Took a day off, it being Valentines.
It was also a day when (a) I resolved to build the smallest practical aircraft and (b) Airbus resolved to quit production of the largest. I'm comfortable with that in the same way that cockroaches and scorpions are relaxed about the idea of nuclear war...
And, it just got smaller.
I work principally with wood at the outset, it having been good enough for Leonardo. One of the 'webinistas' in the GoFly programme advised dropping CAD/CAM in favour of learning to sketch with a pencil instead, and I'm all for that.
We still have as a focus our flying phone-box, but this is like the GT version of your favourite car, and in the way that these will have a 'sport' setting nowadays, this one is set for manual controls. It's a pilot's phone-box.
It also ~ and this is a 1:5 scale model ~ has the benefit of being constructed of just a dozen one-metre lengths of alloy. Such extrusions retail worldwide at production lengths of six metres and so I am using two units of production, which appeals to my sense of unity.
This then is my one metre box, whilst the commercial phone-box features headroom of two.
Looking at it I realise there are countless reasons for underslung motors at the top-end, as this removes them from around the 'flight-deck' and pitches them lower, at a level where the passenger-compartment can be readily armoured against the chance of shed rotor-blades.
I am proud of the model and of the photograph, which the patent agent initially mistook for a CAD/CAM render of the prototype instead of the blood, sweat and tear production you see.
Cannot wait to mock up the full-size box too and stand in it like Dan Dare.
Likely to use 3-inch spars as these will give the depth in the base to store lithium-ion cells (or batteries to you and me) stood upright like a honey-comb lain out flat on the floor.
You see, I think of everything.
