Go In, Stay In, Tune Out

Preparations for war to date in the UK consist majorly on the PM having mentioned in passing that it's coming to a street near you, and a .gov page on what to do in case of being irradiated. The West now operates a 'rule by slogan' form of administration in which catchy soundbites like 'smash the smuggling gangs' substitute for actions of any sort.

Meantime in Lithuania ~ where I spent much time relating to flying training ~ they are establishing centres where 15,000 adults and 7,000 children are to be schooled in the basics of designing, building, programming and operating drones.

Nothing new, though, the Russians having long organised video gaming conventions for youth, from which participants are cherry-picked for less innocent pursuits.

Have a nice day.

Delta Force

Great thing about the 'net is that it's Darwinian evolution on steroids: people ask to be video'd say, walking around a cliff-face hundreds of feet up and whoops, they're gone.

Likewise these shorts are titled 'Is this safe' and... if you have to ask the question?

They do though demonstrate the aerodynamic stability of delta planforms, which is admittedly not what the average viewer is thinking. Put any form of multihull in that situation, for example, and it's a back-flip you're watching instead: triangular wings simply 'mush' where squarer ones might stall or somersault.

If ever the drone gets on the water, the proof of the watery pudding will be stability in and around situations like these. Whichever way you look at it, however, critical dynamics of hydrofoil and aerofoil surfaces will be much more to the fore as vessels get smaller, lighter, faster and uncrewed.

Both of these videos required constant manipulation of the controls by each jackass, though a computer would make light work of stabilising such angles of attack: as it does with fourth and fifth generation fighter jets.

What Goes Round (and Round)...

It occurs that one day we might sit ~ or stand ~ on a version of our boat, although I'll likely still be imagining it on my death bed:

Colin: We're there, aren't we? On the beach in California?

Priest: We are! The sun's setting. There's a crowd... they're all here for you.

Colin: And they're singing?

Priest: They are... the birds too.

Colin: Lift me up! Set me on the seat!!

Priest: You're on the boat now... the propellers are humming!

Colin: The counter-rotator's?

Priest: The counter-rotators.

Colin: Aaaaaaah.

Priest: I'm done here nurse ~ just one more nut-job at the end of the hall.

Let us examine what is out there however in terms of PAVs or personal air vehicles as opposed to PWC, Personal Water Craft (or Price Waterhouse Cooper).

The Volonaut at top-left will leave you with little change from a million dollars, but is from the same people (person, practically) who brought you the Jetson. It doesn't fly for long, sets fires we could do without and is not new: the Williams X-Jet below appeared in 1974 although you had to tilt it to steer. Nonetheless both are perfect for pissing off (or on) the neighbours.

Alongside, the Skysurfer also comes from a talented and passionate engineer (and I'm neither); but he doesn't quote a price, which is the last thing you want either online or in a brothel. It also has expensive replacement propellers written all over it, but hey, it's out there.

Below it however if it was propellers you wanted then Hiller's flying platform served a purpose back in '55. It was not nearly so practical as the altogether simpler (and safer) gyrocopter, however, and was never going to be parked on your driveway: which is where tech comes into its own as regards universal accessibility.

There's clearly a case for eVTOL taxis flying sightseers and rich people around, but motive means for individuals (there are no single-seat automobiles that I can see) except those on two wheels have a chequered past that I don't see improving any time soon.

But we keep trying, as the flowers bloom each Spring.*

*To paraphrase Herman Hesse, who so far as I know never owned an eVTOL.

X-Plane

Kate Bush has been calling again saying, Don't give up, 'cause you have friends! Don't give up, you're not beaten yet! Don't give up, I know you can make counter-rotating propellers work!

Accordingly I have looked again, and settled upon this as a solution: one motor fixed to the rear of the deck and another that can be popped into place and removed if ever the propeller in the background should need replacing.

A rule related to building drones that I've just made up relates to (a) how easily carbon-fibre propellers are damaged and (b) how often they need replacing. This arrangement addresses both issues by proving the necessary protection from damage, whilst still sticking to our 'plug and play' philosophy. Furthermore it still allows the drone to be stored (or dried out) upright.

And whereas the previous arrangement looked a bit of a dog, as our CEO put it, this one looks both purposeful and practical.

I've a recent mail from a hobbyist, saying he too knows when a drive-train just fits if he 'thinks of it constantly and buys it flowers'.

I've removed the email address now.

Counter Argument

Counter-rotating props rigged at the back-end ~ counter as without a common axle. By extending the stripwood and ski it still stands on end, but looks and feels messy to my mind.

I'll hang it ~ or myself ~ from the rafters and look again at one motor and propeller at the leading edge, reserving the space here for a rudder.

We'll bank this idea for now, although it holds out the prospect of rolling the craft into turns using differential thrust alone.

Rudderless, in fact, as the project itself feels much of the time.

N.B. Anyone spot how both propellers are set to run in the same direction? If you did, get a life.

Steam Punked

Happened upon this beauty left idling away at berth on the Ripon Canal at the weekend, and flabber-gas-ted to discover a Diesel engine and not one running on steam power. This was among the first commercial engines of the type, however, introduced in 1929 by Manchester firm Gardner and delivering 10HP at a leisurely 1000 r.p.m.

It is at this point that the transition from external to internal combustion appeared seamless, the two running and sounding much the same. In fact Gardner began as a manufacturer of sewing machines before a venture into engines that ran on coal gas, for two principal reasons: there were lots of both cotton and coal being made in Manchester at the time.

In fact, making sewing machines (as the founder of Triumph motorcycles did) was a natural fit for making engines too, because they consisted largely of metal castings of the sort that were the bread-and-butter of the Industrial Revolution taking place at the time.

Gardner made diesel engines for luxury cars, buses and trucks beside the one seen here, which was designed as both a stationary and marine engine. They expired in the 1990s when emissions rules ~ which destroyed and continue to destroy many viable industries and may yet be proven to have been an ecological waste of time ~ led to the turbo-diesels that most governments viewed as the solution, at least until they didn't.

The same is happening currently to automotive petrol-engines, making them more expensive, less reliable and harder to maintain altogether: so that they're scrapped before their time. It's wasteful, carbon-intensive and inefficient but the important thing is that it ticks the right boxes; or at least until we all die of heat-stroke.

The engine here ~ like the steam-engine ~ needed no electrical input whatsoever and was started by hand.

As some among my first cars could be.

Among my most popular videos ~ since lost ~ was of an antique diesel two-stroke narrowboat engine ticking over at the Boat Museum in Cheshire. You can listen to this four-stroke here instead however: https://youtube.com/shorts/LdVE01EZooE?

Running Out of Steam

Last weekend saw 'The Greatest Gathering' at Derby's rail works, recently voted by the public as the historic centre of locomotive building in the UK. It celebrated 200 years since the first passengers were drawn between Stockton and Darlington and featured any number of historic types, brought together for one weekend in the one place. Tickets sold out in hours and I wish I could have been there.

It could though be considered to be a celebration of the sale of UK assets to foreign shareholders, what is left of rail engineering having been sold long ago to a French multinational known for corruption to the same extent as it is for building railways.

The UK's most recent efforts ~ a high speed service between London and the North ~ failed enroute to Birmingham, and more recently the electrification of lines from London to Derby lost the will to live a little way north of Leicester. In China whilst all this goes on, they are trialling a service around twice the speed of our failed 'high speed' efforts... ironically using a technology attributed to Eric Laithwaite, who was born a stone's throw from here.

I've travelled on the maglev service between Pudong airport and Shanghai, and it is as close to travelling on a jet airliner as you can get whilst still moving over ground.

I've also ~ for the last time ~ used a train to get to Manchester Airport, seeing why we have a problem with rail transport in the UK. The service is over-priced and of dubious reliability, so people avoid it if at all possible. This leads to a doom spiral in which tax-payer revenue is effectively transferred to foreign shareholders.

We should close the railways and just transfer the cash, as with every other utility.

The train up top is a diesel multiple unit (DMU) of the sort we'd take to go shopping in Liverpool decades ago, and I'd still rather a ride in one of those than in the one below... they were so bad, they were good.

Focaccia (pron. 'for-catch-yer')

Here's why the Russians will win in Ukraine, nuclear war or no... a bread factory is producing drones instead: bacon bap to go, quad on the side?

The UK worse off than the US in this regard, as it's a service economy and a service economy is not geared for war... although it can deliver pizzas to the front line.

An exemplary case is Skyports Drone Services, which operates medical deliveries within Belgium from the southeast of England (good), using Swiss drones (not so).

To write shit like this requires a historical perspective, and there is none better than the Battle of Kursk. A place you've heard of, for Ukraine's recent incursion?

It's where 6,000 tanks locked horns and where that Trabant of tanks or T-34 was up against the likes of the Tiger, featuring input from Porsche and BMW... did it really need that sun-roof?

Lesson was anyone producing simple designs in greater number that were simple to operate and maintain, would ultimately prevail.

Sound familiar?

Apache Long-gone?

Although I have touted the idea of a self-launching boat that can hover itself betwixt land and sea, that's not where the current emphasis lies although I do continue as a paid-up member of the Vertical Flight Society.

Its most recent mag is genuinely sobering, reflecting as it does on the impact of the conflict in the Ukraine and the speed with which drones have supplanted practically all other mobile means of warfare: except artillery that can be relocated during the course of an advance.

WW1 effectively did for the cavalry, which would be replaced by mobile means in the shape of the tank and aircraft that dominated the largest battles during WW2.

Korea and Vietnam witnessed the utility of the helicopter gunship ~ an aerial tank ~ that secured victory in the Gulf War.

What Ukraine showed was tanks and helicopter gunships making impressive video footage on Day One, after which they were absent due less costly means of laying waste to them.

Offensive operations have also evolved from the miniaturisation of airframes, along with communication via miniature satellite and AI... which is capable of independent navigation and target acquisition through miniaturisation of chips largely stemming from smartphones.

What all this means in the US is that the DoD is taking a hatchet to programs that result in small numbers of units that are as expensive as they are sophisticated: and replacing them with drones on land, air and sea that can be manufactured in great number, in a short timeframe and at minimum cost in terms of cash and lives.

In a nutshell what the Defense Secretary requires is each element of the military ~ whether on land, sea or air ~ being capable of deploying drones in great number.

(Beside ditching tanks after a century or more of service... and phasing out gunships after some half of that.)

Meanwhile in Ukraine, a first-person-view version of WW1 continues unabated.

Sunday Sermon: ASBOS & ASDOS

A new feature for those like me who loathe life in the UK but are too old to do much about it... the Sunday Sermon!

Today I'd like to discuss challenges have faced two of our socialist-in-name-only governments of recent times, and how they intersect.

Friday I was wandering around Stubbylee Park in Bacup, the taste of my tea spoiled by learning how a pair of goths were stamped (mostly and actually) to death by our feral youth, one of whom released early for good behaviour: keep that in mind.

To combat such, privately-educated PM Tony Blair introduced ASBOs or anti-social behaviour orders... which rapidly became a badge of honour among youths, so as to encourage such behaviour further.

It's what happens with privately-educated politicians whose principal experience of the working class is being on the same side of the bench as the judge. Which is why their efforts to prevent 25,000 illegal immigrants from pitching up on these shores are viewed as larger laughable by their electorate.

Which brings us to ASDOS, or the preferred means of delivery used by narco-gangs wherein a larger vessel drops packages near the coast and a smaller carries it to the shore: At Sea Drop Offs. One of these was busted this week by a Border Force that boasts two dozen vessels to patrol the UK shoreline: as many as one per 800 miles using Ordnance Survey data.

There's more, for to avoid failure in last-mile deliveries, gangs are adopting drone technology in the form of narco-subs that are so successful as to be adopted by the US Marine Corps.

Because they don't risk human life, and are both cheap and low-observable. Sound familiar, like I might be developing something similar and wondering why I bother?

By way of peroration, let us consider one of the half-dozen men arrested this week following the aforesaid bust. Once a fisherman, he turned to smuggling when one UK government or another sold out the fishing industry along with all else. 

Cornwall is the most-favoured stretch of coastline for smugglers, has been for ages past and thus hosts one of the few successful revivals that we can enjoy as a family. As per generations of smugglers, the guy was effectively supplying a consumer demand for anything that might make life marginally less miserable in the UK viz. drugs and alcohol.

For this he received twenty-four years porridge. Stamp on a teenage girl's head til she's dead, and expect altogether less.

Welcome to the UK!

In tonight's episode of Poldark 2.0, Ross and Demelza are arraigned before a court in Exeter for their rendezvous with a narco-sub on the beach at Nampara... 

Do... D or A?

These things often pass unnoticed, except on YouTube, where the gist of the recent directive is that drones should be considered common inventory like bullets: cheap as chips, in other words.

The DoD has awoken to the fact that (a) China supplies 100% of the drones or parts used in Ukraine but (b) has denied use to US forces.

'botsanddrones.uk' summarises the state of play here, viewable using deep pockets.