Monomania #14: Mounting Pleasure

This is how we'll mount the first motor. One argument for using two motors in place of one ~ besides eliminating the requirement for a rudder surface ~ is propellers for drones do invariably retail in pairs.

I'm endeavouring to make this drone as practical to assemble or operate in the field by a single crew, and this method is easiest given that we've only two hands and wielding a cross-bar, screw and screw-driver simultaneously is beyond most of us.

Interestingly, Lockheed assembled their F-117 Nighthawk at the Skunk Works stood on end. I flew in the same university squadron as someone who later went on to display it, and so I'll bask in his reflected glory for a moment if I may?

I just remembered his surname was Wood, and thanks to the wonder of Google his first name apparently was ~ and hopefully still is ~ Ian.

Coals and Newcastle

More boomerang than catapult, these keep dropping into my inbox but are unlikely to do so now they've blocked access: last thing a consultant wants is engagement, as you can't bill it.

This one is interesting though as it touches on a recent post, but firstly I'd not worry about a tipping point for ~ as the latest round of COP was demonstrating before it caught fire ~ it's more about continuous and accelerated decline.

For the UK however it brings us full circle, as the Industrial Revolution came about because of the cost of coal for Londoners. Then a religious 'quaker' in the Northeast of England decided that if they built a steam-hauled railway able to move coal to the nearest port more cheaply, then they'd all benefit and not least the port.

For moving goods thence to London by coastal trampers was by far the easier part, as indeed was true of shipping cotton across the Atlantic and then having it sit for weeks in Liverpool prior onward shipment to Manchester... which isn't by the sea unlike the one in the USA.

Transport in the UK, whether road or rail, is practically the worst in Europe which is ironic given both locomotives and tarmac were pioneered here. But that's progress for you ~ it pops up where you least expect it and eventually moves elsewhere. 

It's lovely that politicians keep telling is we're on the cusp of a revival, and paying consultants to produce glossy brochures telling us why; but to my mind a reversion to coastal shipping smacks of desperation as we look at what others are able to do with both trains and automobiles.

The one positive from all of this is that it shows someone reads these posts beside me.

For as Warhol said: 'If people hate what you do, keep doing it'.

Ed. Unless you're hoping for a government grant.

Monomania #13: Snub Retracted

I've driven a stake through the heart of the ski and into the wooden hub, whilst the local vicar sprinkled holy water in the hope I'd never have to look at this boat again.

Monomania #12: Cha Cha Slide

With the ski under arrest (without charge) at the prow, slide the ski forward along the keel until it bends to the comeliest shape you could possibly imagine on a boat.

You're probably wondering where precisely this should be, but it's a practise that is passed down over generations. By way of a tip, if you hear yourself shouting "Yeah baby, oh yeah baby!" then it's probably about right... add screws to secure.

You may notice that the ski is a fraction short, for it should in fact overhang the rear of the keel by around 160mm so as to match the length of the lats: this is to enable the boat to be stood on its rear-end for drainage and subsequent storage. I refuse to buy any more material at this stage, however, and shall patch it with an off-cut.

If it helps, the length of the boat is around 2050mm and the ski circa 2100 or 83". I am trying to get all of these measures to match stock length of material, but at this stage prefect is the enemy of the good... as is the spell-checker.

I once considered writing spell-checked novels, and an excerpt from a Jane Austen read 'Darcy paused his letter-writing, penis in hand, as Elisabeth entered the room.'

Monomania #11: Choice Snub

Insert a temporary baulk or snubber against which to drive the forward end of your the uPVC skirting, rounding its front edge first so that it looks the part. You can use a CNC laser-cutter to do this, but I don't have one in the lounge and so I've used a paint-tin and pencil instead.

Listen UP... S

Not one to dwell on but I'll throw my dusty old training cap into the ring after the release of the NTSB prelim, which shows the left engine separating upon rotation. The term is pilot-speak for take-off, as the aircraft is rotating about its horizontal axis.

Boeing checklists ~ this is a Douglas aircraft re-named ~ always included one that read ENGINE FIRE, SEVERE DAMAGE OR SEPARATION and unfortunately this crew had all three going on at the same time. Surprisingly, podded jet engines actually are designed to fall off in extremis, in order to avoid them further damaging the wing they hang from... or indeed setting fire to it.

The engines are suspended from a cantilevered pylon that is pitched forward to aid in stability if nothing else: as per a dart. In turn though that pylon is attached to the wing at two points that are generally the forward and aft spars on which it is based.

Ideally in the circs you'd want the engine to separate from the pylon, but here due a corrosion issue the entire assembly has ruptured and set a fire burning that is fuelled by the, well, fuel stored in the wing.

The engine is producing the same thrust throughout the take-off, which begs the question as to why it did not fall off sooner. The act of rotation tho' not only pitches the mass of the engine up, but simultaneously applies force in another direction due to its (considerable) gyroscope inertia.

Old people and airframes, twisting whilst lifting never ideal.

Sand Boxing

Pops into my email account because I once looked at funding in the UK and let it go because it appears to involve too much ass-kissing at subsidised buffets.

The report falls at the first hurdle though... because boats don't work in sandboxes.

It is however a phrase we've picked up from the US, and so I'm going to reach out to you, going forward, and run with the bollocks.

We once produced (and by 'we' I mean Glasgow) a third of the world's shipping and the report laments that we may in the UK only achieve a 10% global share of the global market for maritime drones. I mean, what mushrooms are they on? Shift the decimal point a few places to the left and that's about as good as it's likely to get.

In conclusion they point out that there are no places that such drones can be tested and I can attest to that having pissed off the neighbours in my waders.

My own conclusion is that we are the world's principal manufactory of hot air.

(Ed. pls sub 'is that if you can get beyond the Newspeak, this report is a tool every maritime drone builder should learn by rote: six stars on Trustpilot!'

Monomania #10: Low Tech Hub

I've found a suitable wedge kicking around the garage that will suit, and whilst I normally screw this in place I've gone for gluing it first because it's cold outside.

(Ed. Can we sub 'because extensive testing has proven it optimises the work-flow')

Monomania #9: What's the Point?

Now squeeze the lats together and pop a bit of sellotape on to secure momentarily.

You can use laminate flooring to ensure your rig is true at this stage ~ if you've only got carpeted floor you can still manage by simply replacing it with laminate.

Monomania #8: Couch to 0.0018k

I rarely let a chance of using glue go by and here I have rigged the laths to allow for a 160mm overhang as discussed in the prior post. Instead of clamps as I used last time, I've marked up each lath and glued and ballasted them like so. You may have only books for the latter and I've found that this is an ideal use for ones on religion or philosophy. The couch is IKEA, but others will do (tho' maybe not your granny's).

Those watching videos from the front in Ukraine will notice that guys building aerial drones have to do so in back-rooms, and this is our own tribute to life at the leading edge... albeit they likely don't have carrot cakes to fall back on.

Ones are however available to send from my merch page.

Monomania #7: Kitchen Sink Economics

As Jane Austen might have written, "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single motor in possession of great power, must be in want of a tractor propeller" and I'm moved to tears just penning that.

As we prepare over carrot cake* and tea to fit the lateral laths to each side of the deck, we've to consider how to mount the motors as these are supported at the rear by the laths, and so we need to know by what measure they should each overhang the stern of our mighty vessel.

Now you've probably not dwelt much on mounting electrical motors on drones as I do when sharing afternoon tea with relatives, but almost invariably they're designed with the prop on top... as it should be with consenting couples. This is to promote a maximum of cooling flow, which itself is the reason that in the history of aeroplanes those with props at the rear have always been the exception.

The corollary is that the prop is twisted in away that leaves it largely flush with the surface of the motor: the 'sweep' of its pitch occupying the space filled by the body of that same motor. This in turn has an impact if, as we do here, we would like the drone to be as compact as possible, as this is best served by a tractor arrangement like the one in the picture.

Were we to flip the prop over to run as a pusher, we would have to allow for extra space for that which the twist of the prop takes up nearest the hub. Accordingly we shall see in due time ~ and I know you can't wait ~ how there is an argument for mounting each motor so as to be forward facing and fitted with a tractor.

Turning then to my laser calibration unit on the kitchen sink, each of these units for providing power needs about three inches in which to function, so that an overhang of around six inches is required of the laths.

Go to it, soldier.

* Other types of cake are available.

Laser Focus?

The UK Defence Secretary reports how for the first time a Russian spy-ship used lasers to target pilots of RAF aircraft monitoring its progress. There are three real takeaways from this, the first being (a) lasers are sufficiently powerful enough (as I know from airline experience) to cause temporary blindness in the aftermath (b) crewed aircraft are among the most expensive and at the same time among the most vulnerable assets to deploy... as Ukraine has demonstrated and (c) maritime drones have their disadvantages, but being rendered medically unfit by laser light is not one of them.

Interesting times?

Undersea assets well worth slicing like nerves in time of conflict include electrical power cables connected with the governments drive to literally offshore supplies, internet cables providing the majority of our data traffic with the rest of the world, beside oil and gas pipelines like those which our, er, allies in Ukraine severed at the cost of damaging both our environment and bank accounts.

Lines of Communication

Time out recently to read accounts of the life's work of George Stephenson and Bill Gates, and how they changed the world by ~ as we stand on the edge of a further bubble which involves it in the form of AI ~ improving lines of communication.

Each step change in evolution ultimately involves connections, whether synaptic or digital, and what these two did was to affect that on a global scale at a distance of a century and a half. It is not generally recognised, but is up there with Gutenberg in terms of the ramifications.

And the similarities are startling. In either event, these characters upon their own admission were not the best of communicators and not least through force of their personality. They each however had a vision they would stop at nothing to pursue, despite a groundswell of scepticism... and both would eventually be astonished at how these dreams would eventually go beyond even their own expectations.

When Stephenson however put steam engines to use not in a stationary form but in locomotive, this created pathways that connected urban centres like Liverpool and Manchester effectively for the first time. In the event, not only did it connect people literally beside freight ~ the forward shipment of American cotton to the textile mills of Manchester ~ but it provided routes which sooner rather than later the telegraph and telephone line would follow.

But you need a nexus to attach lines of communication, and what happened a century and a half later was that Bill Gates would put that upon working surfaces in every country of the world. The extraordinary rate at which these step-changes in communication were taken up was matched in each case; and life has not been and never will be the same since.

If you set aside Gates' education ~ of a sort Stephenson could only have dreamed of ~ nonetheless in each case the technology was a journey of self-discovery: each navigating wholly uncharted territories.

It is why for one thing that some things are worth regardless of the scepticism of self and others and why there will ever be bubbles: whether of the South Seas, tulips, railways, dot-coms or artificial means of intelligence. All offer potential for a much higher rate of return than the banks could ever offer, and all are driven on the one hand by monetary motives ~ like the needs of merchants to expedite goods ~ as well as a genuine effort to improve the lives of people.

Stephenson's first successful railway at Darlington ~ albeit for freight ~ was borne of a Quaker's urge to improve the lot of the poor by reducing the cost of their coal... but also to alleviate the plight of the workhorses that otherwise had to move both it, and them.

Monomania #6

I want the ski rigged horizontal (and who wouldn't?) and so I've set the assembly on the floor and weighed it up. The stabilisers are a little short of the floor and so they have been set upon a couple of wooden blocks and a pair of tuppences that we in the engineering trade call 'shims'.

Leave that to set overnight while you get a life.

Monomania #5

I've sealed the edges with a water-based undercoat to protect them from solvents during assembly ~ including spray-paint ~ and lopped around 12" or 30 centimetres from the end of each lath, which were supplied in dimensions of 2400 x 25 x 6mm. 

These will be used as the means for attaching the hydroski, for the density of most insulation foams like these is too soft for fasteners, at least in the absence of threaded plugs... and even that's a stretch as we know to our cost from hanging stuff from plasterboard.

Vulcanic Eruption

Featuring as an element in the current 'phoney war' between Russia and the West (or rest) of Europe currently is an appearance of drones nearest points of interest or vulnerability to people who are minded to attack them. In practical terms it means the appearance of drones under cover of darkness, likely launched by proxies at sea ~ which is where we could use more in the way of surveillance ~ or from onshore.

These would be merely the canapés that precede the use of drones like that above with a range of 1,000 kilometres and ~ launched in sufficient number ~ no practical or economic means of stopping many of them from arriving at the intended target.

Accordingly we've come full circle: delta-wings and flying bombs each a relic of the last world war. The former would feature in the UK's principle nuclear deterrent for much of the Cold War in the shape of the V-bomber (most especially the Vulcan) while the latter in the shape of the V1 was a lowest-cost means of bombing London and inspiring fear in its residents.

But what are the pods at the tip of each wing? The pic is an extract from the BBC, whose interns will be (a) technically illiterate and (b) too busy warping speeches to suit an agenda... so little by way of enlightenment is available from the illustration.

My guess though is that (given the omission of undercarriage ~ who needs it on a flying bomb?) they are JATO bottles. These, as it says on the tin, are a jet-assisted means of achieving flying speed; although the V1 itself was already a jet, albeit a pulse-jet, able to launch from ramps unaided.

This newest Vulcan bomber tho' is undoubtedly powered by a super-cheap 'boxer' motor which China is happy to supply in numbers ~ as with the inflatables powering an invasion by sea which we are equally powerless to stop.

It's called asymmetric warfare, and they're better at it than we are... so get used to it.

Monomania #4: The King's Shilling

Nobody likes a sharp corner do they? Look at your phone, look at your laptop... the corners have been rounded, haven't they? Well let's do the same with our boat. I've elected to use a two-pence piece, but I have taken care not to deface the monarch's head with either glue or sandpaper, as it remains a hanging offence in Britain to this day. What we shall do subsequently is to take our sharp knife and run it around the edge of each coin.

The 'king's shilling' refers to conventional recruitment means by the Royal Navy and involved dropping a coin unseen into a candidate's beer so that he could considered to have accepted payment and was bound to duty. Since updated, it now features a two-pound coin in a regular cappuccino and is why I never use a Royal Naval drive-through on my way to work.

Monomania #3: Chair Man of the Board

Park the deck on a pair of kitchen chairs to provide the purchase for driving skewers into the outriggers, taking care to snip them to a suitable length prior.

(There's no need to throw away the off-cuts as they can be used farther along.)

If an off-cut is reluctant to be driven into the foam, often it will if you try the other end as there's no telling what goes on in the mind of a kebab-skewer.

Lofty Ideals

Harry Lime may have said that during 500 years of peace and democracy all that the Swiss came up with was the cuckoo clock: but LOFT have gone one better.

I've spent more than a thousand hours in full-flight simulators mainly giving or else receiving instruction, and what this invention does is similar to what downloads did to the hardware required to reproduce music viz. practically eliminate it.

For what it does is to flag the instruments on the panel with a code like QR to mark up the broad layout, and then recreate the entire picture inside and outside of the flight deck using a VR headset.

The two things missing are the prior fidelity when it comes to (a) motion or (b) crew interaction, but frankly these will in time be missed no more than a road atlas when it comes to navigating a vehicle nowadays.

In truth to save on costs and maintenance I would operate conventional simulators with the motion off on occasion, and after a little while you would frankly not notice the difference.

As I was departing the industry hydraulic motion systems were being replaced with electrically-actuated devices with the same level of certification, and those savings that we see here will doubtless make such systems the norm in coming years. For if nothing else they suit an era of education or training that may pursued exclusively online, and as often as not at home.

The name LOFT I figured must be because this was a system that could be installed thereabouts, but it more likely relates to what aeroplanes do in carrying us aloft; or even from the fact that conventionally it stands for Line Oriented Flight Training.

Perhaps all three? Something maybe its renegade inventor, electrical engineer, ski-fanatic pilot would know...

The Protestant Reformation had roots in Switzerland, led in turn to Enlightenment thinking and thus scientific enquiry and technical development... rather more than the cuckoo clock quoted in the movie.

Monomania #2: Coining It

Here I am reinforcing the hull with the tried-and-trusted insertion of kebab-skewers.

I have driven a half-dozen in with a two-pound coin, though foreign currencies work equally well; drive sticks fully home with the edge of the coin, so that they lie flush.

If you do it wearing anything but a dressing-gown then you're already ahead of me.

Topical fact: a confession was forced from Guido Fawkes using this same method.

The BYD Playbook

Not necessarily what they'd have wanted to hear in Detroit, but consider this: every emerging empire is based upon the manufacture of automobiles in particular.

In the 1950s the UK produced something like a third of the global export market, since which both the Japanese and Germans rebuilt their economies on innovative production of cars, whilst the US did so into the 1960s under not nearly so much of the pressure.

UBS now point out that BYD build their own dreams as well as ours, sourcing close to 100% of their own parts as against nearer 30% for rapidly-expiring competitors.

Swiss bank USB report how not only are cars such as theirs better, but that they will remain cheaper not least for sustainable 25% cost benefits at point of manufacture.

US hegemony rode upon what happened in Detroit, and they're not going to enjoy the status of underdog as the century marches on; tho' take it from the UK, you do get used to it.

For much of what makes the US great currently as against 'again' is industry based on software which is readily replicated, as Tim Tok demonstrates... and having been in China for some time, I know that they already have their own versions of all else from search engines and online market-places upward.

Why China is set to lead the field in AI: because manufacturing is and will ever be a bed-rock of leadership in all else.

As we showed here in Lancashire, long long ago.

And Lwinner Is..

Fortune mag describes how Havoc AI raise $85 million on top of $100 million prior, most notably because of the president's Big Beautiful Bill that sets aside $3.3 billion (and you read that right) toward rapid prototyping of autonomous vessels of a small and medium-size.

Co-founder Paul Lwin says it is not about reinventing the boat, but connecting it...

... but then no-one gets everything right.

Electronic and software invariably cheapens, whilst costs in hardware tend to rise: for there's a finite supply of everything except love and digits.

1.9 Litres and 2.4 Kids

Life however is like a box of chocolates and occasionally something new does come along to surprise the world of boating, and it comes from Yamaha who have (beside the imagination) revenue from beyond boating with which to experiment.

It's hard not to like, with room for four border enforcement agents of varying sizes and everything you could want from a boat except possibly a cabin for operating in places like the UK if you've not had the sense to leave for sunnier climes.

Doesn't come cheap though, with a suggested price of around $30,000 being about double the going rate for a jet-ski (that originated with another motorcycle maker).

Would I like one? Yes. But then I'd like the waterfront villa and the Mercedes C class too, and they won't happen either.

Border Farce

Little of excitement at the shrunken boat-show trolling by Southampton, tho' there is this part of successive governments' failed attempts to have any impact on illegal migration by sea. It's armoured ~ bizarre given dummies like that here won't be. 

If you wanted to monitor the situation then a drone would surely suffice... but that wouldn't be nearly as much fun, would it? I'd ask how much it cost, but that would  be too embarrassing: suffice it to say the fleet of cutters and jet-skis taken together feature a budget of £200 million.

As Liberace used to say of his jewellery: 'I hope you like it, because you paid for it'.

Monomania #1

Let's carry over what we've learned from the part-built cat, as regards a sheet of laminated foam and bag of kebab-skewers. I've always thought that the cat was the most practical in operational terms in that it could stand on its own two feet... quite literally. Here though is a pattern for a single sheet that offsets the advantage when it comes to building a monoski.

What I've done is to cut the 1200 x 600mm in half, a portion of which goes toward the deck. The remainder is divided in half again between the keel seen here that will support the ski itself, and a pair of outriggers. Although I've cut these substantially on a diagonal, I have still left the forward end of each outrigger with a 5mm inset so that for one thing it is not unduly sharp, and for another so that it is easier to bind it to the deck as we shall see at a later stage.

I made a mistake by not running a squirt of adhesive between the underside of the keel and that of the deck, but we shall be able to rectify that prior adding a filet to the other side by easing it over to enable adhesive to be applied from underneath.

And anyway kids, what else would you want to do with a Sunday afternoon?

25mm foam sheets are available but not so commonly as the 20mm here.

Sunday Sermon: Alien Philosophy

A Republican has been making electromagnetic waves in the US this week with her suggestion that aliens may be fallen angels, or in a word: evil. Which is interesting, because the notion of evil in the West (especially Europe) has fallen from favour. It is one of those things like ghosts that are considered real by most people, who are nonetheless not prepared to give it any form of credence in public.

But here's the thing. Documentaries about the Pentyrch UFO incident often include an expert witness since deceased whose exhaustive investigations came eventually to an end... because he felt there was a decidedly sinister connection with a source that was not necessarily human.

Not overly far from here too is the case of Zigmund Adamski, a miner whose death was the most confusing the coroner had come across: which was more easily explained in the circs by him having fallen victim to an alien autopsy prior being left on top of a slag heap in Todmorden with no clue as to how he might have got there.

Now call me Mr Picky, but it doesn't look like there are consent forms being signed prior these abductions, of which there appear to be legion worldwide. And what these creatures do to cows is considered bad taste even in north-west England.

It gets worse, as professors of philosophy like Sam Ruhmkorff suggest the existence of aliens is incompatible with a belief in an over-arching God of any sort. He goes on to point out, cheerily, that if aliens do exist then statistically some will be our moral superiors whereas some will be evil beyond what we could possibly imagine: worse for instance than the Ford Edsel.

This sits well with alternative encounters where aliens communicate kindly thoughts with just a gaze; as I do so often, although it frightens small children.

On balance though it is best to simply keep calm and carry on, as I plan to with an omelette.