that Teledrone Ltd and its company of players is dissolved, as of the first day of the month of July last. What triggered it was being presented a bill for £350 by the patent agent for services rendered around eighteen months prior.

Unless and until (a) the prototypes bear fruit and (b) produce some sort of revenue, there is no good reason for the unnecessary expense and effort involved in running a limited company, which is merely a distraction from the task in hand.

Make it, don't fake it.

The business, such as it was, will also be listed on Google as permanently closed.

The Strip

Love conferences where people get together to dress up, award prizes for sales and then sleep with each other. I did a few, but stumbled across many more checking in as crew at hotels in the small hours in the midst of drunken comic-con characters.

But as and when we gather in Vegas for annual maritime-drone awards, up for best supporting supplier will undoubtably be Cheshire Mouldings; whose half-dozen strip-woods here go to form the booms, bindings and deflectors on the second proof-of-concept that will be dedicated to hover instead of cruise on water.

Accordingly I've already prepared a speech for the salesman flown in to appear with me on the red carpet:

'As a child, I used to stand in the garden staring at trees and wondering what to do with them... and little did I know then that I'd be standing in front of you today in a sequinned frock. First and foremost though I should like to thank Colin Hilton (raise statuette here), for all that he has done to turn bits of trees into drones.'

The Statosphere

They're not something I review often if at all, this humble blog being more memoir, though stats are invariably informative and throw up the odd surprise: like the post I did about an aircraft colliding with power cables garnering 600-plus views in a day.

In contrast the papers uploaded to digital commons attract few downloads, though may make more of a difference in that they're looked at presumably with a view to imitation as against titillation.

And the takeaway from the latest stats is that there is a drift away from the designs I uploaded that were aimed at the sky, and towards those aimed at the sea instead.

The reason for this I think is that the skies are literally crowded with new concepts, principally because most inventors have yet to realise that they'll burn through cash or else crash at the regulation stage.

Boats though are different, literally and figuratively flying under the radar. Combine it with the closure of an oil-bearing strait, and I guess it concentrates the mind.

That 18th-century blogger Samuel Johnson wrote that when a man is to hang in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully... as does running out of oil.

London Bullshit Company

I was puzzled with LBC's reporting the belated evacuation of UK citizens in the wake of the third episode in the Gulf War franchise, as the photo's a stock image dating back to 2005 of a First Choice aircraft taking off at London Gatwick... despite the impression LBC hope to give of evacuees arriving at London Stansted this morning.

Lesson being in this century get news from wherever you can, when individuals are as good a guide ~ if not better ~ to what's going on in the world than the media.

Wrong flight phase, wrong year, wrong aircraft, wrong passengers, wrong airport, wrong time and wrong airline... although we can all agree that it is an aeroplane.

Accordingly, see the exclusive below from your own trusted news source instead:

The Government's first charter flight to evacuate British nationals from
 the Middle East has arrived in the UK. Picture: Wacky Races

Back to the Future #24

After unloading two tins of primer I'm pleased with the result. 'A fine vessel Sir and no mistake, aharrrr...' as our First Sea Lord commented following the email I sent.

I like the cut of the man's jib, whilst everyone is choosing grey with a black trim for their new cars here in the UK and so this suits the vibe besides appealing to the RN.

I shall probably mount tuna-tin lift-motors for the PR push and remove them after, as this first prototype will be tested purely as a boat with a pair of pushers. Frankly too, if it doesn't work as a boat then it doesn't work at all, does it?

Happily on that score there is enough room given the outline to swing 24" props instead of 22". This is good to have in reserve ~ along with upgraded motors and a higher voltage ~ should the proof of concept require more power.

I shall also mount real motors on the power-bar at the rear, as we'll need to see the resting trim in water; for which I'll have to brave the local pond else build a static test-tank in the back yard.

Watch this space.

Ed. There's a theory the colours people choose for new cars suits the zeitgeist viz. orange, pink or purple in the 1960s, as against fifty shades of Soviet grey today.

Heal the World, Make it a Beta Place.

Having just consumed coffee and scones I had planned to sit in my dressing-gown and binge on episodes of Frasier this morning, but then news of this courtesy of the VFS suggests there might be better things to do with the Spring that is upon us here in the UK.

For Amazon have just invested in a 5.3% stake in Beta, whose 'Alia' eVTOL-come-CTOL has just completed successful trials in Norway. The thinking at Amazon goes something like this: the Alia is a conventional fixed-wing aircraft to which lift motors can be added whenever electric vertical operation gains traction years from now.

If this sounds at all familiar, let us remind ourself that we are pioneering a drone I'd like to see piloted one day that can be operated as a conventional watercraft, whilst also being adaptable as a surface-effect aircraft to skim the sea as when conditions permit: by adding, as do Beta, four more motors.

Which with apologies to Frasier, I ought to be getting on with?

In the days I had money, I walked into a hotel bar near Amalfi where the only guest was Woody Harrelson of 'Cheers'. Doing the same in Mallorca, Bob Geldof (whilst Lauren Bacall walked the gardens beyond). There've been a lot of hotel bars in my life, which you can read about in the second instalment of my bio, 'Hotel Barred'. See also the first, 'Nasty, Brutal and Short'.

Winning Battles, Losing Wars?

Picture's emblematic of the age, being what Ukranian company Skyeton made last century and what it has replaced it with in this. More significantly its partners in the UK ~ we don't make, we partner ~ suggest that it is set to replace the billion-pound domestic experiment in the UK.

The reason billion £/$ (delete as necessary) procurement experiments fail is that Western defence is built around a consumer boom and military-industrial complex... and why YouTube futurist Professor Jiang has predicted that (a) Trump would win the presidency (b) would go to war with Iran and (c) lose.

For his suggestion is that the US military is designed for war in the 20th century and not the 21st. He adds that the AI boom sustaining the US economy is financed to a great extent by petrodollars, the flow of which war will constrain; while threats to either desalination plants or the Straits of Hormuz could choke off the supply of food and water to places like the UAE and Saudi Arabia within weeks. And we forget whilst watching QVC that you can't do without those.

Meanwhile the author of The Art of the Deal bemoans the fact he has no Churchill, author of A History of the English-Speaking Peoples to deal with, and he is probably right. For Churchill was of his time, a product of economies that produced instead of consuming, and we are of ours.

And that is to say that after 2,500 years of war or more instead of 250, Europeans are belatedly wise to the merits of defence at least, even if it needn't extend to pre-emptive attack. What's happening around the Gulf is inflating oil and gas, bolstering Russia's efforts in Ukraine... be careful what you wish for and choose friends wisely.

In response the suggestion is that warships escort oil tankers through the Straits, so the global economy proceeds as normal. Not a stone's throw from where I write tho' is the underground museum from where the Battle of the Atlantic was fought, and orchestrated by said Churchill.

Problem was ships carrying supplies to Europe, plus their escorts, were being sunk by numerous and comparatively inexpensive submarines hunting in packs.

Sound familiar, anybody?

One of my flying students served on the final convoy aimed at relieving beleaguered Russians via the northern route during WW2, prior Churchill pulling the plug given losses from U-boats.