"When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."
Or so said the celebrated Dr. Johnson. News from the organisers of the GoFly challenge that they have a pair of FAA retirees on board in order to guide entrants through the maze that is aircraft certification.
Actually the United States' Federal Aviation Authority is more liberal than most when it comes to defining 'ultralight vehicles', which fall into Part 103 of the regulations.
For it now appears (with a submission required by the middle of the month) that I must definitively specify the location of this airframe around my own frame. Fortunately after arranging it like this on a Saturday evening, the mental mist began to clear.
That's one benefit of the rules and timelines of a competition: they focus the attention.
Another quote from Leonardo Da Vinci, in this context: "A small room concentrates the mind."
I've always been impressed by designs that minimise the outline of a product, and I see now how the means of getting airborne could be reduced to a cipher.
Watch this space.
