Sandhopper

I break from the build so as to collect furniture as a favour from the farthest side of Morecambe Bay. This is an area of tidal flats so hazardous that it has warranted an official guide ~ by royal appointment ~ since 1548. Before that time, it was monks at Cartmel Priory who'd guide travellers across these sands by way of a short-cut. In fact where I sketched the route ~ a distance of over ten miles ~ there used to be a horse-drawn carriage service whose schedule was dictated by the tides.

Otherwise you cross these tidal flats at considerable risk, and especially so in fog or encroaching darkness: circs that accounted for two-dozen cockle-pickers as recently as 2004.

Nonetheless the inset provides the sheer acreage unavailable to boats, depending on the state of the tide and its associated currents. As this is replicated in endless locations around the UK, which has the longest coastline in Europe, that's one giant mis-step for boats for humankind.

Which is why admiring the view seaward along this estuary and on to the bay as I drove west of Grange-Upon-Sands, it struck me a boat that might be impervious to the whims of the tide ~ never to be left high and dry on some or other sandbank ~ must surely be of use to someone, somewhere?

Holy Trinity

During suspension I pig out on Netflix docs, which are invariably about murders in the US of which there appear to be several. Like this caff though and ~ travelling Route 66 on a Harley ~ what else do you need?

Accident Investigation

Naturally I've been suspended from the proj and all related driving duties whilst the AAIB investigate the recent incident. Meantimes I content myself with the fact that (a) I'm still a member of the pilot's union and (b) I carried out the POWER PLANT: FIRE, SEVERE DAMAGE OR SEPARATION checklist to the letter, with an emergency landing on Blaguegate Lane as soon as it was apparent the motor was attached by one remaining bolt... and barely millimetres of that.

These props are not cheap, but they do come by the (CW and CCW) pair in view of the fact you're expected to fit them to quadcopters as a bare minimum. This suits a catamaran too, it using even in the most rudimentary form two cruise motors.

But in fact among the reasons I steered myself from airborne toward a waterborne drone was precisely because a fall from say two feet is altogether more acceptable to hearts and minds than one from two hundred. It is also because whilst the people who fly radio-controlled aircraft were once seen as sad middle-age men in anoraks, they are now viewed as fundamentalists intent on destroying our way of life.

In previous consultations with people co-opted to produce the prototypical drones I made in the past, the merest nick in a carbon-fibre propeller was viewed as reason to discard it all together.

My opinion on this changed somewhat watching YouTube vids of people messing around with drone-builds, almost invariably sourced in the US where they are a good deal more adventurous than us here, whilst having more space to experiment. In brief, however, with one drone stuck up a tree another was sent up to release it by using its carbon-fibre propeller blades as an expensive form of strimmer.

Accordingly the timber boom here will be rounded down with sandpaper in the time-worn method that has served alloy and wooden aircraft since the dawn of time, and the propeller will be pampered with sellotape either side and told to shape up and get back to front-line duties.

Looking at the woodwork though, which looks like its been on the end of some of my work with a mallet and chisel, you get a notion of just how fast these things are windmilling even in a breeze of twenty knots or less. In fact it occurred to me that we could harness the electricity produced to recharge the car's battery, something for which our Minister for Environment would provide a grant of millions.

Ed. As the AAIB conclude, the propeller was running backwards with the air flowing in the wrong direction ~ leading to its trailing edge and not leading doing the chiseling. 

Life on the Edge

Day of mixed fortunes because enroute to the photo-shoot the car sounds at under 30 m.p.h. like it is about to take off: oddly the prop at right of the inset windmilling to such an extent that the motor works loose and the prop takes a slice out of the boom, which hurts its carbon-fibre rather more than it does the timber. The fact it windmills an the other none at all I can only attribute to the fact it is the CW prop and not the CCW?

I've pulled alongside three workmen who are renovating a house and besides being decidedly impressed with the drone, provide cable-ties to do what should have been done at the get-go.

Nonetheless the finished article is a great improvement on the picture that formerly featured on the website, so Gromit and I feel we deserve a tea and a hot-cross bun.

Cubist Movement

A significant milestone as conservatory doors are swung open ~ their tops shrouded in mist ~ and the craft is restored horizontal to be manoeuvred into Assembly Hall #3, which many of the staff simply refer to as 'the lounge'.

Here Pixhawk's mighty flight-controller is installed to supply flight management and guidance; similar to one currently guiding Artemis to the Moon, in that parts are black and others orange.

As lives depend on this tiny orange cube, I plan to be nowhere near the launch-site.

View to rear of craft, which scientists believe features not planet Earth but the door-mat.

Band of Rubbers

Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has been on at me again to reduce my use of cable-ties and so I have reverted to the age-old RC modellers method of securing things (like wings in their case) with rubber-bands.

Did you ever wonder why so many model aircraft had (a) high wings and (b) bands to secure them? Well principally so they can be added as a unitary part in a place clear of undercarriage and so forth, and where they're less likely to snap during crashes that regularly feature.

Airliners don't have wings attached with rubber-bands, but did you ever wonder why so few of them feature high-mounted wings aside from the (defunct) Bae 146?

Well wings are cantilevered around the edges of a big box (called the wing-box) that ideally fits under the cabin floor, where it is used to store fuel and provide support for the landing gear.

Trying to include it at ceiling-height in an airliner, a space devoted to (a) your head as you walk the aisle and (b) cabin-baggage lockers, is set to fail from the get-go. Both turbo-props I flew had high-mounted wings, so neither needed much in the way of undercarriage; but none of the jets.

That is not a consideration with jet airliners, that require long legs for the clearance required of turbofans and to allow for rotation around their middle for take-off and landing... especially as they keep stretching them.

Who knew that stretched bands and stretched fuselages had so much in common?

Can you see the rubber-band, children?

Thanks to the Co-Op round the corner for providing the rubber-bands for free... they also serve who only stand and wait behind the counter.

Plying Their Trade

... and nor is Airbus averse to using plywood when it comes to modelling drones.