Trending Touch-Me-Not

In my day Japanese Knotweed was the illegal migrant of all illegal migrants, but it has been overtaken apparently by Himalayan Balsam, a member of the touch-me-not family of plants with its own Facebook page and Instagram account. Here it is seen relaxing with friends over at a river in Keighley, North Yorkshire.

EMA-IL

Your cut-out-and-keep guide as to where to turn base in a Boeing 737. The other item circled is, within a kiss-Amazon's-ass logistics hub, a patch of woodland that is altogether inaccessible... see signage and fencing below.

I'd have preferred a sign that said "Enjoy Nature at Your Peril".

Trouble at Mill?

Could there be anything better to do on a Friday morning than drive along the Colne Valley that spans Lancashire and Yorkshire, and witness so many of the places that birthed the Industrial Revolution? *

The mills in Keighley hosted the production of streaming sensation 'Peaky Blinders' but like so many others has been burned down by crackheads, because that's where we're headed here. Note though the cast-iron column at right (What can you see in the right window, children? Yes, a bit of industrial architecture!) that would have held up a floor replete with looms driven if not by water-wheel, then steam-engine instead.

Look though at the Italianate tower in the background, a flourish repeated at every corner of a building that was built to last in perpetuity!

* Ed. How about one in a Bangkok brothel?

Alternate Lore

Driving down the A500 I cannot help but notice an airliner departing East Midlands in a climbing turn that looks more ballsy than average? For it's Ryanair practising circuits and go-arounds at the same place I did the same thing in the same aircraft back in the early 1990s... just remember to turn base over the power-station!

Ordinarily this would be done in a simulator nowadays, a much more eco-friendly solution altogether. Nonetheless crashing an airliner is not altogether eco-friendly and there is no surer guarantee against that contingency than practising in the real thing.

For it turns out that over at Heathrow, BA nearly succeeded in stalling an airliner over central London during an approach. Unlike the aircraft seen here, which was designed in the 1960s, the Airbus A320 was a product of the 1980s and introduced 'fly-by-wire' technology wherein effectively the airliner does the flying in response to pilot input.

The problem with that is you've an airliner that does everything for you except suck your dick whilst in Normal Law, but turns out to be your worst enemy in Alternate when frankly it's a bitch to fly. The principal problem is that during the 99.99% of the time it's doing the flying for you, you've largely forgotten how to do it yourself.

Stalls in airliners, which involve losses of altitude of hundreds of feet at a time you might be at just two or three thousand, are fortunately rare and you'd have to re-run the FlightRadar 24 to see if this event was actual or incipient... and I'm not going to pay for that.

Suffice it to recall that Air France 447 stalled all the way into the sea from around 35,000 feet because, essentially, none of its three pilots recognised a stall situation. But had you learned to fly circa WW1, the stall would have been the first thing you got to know about in an aeroplane (beside the spin, which killed people until a pilot happenstanced upon a recovery) and your constant companion thereafter.

The situation is reflected in largely-electrical cars, and moreso again in self-driving types. They are statistically altogether safer, like largely-electrical airliners, but at those times when they call upon motor skills: we've largely forgotten what they are.* It's not though a particular airline thing or a particular crew or pilot thing, but simply an evolving technology thing.

And as we segue between a human-managed world and an AI-, we may as well get used to it. Elon gives us ten years, but airliners are designed and manufactured to last many more tens of years than that, and they have seats up front. Will we get to see a robot sat on the flight-deck and leaning over to the captain to say, You can't do that, Dave?

I do hope so.

Unless you're playing Grand Theft Auto instead.

Big Day Out: Sammy Miller Museum

If you're anywhere near the New Forest in the south of England ~ 'new' because Henry VIII had chopped down all of the trees around London and needed some place else to hunt ~ then this museum's a must for petrolheads.

On the way in there's as good a selection of petrol-pumps, in fact, that you could hope for and ideal by way of mental stretching-exercises. This is the sort I most remember as a kid, and into the days I'd work as a teenager filling tanks:

Thereafter I'd recommend a visit to the caff, not only for a fine selection for brunch or lunch, but for its array of oil-cans. During the aforesaid work at a petrol-station, this is the one I recall that I sold most often ~ or used in my two-wheelers ~ beside Castrol's legendary GTX. A recent YouTube video explains how engines are failing sooner nowadays because oils are thinner, and as everything else is fairly shit I can imagine that's the case:

At the entrance to the museum ~ itself beyond a quadrangle that used once to form the outbuildings of a farm and which itself contains any number of curiosities ~ there is what I am sure is the only motorised mono-wheel that I have ever seen and which in some ways is not at all surprising:

Move on inside the main collection however and there is apparently no fewer than five hundred motorcycles to inspect. The only other sizeable collection exists in the Midlands, which is where bicycle and motorcycle manufacture is historically centred in the UK: they have double the number despite a serious fire some time ago. Bear in mind however the museum we are looking at here is essentially a private effort begun by a legend in the field of motor-sport, and run by volunteers.

Let's get back to the show, though, by admiring a delightful 50cc unit from Honda. In view of the fact their 50cc Super Cub is the best-selling form of transport ever, technically this engine and its derivatives is the most-produced machine in history:

There are any number of custom motorcycles to look at beside production runs and here's one with a petrol-tank that has literally taken a beating to knock into shape:

Another aspect of the development of motorcycles is the range of different engine configurations that has been experimented with, before evolutionary forces weeded out the least likely, such as this square-four:

Inevitably in-line variants tended to win out over the course of that evolution (my own favourite Kawasaki's two-stroke 750cc triple), though like Gillette's razors they covered both ends of the spectrum as represented here by Honda's in-line six:

There has also been some debate as to whether the front or rear wheel ought to be driven, and whether the engine ought to be cradled in-between or else fitted on or above either of those wheels. My first moped ever was the Honda P50, which I have only ever seen in Glasgow's Transport Museum... where my offer to buy it would be rebuffed. Although it incorporated its 50cc motor within the rear wheel, however, it appears not to have been the first to do so:

Honda themselves though have proven to be among the most innovative and indeed experimental companies on Earth, not least due the imagination and perseverance of its founder. We as teenagers once found a 100cc two-stroke twin to restore and it may have been a Yamaha, but either way I figured that's about as far as dividing cylinder-capacity as things could get. But seems I wad wrong, and here is a Honda 50cc divided among no less than four (!) cylinders. Thought I was going to orgasm at this point!

I incorporate this next Yamaha FS1E because at school it was a choice between this or Honda's 50cc four-stroke SS instead. I could not afford either, and persisted with a moped with an engine for a rear hub. Conventionally 'mopeds' had been engine-assisted pedal-bikes, but the Japanese managed to include vestigial pedals into a pair of motorcycles that any 16-year old could ride. As a consequence the deaths of 16-year olds around the world became statistically significant, and you'd wonder if that kept them awake at night; although I doubt it.

I wondered looking back at these photos why I had included this particular one, and I wonder if you can guess? Yes, it's an example of the Brough Superior upon which Lawrence of Arabia died on those country lanes in Dorset! He lost his life swerving to avoid two boys on bicycles, effectively both living and dying the hero that he has commonly been viewed as ever since:

We've seen some interesting variations on the theme, though, haven't we although to my mind this takes the biscuit. The radial engine was a spectacular success in the aeroplanes that featured in WW1, and it is perhaps no surprise therefore to see that it was tried out in a motor-cycle. The layout of motorcycle engines is like all things a compromise, however, and one that includes lowering the centre of gravity as much as providing the maximum ground-clearance, and radial engines basically leave the exam-room quietly at this stage:

Turning to mopeds with a front-wheel drive, France's inestimable Solex survived in production between 1946 and 1988 and that first date is key. After WW2 the entire nation was skint, and barely able to afford a loaf of bread or half-dozen eggs, and thus no surprise there were few Honda CBRs to be seen at the time. Fledgling cars had been wiped out along with any number of civilian and military casualties, and so the next best thing was to fit a motor to your front-wheel.

It started out by bearing upon the front tyre, tho' this tended to drive previously-harmless punctures home, so that a chain would eventually be included along the way. You'd think that electrical motors would revive at least the former means if only for its simplicity, but then the motor-in-hub came along to prove even better.

Writing of means of transmission, however, we cannot depart the museum without a look at this constantly-variable means of gearing. It's like an LP record set vertical and with the outside running altogether faster, picking up power from thereabouts is going to be like seamlessly shifting into a higher gear. Only DAF would persist in the development with their 'Variomatic' cars that nobody wanted to be seen in, for at the end of the day a conventional toothed gear transmits power with fewer losses due to friction altogether.

Nonetheless we like a good foray into the mechanical unknowns, as we do our days out at the museum:

Maquette Man

We've seen the value of mock-ups in prototyping and product development, and a maquette is a scale model that provides for the look and feel of an element of the design, besides an insight in how it might best be constructed.

I've an aspect of all this that I'd like to include in a patent specification, however, for which I prefer a half-decent render to the sort of hand-drawn sketches that I have disgraced these pages with in the past.

The way I do that is to put a maquette of this kind together upon which to base the drawings, and in fact for this I have re-used parts from the crewed cat mock-up we so enjoyed earlier today.

Then I put these photographs either to my cousin to reproduce in SketchUp (once having been an architect as against the EasyJet captain he is now); for a lager and a curry.

Alternatively I pop them over to Richard Bache in Estonia where now he lives with a wife from thereabouts, and he converts them into drawings suitable for patent docs.

He has worked on any number of my specs in the past, the only fly in his ointment being the fact that Estonia requires all businesses to invoice using VAT registration viz. UK and European sales tax. This has to be done by a friend of mine, whom after has to be reimbursed by self.

It's probably one reason why the sane don't develop anything if they can help it.

Strip Show #10

Without wanting to drag things out, this completes the feasibility study into whether flat-cats might be built for crewed operations: broadly speaking, seems they might. 

The half-decks are of identical build to the pontoons and largely serve to protect the propellers, which are overlapped (to reduce width by some 25%) by off-setting the motors longitudinally.

It is around 8' in length, and so a half-scale build. Asking whether it could be got to work in any shape or form, as a guide we've the fact that people on planks seem to plane happily on water when moved at speed. Whether anyone would want to buy a boat like the one here is debatable, and dependent on expensive prototyping prior.

What I might do then is to build something larger for the sheer entertainment value, and get it towed behind a regular motor-cruiser belonging to someone richer than I. 

But if you wanted swarms of drones stored or built as flat-packs at reasonable cost, then the outline would probably be worth considering?

The props should run in this event in the same direction in order that overlapping portions of disk run in opposition.