Flash Mob

The cat in the car-park (above) and on holiday (below). Too nice a day to forego a quick check in water, and fact it floats level saves me from having to build a test-tank in the garden. It will of course be able to run on ice, as I intend for the local rink in due course.

And with no opposition from anglers or locals I withdrew my threat to block access to the pond, which in my view has a great future.

Shock and Awe

In the days leading up to a photo-shoot and possibly after reviewing CCTV footage, operators of the local playing-fields imposed a height-restriction at the entrance of the car-park that the platoon had identified as the perfect drop-zone for a PR shoot.

Taking a leaf out of Napoleon's book at Austerlitz, Gromit and I rose before dawn to load the vehicle and raise it to working temperature before departing in a cloud of AdBlu. Within minutes and in sight of the entrance, the 4x4 scaled the grassy knoll alongside like a Panzer unit in the Ardennes. With not even a dog-walker defending its ramparts, we had successfully invaded the car-park.

Ed. The author's grandfather and great uncle served in Gallipoli and are turning in their graves.

Let's Do the Space Warp Again

The timber yard around the corner sells a set of flags like this with which to stylishly pave the back garden... a circular table at its centre perhaps for the glass of Pimms in the sunshine. 

This tho' is the heat-shield from the top end of Artemis 2, adorning the ass of the uppermost capsule that contains the astronauts and which they rely upon during re-entry.

The figure to remember should anyone ask you about re-entering the atmosphere from a trip to the Moon is twenty-five. You'll be travelling at 25,000 m.p.h. and the temperature of that surface will be around 2,500°C... and what lies between you and that super-heated sauna is 25% plastic.

What most strikes you about space-flight is the level of near-perfection required in its attention to detail. The far depths of the oceans and farthest reaches of the sky are as unforgiving in physical terms as anywhere on the planet; as the losses of the Titan submarine and Columbia space-shuttle attest.

I always figured these tiles were ceramic, so that for future commercial off-the-shelf builds you could drop by Home Depot to search among kitchen and bathroom tiles.

What they are instead is a sort of cake-mix of epoxy resin, plus glass microspheres and silica fibres. These are popped into a form of baking-tray in the shape of a steel hexa-comb like honey-bees make, and then popped into an autoclave on low temp while you join friends at the pub for pre-meal drinks.

Artemis 2 (crewed) was preceded by Artemis 1 (uncrewed), with which they would experiment with a single-skip entry to Earth's atmosphere ~ like a pebble on a pond ~ with which to help reduce the speed. Except what it meant was that gases crept into the seams of the tiles and expanded upon re-entry to blow parts of the tiles off.

What they told the crew prior this month's re-entry therefore was that they'd go for a 'ballistic' or full-on entry instead. Which is one reason why what the astronauts do is sit down with the kids and the household paperwork, explaining what to do with it should tiles designed to a 1960s recipe fail.

Incidentally the difference with moonshots is that unlike a return from orbiting the Earth, there's an extra 8000 m.p.h. to dispose of; and the best way of imagining it is that the gravitational pull of the planet acts not unlike a coin-vortex. What you're on is effectively the solar system's biggest roller-coaster, because it's all uphill for a small part of the way leaving the Moon, and accelerating downhill for the remainder.

Used to tell my own child at amusement parks how coin-vortices were ideal means of visualising the warping of gravitational fields as suggested by Einstein; he turning to me as often as not to say "Yeah right, loser."

Completely Floored

They said it would need adhesive but as I said to the vicar, it fit like a condom.

On the strength of replacing this toilet end-to-end I have bid for the upgrade to the facilities on Artemis 2, which failed spectacularly only recently.

The bid required a name and they accepted 'Moonshine' only after rejecting my first suggestion, which was 'Moonshite'.

Transferable Skills

Used on the drones for many years since, an ideal way to drive holes through dodgy sheet material like alloys or carbon-fibre... or indeed vinyl flooring. To make holes for the piping, pre-drill a block and centre it over another before driving a spade-bit through. Access for pipes enabled here by running a Stanley knife from the edge.

Carpet Bombing

Blog's going great guns and there's even a faction out there with a forum discussing aspects of replacing bathrooms suites by my own methods. And whilst I could have patented this one here, it is intended purely for the benefit of humanity and funded by my philanthropic foundation.

Lacking the necessary carpet-fitting skills I found a get-around in the shape of this giant paper template of the bathroom, for a cut-out-and-keep vinyl floor using the bargain-basement off-cut that I shall soon be running around on naked.

There's a book out there somewhere about a man who planned to make a 1:1 scale map of the world, and once the floor is down I shall be offering this life-size map of the bathroom which ~ stitched together with your own contributions ~ can be used to bring his dream to life.

As I said to that pizza-delivery guy, 'It's all about what you can do for others' and 'Where's the fucking mayo?'.

Captains Blog Stardate 21-APR-26

Need to get the drone over to the car-park at the local playing fields for a PR shot for the website, but they've put a height restriction in at the gate. Options, re-design for a six-inch shorter cat or find an alternative way in... which looking at it on the way home yesterday evening looked eminently possible.

Thereafter it is waders on and over to the local fish-pond for a static flotation test ~ if the locals are still as hostile I shall threaten to block the straits. Expect the craft still to float nose-down at rest, which can be solved with more weight at the rear in shape of battery-packs. For aerodynamic reasons I do not want the C of G migrated rearward unduly, so shall look at options to up the buoyancy at the forward end.

On the domestic front in preparation for the new toilet ~ and you don't get pulled off projects for that at Lockheed Martin ~ I've put new flooring down myself at a cost of just £50, undercutting the original quote by nearly 90%. Yes, Elon Musk has done that with launch-vehicles... but can he do it with vinyl flooring?

Merchant Mania

A brief but honorary mention for one of my own favourites in the form of the Vickers Vanguard, it's sibling the Viscount in the background. The latter was altogether the more successful, its turbo-prop engines bridging a gap between stressed-out pistons and the jet-engine in the 1950s. Arriving too late on the scene, therefore, it proved altogether more popular flying freight at night when re-purposed for the role by the Canadians. Called the Merchantman, it was loudest airliner I ever heard as it taxied past our humble Shorts in the dead of night at Coventry Airport.

Ed. the airport is set to close after ninety years as a part of a government scheme to ready British society for a possible war with Russia, and who knows who else.

Mud Lark

My travels took me yesterday to the banks of the Mersey Estuary, its only traffic a pair of small craft circumnavigating a far-distant sandbank. They may or may not have been hovercraft, the nearest RNLI station known to operate at least one in the circs. The fire-service at Liverpool's airport appear not to employ one, though they did at Heathrow in view of the fact that you might come down in the reservoir at the end of its westerly runways.

But if you were going to deploy a drone hereabouts you would want a boat that may fly at least a short distance, and subsequently be able to unload its skids in order to plane with as light a tread as possible, if not skim the surface with clear air beneath.

For instance there's a drop of some ten feet from the quay here to the mud-flats, a place you don't want particularly to travel on even in shallow water: it conceals any number of obstacles like discarded scaffolding tubes that would hole a hull. A boat with lift- and cruise-motors could launch from land here and down to the mud-flats, where it could travel in ground-effect before entry into the water to plane or troll: a combined operation of helicopter, hovercraft and boat.

It has to happen, really, in one form or another but if you look at the introduction of anything new it invariably follows from the action of one (or two) individuals that fly literally in the face of scepticism or ridicule... whether it be search (Google), social media (Facebook), flight (Wright Bros), space (-X), reciprocating engines (Watt, Diesel) or automobiles (Mr and Mrs Benz).

And I've a horrible feeling that when it comes to the go-anywhere boat it may fall to me and ~ as I told every employer ~ I'm the last person you'd want to rely on.

The inset shows (lock-gates intact) that the quay here was once a dock, this being near the original crossing-point established by local monks with a ferry. I wondered if the people digging it thought: Fuck, it'll be filled-in eventually anyway?

It Is Rocket Science

The recent trip around the Moon did not arouse much interest in me at the time, it having been a case of been there ~ not personally you understand ~ done that as I recall being allowed to stay up late on a Sunday evening in 1969 so as to watch the red carpet event.

What is of note however is not so much the physics as the economics, this time. In 1969 it was the rush to prove the tech could improve on Soviet efforts, whilst now it is as much about conquest as anything else. Apparently a focus of attempts among a number of nations involved is the south pole of the Moon that may contain water, albeit in frozen form. This in turn might provide the means for a permanent station, from where to both mine mineral wealth beside stopping for a sandwich enroute to Mars.

So forget the thrust and consider the numbers. The Apollo program sucked up five percent of the federal budget, whereas now they get by with ten times less. Part of the cost-cutting involved includes the fact that Congress requires them to repurpose the original engines from the Space Shuttle, developed over fifty years ago: a little like planning to wheel the E-type out for a drive instead of the RV.

There are two aspects to this, the first being that much like your cappuccino stirrer these engines are single-use. The second is that all-in they cost between 100 million dollars and 140 million, whereas Elon Musk's reusable equivalent (pictured) costs a fractional half-million. You read that right, one individual and modern methods and means can reduce the price by a factor of some three hundred times.

It is interesting to note that even as regards space, the world is getting smaller in so far as we are making do in various arenas whether drones or satellites with large numbers of units taken effectively off the commercial shelf. With space-flight being the case that once you've developed an engine ~ no mean feat ~ the easiest way to scale is to simply fit more and more of them. The Artemis space-launch system uses four principal rocket motors, but I'll leave you to count how many Space-X use from the pic.

From our own point of view here in the UK, we can I think take pride in the fact that when polled a full half of the population said they would not wish to go to the Moon even if offered a free ride. In contrast we are the biggest users in Europe of mobility scooters, whose use has expanded by four times in the last five years.

It was PM Tony Blair who said prior invading Iraq that as a nation we look to the far horizons, though nowadays these stretch only so far as Gregg's for a bacon roll and Wetherspoons for a pint of lager to wash it down.

If you were confused like me by the fact the Artemis crew ventured further into the final frontier than ever, as we'd already been to the Moon, this is because they flew a further-flung orbit. I say 'we' because they also serve who only watch on TV over a bacon barm and a pint of lager.

Strapping Yarn #3

Joy of deepest joys, our motors are back where they truly belong, in alignment with the booms.

And there's more, invert the boat and even the props clear the floor and can be left in place whilst the skis are attended to. If at this stage you're not feeling warm inside, then see a general practitioner at your soonest convenience. You need feel no shame in doing so; I took my own son as a very small child to be looked at when he wasn't responding to normal stimuli like triple-expansion steam-engines in ways that I would expect.

The only lining that's not silver in all this is that the booms had to be foreshortened further, which hurt more than losing part of my penis.

IKEA would also fit a dowel between boom and power-bar, but as I'm not IKEA we won't be doing so any time soon.

Strapping Yarn #2

You're asking me why I do not settle for a single bracket in support of the power-bar, and I say unto you: 'Hast though lifted thy motors into place to see them drop unto the floor when thou turnest for the screw-driver?'

And the blog-readers went from that place, sore amazed.

Strapping Yarn #1

With the rubber door-stops fitted we cannot wait to flip the boat over and in fact it is what we need to do now to modify the motor-mounts. Take one 4" steel strap ~ it may be known as a mending plate in different areas of the world ~ and allowing room for the width of the power-bar, apply it to the underside.

Top tip, do offset this to the outer edge of the boom so that the subsequent can be offset to the inner-side such that we never need to use a nut and bolt, as per my foremost commandment: 'Thou shalt know neither bolt nor harlot.'

Raise Your Game

Here's what I mean, with rubber door-stops fitted where the lift-motors would be on this the planing-performance prototype. You can purchase four on our merch pages for just 199 Euros the set, incidentally, where they appear as LIFT-MOTOR SUBS in a range of colours.

You can see I've had to remove the power-bar from the back-end as the stops do not raise the boat sufficiently when inverted to clear the motors until such time as we mod the way these are mounted... prototyping being a game of whack-a-mole.

Nonetheless I'm delighted with how these look and ask my people to stop whatever it is they are doing, and join me in the company song:

You raise me up, so I can clear the speed-controllers,

You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas,

I am strong when I am on your door-stops,

You raise me up, to more than I can be.

© Brian Kennedy, adapted and arranged for kazoo by Colin Hilton.

Side Order

Watching a vid about the first of the RNs Type 45 frigates, destroyers or whatever the moniker, which has been ~ if I have this right ~ in use for 2300 hours and in maintenance for 3300. Although it might be the other way round, but then again it's cost us a billion pounds to get right apparently because upon entry into service they discovered that when operated in temperatures above 28°C, the turbine generators failed and plunged the ship into darkness. Bear in mind that's cold in the Caribbean where it has apparently spent the bulk of its time when not tied up.

And this is where drones differ from destroyers ~ the one inordinately expensive to develop, build and maintain and therefore produced in a rapidly shrinking inventory; another needing to be quick, cheap and easy to develop and deploy with operational feedback soonest; whilst requiring little in the way of training or human resource of any kind.

Accordingly one of my own personal fetishes involves building nothing that cannot be set on end or on its side for maintenance or storage. And you can't do that with a frigate, can you? But I've looked at drones from all sides now, from up and down and still somehow, of drone delusions I recall I sometimes*

Therefore today's lesson, if you can turn to the blog provided, is to modify the craft to enable it to be inverted too. We'll do that by adding rubber-doorstops where once lift-motors might be, and by adjusting the position of the cruise-motors so as to facilitate the operation.

'Why, oh why, oh why?' I hear you saying as you pause your latte mid-air. Because it's the easiest way to fit, remove or replace the underslung skis.

It's learning by doing, as Dutch airline 'Vbird' told me they'd do before going bust.

* Ed. Stop that now... it's not big, and it's not clever.

Hangar Rush

Come across upon my travels something I instantly recognise with the aid of Google as the Type-C hangar of my youth; here at RAF Sealand as was, then at Finningley. 

Developed during the 1930s, it's got Art Deco written all over it, although later they dropped the brick cladding with the monstrous carbuncle that became the Type-C1.

Some among them enjoy the protection of a Grade II heritage listing, although not the one seen here sadly.

Once playing a role in aircraft repairs, now it is home to a paper-recycling plant but leaving I still call out 'Chocks away, last one back's a sissy... whoooof!'.

Ed. You can follow the author's career as a cadet pilot on LinkedIn, simply searching for 'Air Vice Marshall Sir Colin Hilton DFC'.

Steam Punk

Drop a container-load at a site where the side-hustle is restoring our steam heritage and during a tour of the workshop ~ as a high-priest of maritime dronery ~ get to enter the Holy of Holies.

Here amidst the incense of smouldering anthracite and oils is no less than that steam-roller restored to its former glory by the inestimable man himself, Bolton's finest, and hands together if you would now ladies and gentlemen for Fred Dibnah?

Fred's fame abroad extends to fans like the esteemed Rahmi Koc, himself founder of a business empire and the owner and patron of a transport museum in old Istanbul.

So with the atmosphere hushed, only the rhythmic knocking of a milling-machine breaking the quietude, I doff my own flat-cap in silent homage to the master.

BVLOSses

Worthy but admittedly dull vid ~ look closely and you'll see he's asleep ~ about how Amazon has withdrawn from the Commercial Drone Alliance due a disagreement over how these things ought to navigate to your front door. And he should know, as he was responsible for the security of such systems.

BVLOS means Beyond Visual Line of Sight, which is akin to letting the puppy off the lead. Once beyond the purview of any operator, such things can in theory navigate purely by GPS. Except that, as Amazon points out, GPS can be spoofed. Argument is that drones need a sub for the adult in the room in the form of autonomous sensors and they compare it to the difference between car and horse ~ a car can be driven into a brick wall, knowing no better, whilst a horse cannot.

Upshot being drones based purely on a system called ADS-B commercial aeroplanes use ~ which transmits position, direction and speed ~ cannot be relied upon for the avoidance of collisions (and that's a big drone to hit your flight deck at 300 knots). And worse, it leaves open the possibility that such drones might be hijacked to be driven into power-plants, football stadia or any place else you might imagine.

Whether flying taxis or delivery drones, with each being a wholly new industry and involving so many people without prior knowledge of aviation, the thought was that these toys could be scaled up without anyone ever getting hurt.

One channel I do dip into from time to time is by an ex-F15 jock called Hoover, who reviews crashes occurring principally among light aircraft. The standout takeaway from which is that ~ despite flying being well over a century old ~ there is ample material for Hoover to draw upon every passing month.

So it won't be a question of how personal air vehicles, flying taxis or delivery drones crash, so much as how.

One thing that can be said about Amazon is you don't get that big by being dumb. 

C of G Check

Important moreso from the aerodynamic point of view and about where we'd want it centred, some 13" or 330mm aft of the forward bulkhead, depending on preferred metric. Although the craft could be foreshortened, rearward extension of booms and skis not only provides space for rear lift-motors, but also acts as a counterweight to the extension of booms and skis some four feet (1200mm) forward.

On the hydrodynamic side length of craft translates directly into sea-keeping ability. What therefore has to be done next ~ once logos are lacquered up with acrylic ~ is to pop it on the local waterway to see how it floats at rest. Prior experiments many moons ago showed it sitting nose-low: not an issue underway, but nonetheless offending my sensibilities before the off.

But come on Gromit, let's go for a curry!

All Logo'd Up

Both of you have been asking where that wonderful GPO-phone-box-style logo you can see down the sides of the drone come from, and the answer is right here!

Simply size those images above and below to print on A4, and then rather than cut out and keep it's more a question of cut out and tape together before gluing in situ.

We've also bumper-stickers reading 'Maritime Droners Like To Watch' you may like?

Pack Drill

In common with the other prototype I mount the battery-packs on the aft bulkhead, where edge-protectors will include screws for fitting rubber-bands around the pack.

Forego plastic trays featuring on the other prototype, and instead I'll add a length of Velcro tape to the bulkhead to engage the underside of the battery.

Must break off now to fix a toilet, flushed as I am with the success here.

Please Stand Up, Please Stand Up

The rubber caps fitted to the spindles, I set the craft vertical again and add a domed screw to help secure the power bar at the rear where the wood has more holes than a Swiss cheese... though every hole that doesn't kill it makes it stronger. Do please use a shallow fastener here as it coincides with the 40mm screw driven in from the top-side.

The Thin Controller

Electronic speed-controllers I mount in alignment with the front end of each lift-prop downwash-deflector for aesthetic reasons: it's what Steve Jobs would have wanted. 

At the same time were lift-motors fitted, it parks them in that downwash for cooling purposes; as we'll be pumping all 80A through these babies.

Back End Operation

We've a crucial meet this morning, which I'm not happy about as it's a Sunday and reserved for coffee and croissants. Sales are telling me that Airbus insist this thing still go through a regular doorway, and recommend I reduce the rig to match the width of the skis. I approve it, although the Head of Safety and Compliance storms out and channeling my inner Elon I shout 'Go now go, walk out the door! Turn around now, you're not welcome any more!' but he already has.

The atmosphere electric, we turn to next item on the agenda and sales again insist it still be able to stand upright for storage, motors or not. Engineers are concerned that in this event there might not be clearance for 22" rear lift-props, although it turns out back in the workshop that as they are mounted 50mm above the booms, clearance is still satisfied if we shorten the booms to accommodate cruise-motors.

Accordingly I gave the green light and amidst the whoops and cheers ~ which I insist on under threat of redundancy, although that happens to whoever stops clapping first ~ we crack open Krispy Kremes and celebrate. At the water-cooler engineering suggest motors are protected by rubber feet in storage, and a push-on type is already available on our merch pages.

The price, in accordance with aviation spare-part practise, just $500 the pair.

War and Peace

The best-selling car in the UK is currently produced by China's JAECOO, and is a triumph of both teamwork and advanced means of engineering and production. It is what develops principally in peace-time. Wartime in contrast actually benefits individuals and simplified means of production and deployment, as politicians are desperate for solutions as against consumers.

The above is a good example, and was pioneered by a Cambridge doctorate student whose expertise lay in biochemistry moreso than windows: his idea polyethylene sheet and a frame of PVC piping and foam insulation to create push-fit replacements for broken windows in Ukraine... which has many.

Lose a window in war in a place like that and you're instantly in the cold and dark as you plug gaps with whatever comes to hand... to the extent one old lady Harry was able to help was sleeping in the bath-tub, it being the warmest place to do so.

Things have moved on to blend modern production means with manual, in the way drones in Ukraine might still feature laser-cut carbon-fibre sheet, but modified with impromptu add-ons like canisters of optical fibre strapped on with duct tape.

Now therefore it comprises a bespoke uPVC extrusion into which two PET panes are inserted into four edges that engage using simple end-caps. The result looks barely different from what went before with a little expanding foam squeezed around the edges ~ except that being shatter-proof, it makes living safer as well as warmer.

Well done Harry, who has interrupted his studies to bring more light into the world.

And if you wish to make a donation, Harry's charity is at Insulate Ukraine.

Turn to your hymn-sheets now, to join in "What a Friend He Has in Colin".

Ed. France making the best family cars, Germany the executive, UK the Japanese.

Re: Bar

The bar abuts a couple of angle-brackets and is secured with a screw from topside.

Ideally, viewed from the rear and left to right ~ AC/DC a prompt ~ propellers rotate anti-clockwise and clockwise.

In theory this means that if more power is applied to the port motor then the torque reaction will unload that same ski and produce more drag on the opposite, assisting a turn to starboard.

May or may not be the case, but as Tesco supermarket says: every little helps?

The speed-controllers may yet be mounted on the bar instead of the superstructure, but that's a story for another day, isn't it?

Good-night everybody!

Being pushers I've paid less attention to securing the motors, which are more likely to stay in place than when pulling the craft. I knew a man who took off in an aircraft called an ARV, whose propeller parted company soon afterward.

Bar Flies

With the bar centralised at the rear of the boat, I've marked the places where those mighty three-millimetre bolts will be craned into place in support of the motors. The best way to do this is to 3-D render and subsequently print a pattern from T-motor technical drawings, but I used guesswork, wood and a bradawl called Brad Pitt.

The larger recess is to allow for the axle of the motor, which T-motor has extended to the rear by a mil or two for the same reason Bosch fits push-buttons to coffee-makers... so life sucks.

Barring Accidents

As the eyes of the world turn back toward the first prototype, briefly distracted by the other moonshot, we remind ourselves that this is the one to validate the planing on water rather than hovering above it as people sometimes do on operating tables.

You'll recall that although I'm a man who loves to see an electrical motor parked at the rear of a boom, it appears altogether better placed on a bar spanning the width of the craft and more.

We had a competition to choose the ideal name for it, and despite my suggestions viz. sound-bar, power-bank, common-rail the winning entry went to 'piece of wood' which I view as repeating the effort to call the Sir David Attenborough 'Boaty McBoatface' by common consent.

There are many and various reasons however for mounting the motors on one such bar, some of which will be familiar to Airbus and some ~ like the craft having to fit through a doorway ~ are less likely to be.

These are as follows:

(1) Greater flexibility on the number and size of motors and propellers fitted thereto

(2) Easily removable for testing, transport, maintenance and storage

(3) Able to be set on the window-ledge on a pair of stands like a Ninja's sword

(4) It marks the extent of the propellers, which are barely visible once spinning

(5) It protects the propellers from inadvertent damage going (literally) forwards

(6) It allows for the easiest possible fitment of each motor back-plate to the bar

(7) It allows different 'rigs' to be swapped out to suit various operational needs

Not least it means the boat can be stood upright so its foot-print is minimised... something IKEA have told me is a must-have beside it doubling as a clothes-drier.

The bar itself is half the length of the 21x21x2400mm timber itself, which is likely to give you a warm feeling inside as it did me.

Bring it on!

Ed. Technically, put it on?

Space, the Final IKEA.

Open the staff suggestion-box and beside the many that read 'fuck you' is one that recommends removing the dining-table from Assembly Hall #2; weekends involving maritime drones instead of feeding ingrates.

Delighted to discover it was me who popped this one in the box, and do not hesitate  to make myself 'Employee of the Month' for April... which comes with a dough-nut.

Kofi Anon

Many of you recall my trials with the coffee-machine, and my efforts to sue George Clooney for mis-representing the ease with which it turns a pod into a latte.

Long story short, it had a push-button on the side that turned green when the (Bosch) machine was good to go... except the switch failed in short order.

I tried and failed to circumvent this by liberating the switch with an angle-grinder in an effort to hard-wire it, but this did nothing for the machine's looks and less for its operation.

Enter DeLonghi's replacement and it's a joy to use... slide the pod-tray back and the light on the side illuminates red and then when ready, green.

Then flick the switch and before you know it you've emailed Clooney's people to say you're sorry for suggesting he pop his pods up his ass!

Arty... mis

A former habitué of their facility at Ames in California, I am indebted to NASA for this most spectacular image of the far side of the Moon.

Ed. He's also indebted to Google for generating dirty pictures.

Levelling With You

Having assembled the quad ready for wiring, I contact he who last wired, tuned and flew the last drone (which took the form of a sort of phone-booth levitated by quads top and bottom ~ so technically an octo). The good news is he'd love to, albeit that could be interpreted as a brush-off, but he's booked into June. Much of that will be aerial filming or survey; an increasing element likely related to ongoing experiments with cargo or military drones under development.

This is basically because there is too little expertise to go around in the UK, where it is almost exclusively drawn from radio-control hobbyists who ~ once seen as nerds ~ find themselves to be masters of the universe. One such master for instance films  Heathcliff riding atop the moors on his stallion in the 2026 version of the tale. You'll find that he was provided by the Helicopter Girls, whom I've met in passing, and if you look at their website you'll realise where the money lies: in entertainment, with war moving up rapidly on the outside though less so in places like the UK.

But although this plunged me into the Slough of Despond (now known as the Slough of Berkshire), I've a cunning plan. For thinking about this, there is actually nothing special about a boat that can fly like a drone, per se. In fact two German brothers famously managed to fit motors to a bath-tub and fly down the street in it 'til wings were clipped by the Polizei... and in fact they could technically claim to have flown the world's first self-launching boat. Only problem being, not much of a boat really.

It had occurred to me however that all that we have to achieve is getting the cat off the ground, where it can be steered from land to water by the rear-mounted cruise motors. This is at the same time sub-optimal, but again eminently practical because as we've seen hereabouts and not least in Morecambe Bay or the Mersey Estuary, we've very large stretches of sand from whence to manoeuvre from the dry to wet.

The only problem being that whereas quads can be flown with pinpoint accuracy from A to B, like off the back of a flat-bed over the levee and into the river, what will effectively be a hovercraft requires much more of a launch-pad in view of the fact the lift-motors will be providing for elevation... but not direction.

In the days when people experimented with vehicles instead of buying jelly-mould EVs from China because it is altogether easier, there was a move to get us all in a personal hovercraft in order to travel from the suburbs into work. The problem was, it turned out, was that hovercraft (and uncommanded quads) find their own level in ground-effect; but that applied to levels that sloped. That, incidentally, something roads have done since Roman times so as not to get flooded.

Accordingly, hovercraft merely slid off the side of the road from the get-go. Back to the cat with four uncommanded lift motors, however, the last time I checked both sea and foreshore were flat and this means there is altogether less of an issue?

The few remaining nations using the hovercraft in anger include the US, China and Russia. Canadians use them as ice-breakers to clear the St Lawrence and perhaps predictably, we use them to travel to the Isle of Wight for a plate of fish and chips... guilty, m' lord.

Nonetheless with the LCAC appearing below (and that's Landing Craft, Air Cushion am guessing the way military inventory is listed backwards to sort alphabetically), the US claims that only 15% of the world's coastlines are accessible by conventional landing craft: as against 70% using the LCAC. I'd like to make that 100% with the drone, but Rome wasn't built in a day, was it Gromit?

Thing to note about the LCAC is they are using, beside the cruise fans and rudders at the rear, exhaust efflux that can be directed by swivelling those outlets out front. These act in much the way that side-thrusters do on ships, in providing a modicum of control ~ when compared to a drone ~ when it comes to moving sideways and arresting for instance that tendency to roll virtually down slopes.

So your mission, Colin, should you choose to accept it is to get the lift-motors acting to produce identical measures of thrust in order to get the cat off the ground, from whence it can be steered toward the sea and back following successful splash-down.

This blog will self-destruct in ten seconds.

Sandhopper

I break from the build so as to collect furniture as a favour from the farthest side of Morecambe Bay. This is an area of tidal flats so hazardous that it has warranted an official guide ~ by royal appointment ~ since 1548. Before that time, it was monks at Cartmel Priory who'd guide travellers across these sands by way of a short-cut. In fact where I sketched the route ~ a distance of over ten miles ~ there used to be a horse-drawn carriage service whose schedule was dictated by the tides.

Otherwise you cross these tidal flats at considerable risk, and especially so in fog or encroaching darkness: circs that accounted for two-dozen cockle-pickers as recently as 2004.

Nonetheless the inset provides the sheer acreage unavailable to boats, depending on the state of the tide and its associated currents. As this is replicated in endless locations around the UK, which has the longest coastline in Europe, that's one giant mis-step for boats for humankind.

Which is why admiring the view seaward along this estuary and on to the bay as I drove west of Grange-Upon-Sands, it struck me a boat that might be impervious to the whims of the tide ~ never to be left high and dry on some or other sandbank ~ must surely be of use to someone, somewhere?

Holy Trinity

During suspension I pig out on Netflix docs, which are invariably about murders in the US of which there appear to be several. Like this caff though and ~ travelling Route 66 on a Harley ~ what else do you need?