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.