Come four o'clock and with a final sweep of the workshop, air vehicle and trailer are set to be transported elsewhere for soldering up and programming prior to flight-testing, and all in the teeth of a second wave of Covid-19 infections with whatever restrictions might follow.
It has been a little over three and a half months since the previous prototype was driven south ( http://teledrone.blogspot.com/2020/06/ex-works.html ) and though those plans went awry, we are in an altogether better position now regards both prototype and personnel.
Every step of the way from hereon in has to be designed for the rough-and-tumble of both road and air, and this applies to the logistics as is clear from the trailer. I would like to say the trailer was designed around the prototype, but if anything the latter has benefitted from having to fit the former.
This is not as strange as you might think. The much-delayed Bristol Britannia was drafted with seating for three-dozen passengers, because launch-customer BOAC felt it sat better with their existing fleet of buses back in the day when you were driven out to the aircraft. The buses sat three-dozen, which thus became the key specification.
It's what happens when you eliminate commercial probity from the equation, and one among a number of reasons why the golden age of UK aviation in the 1950s was turned gradually to lead.
