Include this as it's a thing of beauty so far as I'm concerned: six-inch PU foam infill dropped down to two using only a wire camping saw, wood-saw and hand-held sander.
Break off early for a webinar from the GoFly organisers that features the head (?) of GAMA. These talks kick off around 11:00 in the morning EST, coinciding nicely with tea and cake time in the UK.
Context: have been flying all types of fixed-wing aircraft off and on for the past four decades or more and turns out I'm a dying breed:
(a) average age of GA airframes is around 50 years old
(b) average age of pilots of above is rather older
(c) GA movements in the US practically halved in 20 years
(d) fatalities are flat-lining with over half due loss-of-control
(e) 75% of same stubbornly associated with pilot error
eVTOL will improve every count, and once I demonstrate how easily and cheaply they can be designed, built and flown then they'll be common as sparrows. Or commoner, for like most wildlife sparrows are dying out faster than general aviation.
I pose a question in the webinar, asking how the FAA plan to prevent unregulated use of piloted drones when the price falls fast like that of model drones. He's aware of the issue and compares it to electrical scooters, which have proliferated worldwide and broken both bones and fellow pedestrians in the process.
As a teenager I witnessed the circumventing of rules defining 'moped' by the Japanese, so that they could produce geared 50cc motorcycles on the same terms.
This killed so many sixteen-year olds around the globe that it showed up in mortality stats.
We have therefore to balance ~ as ever we've had to ~ the benefits and dis-benefits.
