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.
