Yesterday something of a personal Black Friday, which tends to happen at such times as the project looks like it's staring into an abyss. At such times it's essential to step away from the vehicle and I watch back-to-back World Cup matches, interrupted only by a documentary on the life and work of Agatha Christie.
Returning to the fray I realise ~ especially if the aircraft is to be flown fixed in the first instance ~ that this is an altogether more rigid construct than the columns, and at the same restores the 'leitmotif' of flying phone-box. With the base that we constructed in the week, I remove the 'foot-well' and taking the metre-length perimeter sections off the rotorhead, I fix them to the upright tube-connectors instead and cap them with an identical frame.
It looks a flyer (and we've flown such boxes previously, albeit with a seated mannekin inside) and is both rigid and lightweight at 4.0kg (or 9.0lb) whilst the mannekin itself is just 3.3kg (7.0lb). It's supposed to represent a three-four year-old, yet is at least four times lighter. For flight-testing this will be addressed in stages by drilling a hole in his head, allowing it to be filled with water beside allowing the wonders of the universe to access his pineal gland.
There's actually a dwarf sport association in the UK whom I intend to approach to see if they know of one who might test-fly a phone-box at scale... the program open to anyone with the required motivation so long as it's not me personally.
