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.
