66.6 the Number of the Beast?

Start assembling the 66% scale models as per prior post in 10mm laminate backer-board.

The light fading, I drop to my knees in a navy-blue onesie to apply finishing touches to beads of adhesive...

...only to get reported by neighbours out back for involving youngsters in satanic rituals!

Ed. Altar-pieces are now available on our merch page.

Honey I Shrunk the Drone

I’d be the first to admit that we failed to get T-motor’s U7 and Flame’s shitty 80A ESC working at all. You’re disappointed, I’m disappointed and we’re all hurting. I’m off to a McKinsey wedding in a French chateau this summer though, and a classical strategy among consultants is to circumvent obstructions rather than spend undue time tackling them head on.

Accordingly there are currently two issues prevailing at the moment and these are the facts are that (a) an eBay bath is a cost-effective 67” Hearty Italian sub to test the the models with and (b) if electrical components must also be subbed then small is beautiful. 

Taking the measure of our hydro-static test-facility, which is how Archimedes got his big break, it would appear that a 2/3rds scale of what we have currently would suit both contingencies. With a centre-section 400mm or 16” wide it’s a comfortable fit and that would allow it to be upto 1500mm long or 60”, to fit lengthwise too: but bear in mind that both cat and bath slope upward at what will be the forward end.

By such means we can look at alternative suppliers of both motor and ESC, whose head we can hold a gun to pending such time as they get an RC transmitter to talk to the two of them.

It just so happens too that I used a pair of 10mm laminated backer-boards to panel the bath with during the renovation we all enjoyed in recent posts ~ and sufficient over to build a pair of centre-sections like the previous, except a little shrunken. I realise Elon Musk is probably not wondering what he can do with a left-over bath-panel and whether he might build a space-ship with it, but I'm cutting a wet-suit to suit our cloth here.

At the same time, the family sit here requires that the conservatory is co-opted as a means of entertaining guests instead of drones, the way the front rooms of my past were preserved for occasional visits by the vicar, and ready should ever royalty call.

It does mean the proj is relegated to the garage, which is where I'd already decided to locate the bath; not wanting to be considered (more of) a nut-job by neighbours. 

Let me take you then by your digital paw then as we plan and build one of the most spectacular test-facilities the UK is still able to muster!

Financial OVOtures

Sale of energy firm OVO to German company EOn, which already has a sizeable slice of the dysfunctional UK energy market, for a reputed £600 million; a sum that should help restore its founder’s fortune following his contribution to a newer venture altogether in the form of flying taxi developer Vertical Aerospace. The latter is something the UK government ~ in a desperate effort to place all its chips on one of the few remaining gambles less likely to decamp abroad at the first opportunity ~ is practically the only electrified form of flight that it has backed in a substantial way.

An obvious reason for doing so is that politicians rarely know anything much beyond the palace of Westminster and how to profit personally from it, and thus rely upon what they consider to be the safest bet. This is generally, and especially when it comes to defence, companies like BAE Systems that already enjoy financial backing from abroad… combined with the fact that companies like Vertical can afford the salaries of people either skilled in pursuit of government grants or otherwise skilled in kissing the asses of those responsible for signing them off. Back-handers may or may not feature, the likes of BAE proven to be expert in that department too.

The energy market is another thing that we have to thank Thatcher for, and is something that sticking-plaster socialist governments are unlikely to improve, which is why they are so unpopular ~ like so much of life in the 21st century, they (and it) stand for little else beside handouts, as it’s something simple that requires none of the imagination they lack anyway.

What struck me about it was around the time of the Covid pandemic they said over eighty had gone bust, the best-known of which was ‘Bulb’ although there are many shittier names than that, not least OVO… or new-biological OVO as we expect Germans to call it. This reflects the fact that whereas state-run entities like the electricity boards had to put an infrastructure together, what modern energy firms (and broadband operators) need is a billing system and a silly name. OVO garnered customers with a claim to only use green energy, which you may believe. You may also believe the Earth is flat and the Moon made of cheese, as I do.

If you watch the YouTube channel Economics Help, which is like WWE wrestling to the likes of me, you’ll see how the only real ways that the UK can dig itself out of long-term decline is either by printing money ~ which is like ordering beer during a party that you’ll never be able to pay for ~ or else flogging off the family silver to foreigners. 

As this great green hope has done ~ but who’d blame them when the house is folding?

Ed. More cheery posts soon!

Bathed in Glory

None of which is getting boats built, though this might well be!

Let me touch on it by including the CEO's latest press release:

"I'm delighted to have signed off last thing Friday on this, our first hydrostatic test facility, thought to be the largest in Europe if you don't count the hot-tub next door. It was built by Armitage Shanks, a firm well-known here in the UK for maritime test-facilities as well as gents urinals. And while it cost £16.15 on eBay on a buyer-collect basis, it will be essential in driving the proj forward at a sub-scale that I shall speak more of in the weeks to come. Amen."

Gaining Traction

What a spot on the M6 motorway!

It's an old Nuffield, a 1500cc beauty built in 1969.

Know this from the government's 'Tax Your Vehicle' website ~ so pleased I taxed it for him!

Electoral Guide

People wonder how politics works in Britain ~ and like elsewhere in the world it does not. Here then a guide to the parties here in our disunited kingdom, and I've used a seat in Edinburgh as it's as good as any other.

First off the recent local elections were extended in Wales and Scotland to devolved nation elections, and in short the Scots and Welsh want to be separated altogether from the English, given our own politicians are drongos.

Viewing from left to right:

Long-haired guy. Don't know, get off.

An independent, invariably individual crackpots exercised by pot-holed roads.

Labour Party, exclusive to metrosexuals within the M25 motorway around London.

Lib Dems, for rich people who've gone off the Conservatives.

Conservatives, the oldest party in the UK and clearly demented.

Reform UK, more Conservative than they and more working-class than Labour.

The Gannets, campaigning for a heavier fish diet.

Scottish National Party, who normally win here but didn't in this case.

Green Party, big in Europe whom they'd like to re-join and smoke pot.

And if ever there was an argument for less democracy, this was probably it. As the gannet said as it left, "Good-bye and thanks for all the fish".

Rising Inflation

We do ourselves down in the UK too often, and on the maritime front we've created a whole new class of vessel that to my knowledge didn't really exist prior. This fine inflatable is yours for less than £1200 on Alibaba, where the online world is buoyed up with 'super dinghies' in all different colours and sizes and with a range of fittings. Though marketed as 'high-quality rescue boats', law enforcement is raining on their parade by calling them 'DIY deathtraps'... as they do my own efforts.

Some super dinghies now carry as many as many as 130 people, so that's less than a tenner each if there's 129 of my readers out there who'd like to chip in and go for a ride with me this summer, celebrating a unique form of transport on a day that includes baguettes in Calais and scones at Dover Castle; and a lecture by me on the origins of inflatables (see merch page, 200 people are also looking at this and there are just two seats left at this price).

For my readers elsewhere the English Channel is just twenty-two miles wide and is viewed by most Britons as a shittier Straits of Hormuz. It is also the world's busiest shipping channel, hosting super-tankers and container-ships besides inflatables like these. Occasionally the Royal Navy uses it and there are spotters online who like  'twitchers' race to the coast to see them. Beside all this the RNLI do a sterling job in re-rescuing people during the inevitable deflation that starts a mile into the journey.

We began keeping figures on the number of tourists arriving by these means back in 2018, since when over 200,000 have done so... thus it is reasonable to assume we can celebrate a quarter of a million arrivals of this kind. They peak whenever the weather's nice and the seas are calm, though the French police sometimes spoil the show by taking box-cutters to these fine craft, which in my view is a crying shame. 

As a result, travel agents organising these tours have upped oars and decamped to Ostend for departures from farther shores, a place we'd often drop into for cheaper aviation fuel beside an ample choice of crossings. My only beef about this is ~ and I wrote to Skier Starmer about it ~ that revenue could be diverted to treasury coffers instead of being steered into East European accounts.

Quite why anyone would want to come here escapes me anyway, but it's probably considered a spring-board to life in North America the way they use tenders to ferry you to cruise-liners from ashore. You must admit then that we are among the nicest people in the world, and even publish stats on how many use 'small boats' ~ a description stemming from days they sat seven including the skipper. It is too an alternative to tracking merchant ships, as we do here on the blog on quieter days!

People moving from one place to another in great numbers is, when it comes to the way law-enforcers might handle it, not unlike prostitution, drink or drugs. Because we've a protestant ethic in the UK and US and despite the fact Luther swore like a trooper and was obsessed with the scatological (poo-poo to Christians reading), we don't do it very well at all.

In Holland they have cafes where you do drugs and Danish pastries, and Germans have official brothels of a kind I visit by way of research for the blog. So instead of gang-banging like Skier Karmer does and sound-bites like 'Smash the Gangs!', why don't we take a sensible view and instead of letting others price-gouge migrants, organise the trips and accommodation ourselves? What better way to celebrate a unique means of travel that's up there with hovercraft I once used from Ramsgate?

I can do PR for a pink super-dinghy that includes a cocktail bar, water-slide, Richard Branson figure-head and 'Pump It Up With Virgin Rescue!' along each side... has to be an improvement on the PM moaning and droning! I do have a friend who arrived on a small boat, who is studying English as I write and that's no mean feat for a Georgian... and that's the real one, for any Americans reading. She's also our fastest female park-runner: so she may be an economic migrant, but she's our economic migrant!

Ed. And that's me migrating to the troll-shelter.

Face Lift

Sorry Bill, I think that's Marilyn Manson you're next to?

Oh go then, if we must, but go and get a bowl of popcorn and settle down!

The Pictorial Key Pad in summary, to save a walk to the Digital Commons:

What I was intrigued by ~ and turns out Y Combinator were too until they found out who was behind it ~ was the notion that the one thing we're exceptional at from the course of our evolution was recognising faces. So idea was, slip a few you recognise into an array of those you don't, and you've something easier to remember than the components of a PIN code... but which cannot really be relayed in ways that would assist a hacker.

For instance, who'd I most associate with up there? Yes! Paris Hilton, because she shares a surname, and because I'd like to see her with no clothes on! You however have only a 1-in-50 chance of guessing the same way (Ed. unless you're male, so maybe granny would be a better random pick after all...).

The problem that rapidly became apparent was that you'd need a database of looks like faces generated most easily by AI to avoid copyright and GDPR (GPDR?) issues, and that was looking (a) tricky and (b) expensive.

All that changed when I realised ~ too late as it happened ~ that now it'd be easier simply to buy the software generating the faces, with things moving fast and getting so cheap. Another issue though was the fact the passcode you see on a phone from the get-go is proprietary and difficult to break into in more ways than one. Thefts of mobiles though remains massive; this an intriguing step in a more secure direction.

Thus what would happen would be that you'd swipe the phone and in just an inst it would produce an array of AI-generated mugshots, among which would be people only you would be expected to know. In the pitch to YC I used their own faces in a sad effort to appeal to their vanity... which clearly worked*.

For the fact is any number of ideas briefly flourish and die before their time, and when I did the due diligence the idea of recognising shapes say or icons or emojis that you'd pre-selected for example dated as far back as 2003. Not faces as I recall though, perhaps because it was prior to the explosion of images we're used to now.

But nothing as Victor Hugo observed can stop an idea whose idea has come, except perhaps VCs in San Fransisco whom you've just pissed off in a blog-post?

(Incidentally every pic up there is in fact a famous mug-shot due arrest or detention except for Ronald McDonald, who I'm currently being sued over... spot him kids?).

* Ed. He's a rare form of Tourettes affecting only typing, but I won't be contacting Paris for him.

The overlay... took me ages.

California Dronin'

Latest worldwide download-ership is in for my "academic" papers that I upload to the digital commons ~ after that argument with the Patent Office ~ are in, and this time I thought I'd take you for a tour of who likes what where, beginning in the US. Let me then take you by the digital hand, and we shall fly across America like that brat and the snowman seem to do every year on TV at Christmas!

I'll work from west to east with Mr. Mercator's permission and accordingly kick off in Redmond WA, where the maritime drone has 'dropped', principally because it is free but also because they've got water nearby... we wish them bon voyage!

Meantimes in San Jose CA (simply 'the valley' to Elon and I)  they've gone for a SLB or self-launching boat, which I'm pleased about because with their smarts and my angle-grinder I feel we can make it happen. Meanwhile down in LA it's the Pictorial Key Pad that's going down a storm and on the next post I'll say why, and how it can be improved. I do that for the good of humanity, and so people in Ormskirk nudge each other in Wetherspoons once they realise they're in the presence of greatness.

Over in Vineyard UT I'd hoped they'd downloaded my patented "Method and Means for Moving Nineteen Teenage Brides" and I won't be welcome there again, though frankly wasn't the first time, but in fact it was the Pictorial Key Pad again, so they may want to read the next post if that laptop hasn't been thrown against the wall.

Moving swiftly on we're at Warren Air Force base, YES SECRETARY HEGSETH SIR, HILTON SIR, G2626058 who've gone for my Drone Adapted to Human Carriage. I cannot even remember what that involves, but clearly it's impressed somebody. Or maybe it's just been taking home for the kids' Year Six show-and-tell?

Down in Dallas TX they've gone for the very same thing, and I like to think that's a 'droid that works for Elon who's perusing that with the AI brain bolted into his skull.

At Cedar Hill TN though it's back to the Maritime Drone and zooming in here to the most granular of detail from my perch in Lancashire ~ Mwah ha, mwah ha, mwah ha ha ha ha ha ~ I can see that they're planning to use it on the Piney River, where the women are fast and the current's beautiful?

But we can't stay long, can we snowman because we're flying through the digital air to a high school in Duluth, Georgia we're the teacher has just printed off thirty-six more Maritime Drones and the kids are saying, "Can we go now, loser?".Exciting!

Bye kids, bye, for we're off now to Pittsburgh (guessing PN?) which is consolidating the trend with these maritime drones. I've actually been to Pittsburgh on a Sunday afternoon, though mostly to escape Cleveland.

Over to Riga now, and though I've not been there I have been on an airline training course in the original in Latvia, where I was kicked out for pointing out that most of us had been silently watching YouTube videos during the type conversion (which in fairness I'd done time and again in accordance with EASA's senseless dictates). In Riga NY they to ~ oh, come on ~ went for the Maritime Drone.

Thank goodness in Ashborn VA they've gone for a Virtual Quadcopter instead. This is simply a way to reduce the size of a quad with two props on each arm by having them overlap whilst mounted above and below; remembering they've to run in the same direction so that their don't, in short.

At Perth Ambay (g?) in New Jersey, no prize for guessing it's the maritime drone in view of all the water thereabouts, and finally as we direct our weary wings toward New York City itself, and the heart of its financial district, it's the Drone for Human Carriage once more. Perhaps the guy just wants to escape the grind, like a slower version of Batman?

There are downloads across all the continents that we could analyse this month, but what the snowman said to the idea is something you don't want children hearing.

Ed. The author's re-view of the Pictorial Key-Pad may be a few posts from now... we live crazy lives like that, and might even leave the breakfast bar one day.

Deliver...ong

Arrived home yesterday to find an unwanted Deliveroo on my door-step, in the form of a family breakfast from some eight hours previous. What would you do? Like any man I put it in the oven and afterward ate it all, washed down with beer and tequila purchased with the savings. Horrendous shits this morning ~ which can only improve my Parkrun times ~ although it was good while it lasted.

Jet Eh?

Airlines ~ and not least their pilots ~ are in my experience always bleating about something and principally how little money they're given. The cabin crew joke was the difference between pilots and jet engines being that the latter stopped whining at the end of the day.

The current groan relates to whether they should be allowed to use imported fuel from the US in Europe, the European Commission saying 'yes' and EASA, which like all aviation authorities is principally an arse-covering exercise, saying 'no'.

The debate is over the freezing point and this is the point at which you don't trust everything that AI comes up with, it effectively crawling the 'net for whatever's out there and regurgitating the most plausible; including everything that armchair pilots have to say about it.

BA have only really had two crashes anyone can ever recall, one to a Trident in the 1970s following on from a spat between an ex-military captain and entitled drongos of the sort worked for the airline as First Officers and probably still do.

The other was a 777 that crash-landed just clear of a threshold I knew and loved at Heathrow, and whose captain's career was cancelled for many years by the drongos that equally work as airline owners and managers.

And the problem relates to what happens to kerosene after many hours in the cruise and during which it forms what you and I would consider more slush-puppy than jet fuel. Water sinks in fuel, as the latter has a density of around 0.80 SG, and in light aircraft at the start of every day you go around with what looks like a urine sampler to drain the tanks and see how much has accumulated.

I don't recall having to do this on either Airbus or Boeing airliners, which must have a cleverer system altogether: but clearly not quite clever enough. The temperature that sticks in my own mind is around -65C as I used to dwell on how cold it would feel if the aircraft broke up, as very occasionally they have done in thunderstorms. 

In fact one of the guys who started "Aunty Betty's" frozen produce was a co-pilot of mine at the time, and we enjoyed conversations in the cruise less about what we'd do by way of an approach into Leeds-Bradford and moreso how Yorkshire puddings were frozen. He told me the tricky part was the flash-freezing, when they went from not long having been baked to something more like a frozen mitten. We decided the best way of doing so might be to throw them out the side-window in the cruise.

For what happened in the case of the 777 flight  is that ice crystals accumulated in the fuel during the flight and warmed as things do during the descent so as to block the fuel filters and thereby starve the engines, both of which practically quit during the approach. I recall, and could be wrong, the captain retracted the flaps to reduce drag and stretch the glide; but was criticised by the male Karens that emerged from within head office as invariably they do when the shit's flying faster than a 777.

In fact we'd do that in the simulator in similar sized aircraft following such incidents and I recall, if anything, that it did actually work.

The great thing about AI though is that it teaches you things you'd never learned in half a lifetime as a pilot, like how the tanks are insulated like your hot-water tank at home by spray-on foam, and how you're going so fast and the wings are so hot you needn't bother your pretty little head. This is possibly because for all I know, this is likely to be (and probably undoubtedly is) kerosone-lubricated AI slop.

The only airliner I recall that this became any sort of factor with was Concorde, that flew at a coincidental 65,000 feet where illogically perhaps, the air atmosphere does actually start to get a little warmer. But at twice the speed of sound things really do heat up, not the least of which is the alloy the airliner is made with, which starts to bend. Beyond these speeds it is strictly steel ~ as per the  Soviet Foxbat as I recall ~ or else the more expensive Titanium the US was able to afford in its Blackbird.

What does keep aviation fuel snugly warm-ish is the fact it is used as a coolant in and around the engine's auxiliary gear-box, where things work both ways: you keep me cool, and I'll keep you warm to our mutual benefit.

Back then to a debate over whether Jet A might be used instead of Jet A1, one from the US and the other the Gulf? Well in the manuals and although I never had to use it, my longest flights being the six hours betwixt Shanghai and Phuket, a suggestion is that crews keep an eye on the outside temperature and consider descent to cruise at a lower and warmer level if they see fit. Problem is in a world stretched already, that might involve a higher fuel-flow, and the rate at which Euros are being burned.

Ed. Don't let this put you off that trip to the Costa Brava. Do think of the crushed-ice margaritas at the other end.

Freighted History

Always been considerable cross-over between shipping and air lines, Maersk having ventured into passenger airlines prior to focusing on airfreight to add to its shipping operation. It has been superseded as the largest container ship operator by MSC, whose ships can carry upto 24,000 (20') containers and which also acquired an airline to move goods that bit quicker. Other airlines to have sprung from freight forwarding include Cathay Pacific, originally of Shanghai.

At the same time, as recently as the 1960s it was fairly common for passengers to travel by ship, especially on longer routes across the Atlantic or to Australia in view of the comparative cost of flying and its fuel-stops enroute. The perceived threat to shipping companies led some of them to set up airlines of their own, most notably Court Line and Dan-Air in the UK.

Toward the end of the latter's life they were known for running on a shoe-string and would thus arrive at Gatwick with the bare minimum of fuel required for holding and diversion. They became known for diverting to Bournemouth in the circs to disrupt people's Instrument Rating test with fuel emergencies.

I myself had just completed the precision approaches and holding exercises, having only the non-precision (NDB, as they didn't have a VOR) to pursue when one  such flight pitched up and we were vectored elsewhere. Should it ever to happen to me nowadays ~ and face it, it won't ~ I'd say the examiner just had a heart-attack and that my emergency trumps theirs.

The crane at the railhead here is called a 'heavy lifter' and manufactured invariably in Finland of all places. You don't want to be run over by one either.

Covering All Bases

Turns out Kim Kardashian's Met Gala suit was made here by Whitaker Malem, who have also done something similar for Batman in years past. Here it is after having been spray-painted down in Kent at, er, a body-shop?

I've already drafted a set of metallic Y-fronts to use at my TED talk in Cockermouth.

Fifty Shades of Grey Hair

What leaps out at you from this extract from venture capital UP Partners, apart from the fact robots are clamouring for minimum wage?

It's that the average age of aerospace engineers in the US is 50 years old.

In Vietnam, the average age of combat troops was Nnnnn... nineteen.

The average age on a US carrier is not much older (at around Ttttt... twenty-three).

I recall those putting men on the moon averaged twenty-five not counting members of R.E.M.

Fact is that's more like the status quo is in China now, now aviation is down-scaling.

For the other fact is... you cannot teach an old dog new tricks.

Ed. And he's been trying to balance a biscuit on his nose all afternoon.

Cappuccino Darling... ton?

Remember this day.

Yes, we know it's the day when we vote for local councillors, the burning issue here not so much the Straits of Hormuz as the straits the shopping centre has been in since a discovery of asbestos closed the laundrette and left me high, dry and dirty.

But tell me what Darlington is famous for besides car-theft? Correct! It's where the first steam locomotives were hauling a mix of ore, coal and passengers on dedicated lines, and whose bi-centennial we recently celebrated here on our very own weblog.

Well now it's famous for the first drone delivery outside the US, courtesy of Amazon and its on-off project that aims to get deliveries ~ of vital things in this instance like a box of rubber gloves to a swinging couple in the sticks with an erection that won't go away ~ in literally minutes.

As yet the range is limited to 7.50 miles and weight of carriage to a modest two kilos or five pounds. The ways drones have dropped packages to date include with a parachute, with a winch and as here, like shite from a seagull as Jeff Bezos explained earlier to the BBC.

The man running the proj says that together with the CAA the aim is for a level of safety on a par with airliners viz. a one in a billion chance of failure that experts have said is designed to strangle drones at birth in view of the fact it's a cardboard box that might be crashing and not a 500-ton Airbus.

And here I can only refer back to my own blog post called something like 'Primed and Cocked' about how northerners like me will shoot these things down for sport ~ the rich with shotguns and us with Airsoft ~ especially now they come with a Cartier watch inside.

For that's not a factor reducing the odds of airline accidents, but I venture it is with drones and I call Goodyear to the witness stand, whose airships are shot at once a week. The only place I recall where we were potentially (and actually) shot at in an airliner was Libya, but then after our peace-keeping efforts there anyone could buy any military hardware their heart desired.

It actually brings us full-circle back to local politics in the UK, however, designed to eliminate anything that doesn't protect property prices and/or fails risk-assessments from the get-go.

The first two 'skyports' that Amazon have put to the council have been rejected at the planning stage for being too noisy, especially given the likely effect on residents who don't even own an air-rifle in order to take matters into their own hands.

Welcome then to Britain, Jeff, and can I suggest that ~ like Marie Antoinette ~ you simply have them eat cake, dropped from a drone?

Ed. Pictured is the very first delivery. All of us in the UK have a driveway like that.

The Blue Bell Show

Only time I'd been to Bromborough in my entire life had been a geology field trip to examine an exemplary demonstration of faulting in sandstone, but now I'm around its industrial estates on a fairly regular basis... what's going around coming around.

But what bluebells remind me of is flying downwind legs out of Redhill aerodrome in Surrey. It takes you along a wooded escarpment and if you looked down out of the right hand side from eight hundred feet, it was tinged in electric blue in view of all of these flowers there.

Later the same with poppies instructing out of Bournemouth in Dorset, cornfields stained blood-red like those once home to trenches in northern France instead.

Later again operating shuttles between Heathrow and Edinburgh in springtime, when the gorse illuminated the Pentland Hills in a vibrant yellow.

But nothing quite beat tulip fields in Amsterdam, where I told those lucky enough to have a window seat to look at as magnificent a floral display as they would see from the air anywhere; was said my captain at the time, likely the gayest PA they'd ever listened to.

For looking back flying gave me ample time to look out of the window, a free copy of the Times to hand and a fried breakfast on my lap brought to me by a young lady with ample embonpoint.

But our lives still have gentler compensations like the bluebells, don't they Gromit?

Perf 'A' Primer

Exercise 1 (40 min, 50 pts):

You've been flying the Atlantic all night and given an early descent to Newark due conflicting traffic. The cabin attendant has brought in your fried breakfast and at the same time you are woken by your First Officer saying 'Wake up scrotum, they're on 29.' You've still an erection, but you are able to conceal it from the cabin attendant with your electronic FCOMs.

The weather reads: 300/25-30 NASTY RASH 10K S/25 29.92 NOSIG

And NOTAM: KEWR 0500-2300 Bakery vans operate btw waypoints BURGA & FRIES

Using appropriate CRM, what would we expect to hear?

(a)    'Shit'

(b)    'You have control of my breakfast'

(c)    'No no, let me do that thank you...'

(d)    All of the above

Now examine the first of your handouts:

You've forgotten your reading glasses, so you've taken over the radio for a moment and asked the First Officer to talk you through it.

 

What angle of approach do you expect?

(a)    0º

(b)    3º

(c)    45º

(d)    90º

You're on short finals. Look closely at the second handout:

What do you think it is the height of?

(a)    Your own First Officer

(b)    A Boeing 777 airliner

(c)    An average semi-trailer

(d)    The Loch Ness monster

Turn your attention to the full-colour extract of the layout at Newark. Using the pen provided, mark wherever you think the threshold is with an 'X'. You are allowed five attempts at this, and whoever is closest wins a ticket to the FA Cup final:

In the final stages of the approach your First Officer alerts you to a truck that has appeared on TCAS, and wonders why it's flying so high. The correct response is?

(a)    Keep calm and carry on

(b)    Quickly pass the co-pilot the controls

(c)    Request a baguette and two croissants

(d)    Blame ATC for not offering its driver vectors 

Approaching the threshold you hope to break the airline record for the nearest RET. What is ideally 50' above the threshold in order that you should continue?

(a)    Nose of the aircraft

(b)    Truck driver's nose

(c)    Your own nose

(d)    Landing gear

Using your calculator, CRP-5 or the notes in your socks, now answer the following... Given the approach slope is 3º and the landing gear ~ or someone's nose ~ is 50' above the threshold, what is the correct height above a baker's delivery truck?

(a)    The width of a Danish pastry

(b)    500' and clear of obstacles

(c)    half the height of a trailer

(d)    50' plus the bonus ball

Thank you. Put your pens down now if you would, and don't forget to collect your ATPL and a gift-bag before leaving the building.

Answers D, B, C, D, D, C* (*United pilots only, all others D)

Shen Zen

What's this? Come on... what is it fuckers? Knew I should have gone into teaching.

It's a fit-for-century store, courtesy of DJI in Shenzen, who literally own the global drone market and if you want a better way of demonstrating how whole industries can be lifted from the US and used to advantage in China then this would be it. For the guy who started it all ~ and I recall reading about it first flying out of Shanghai where I recall trying to get in touch ~ was infused with Western values having I'm almost certain been brought up in Hong Kong listening to Led Zeppelin.

And that's why this looks like it does, why it's very obviously a showcase for a firm called Hasselblad that grew out of Germany, and why like Apple it is designed to be seamless in what it does: it's not about the drones, it's what you can do with them.

And in a world dominated by self-reflection, entertainment and the visual arts, it is what they can do for that. For in a nutshell, it's the Apple of flight and demonstrates what can be done when Western vision is allied with Eastern persistence, teamwork and let's face it... hard work. For when that Chinese foreign minister said Europeans were lazy, he weren't wrong. Although in my defence am drafting this at 04:20 a.m.

Here's a for inst for you. The world currently revolves around a firm in Taiwan that had the vision to imagine chips with transistors smaller than had ever been thought possible ~ a vision in which investors in the US, who've elevated short-termism into an art, refused to buy into. Instead, a European firm in the form of Phillips did so.

What it meant eventually was chips designed in Taiwan built by a machine shipped from Holland would come to dominate the emergent field of AI, it being the spade behind the digging for the ore that produces the gold. It would succeed to an extent that it was viewed to be in the strategic interest of the US to base such 'fabs' (or at least one of) in the US.

And here's the thing. The guy said it wouldn't work because (a) Westerners would double the cost of any such venture and (b) wouldn't get out of bed at 02:00 a.m. to fix it as they would in China, or at least a place that let's face it will one day be a part of it. Am I wrong? Or more importantly, was he? For what the world is waking up to is the fact that both the US and the UK in a Lego way have economies which on the strength of past glories and running up a credit card bill since around 1970. 

I'd love to think we can all make it great again, but we'd be the first civilisation ever to have reversed its natural trajectory. If I were a betting man, I'd say nuclear war was altogether a more obvious outcome?

But let's not dwell on that, for what prompts all of this is spending an afternoon in which I again tried to get a Futaba transmitter to communicate with a Flame speed controller and from thence to a T-motor motor with even less success than last time I tried.

And then it dawned on me. The state of RC modelling is what Windows was around the time Apple too was coming into being. Like a PC you had to open up and switch circuit boards in, instead of a Mac that you had only to switch on. In a sentence, the PC and its software was designed by nerds for nerds, much like most RC equipment until a Steve Jobs emerged from Hong Kong, took the Chinese passport at such time as he had to choose and then set up a stall in Shenzen. Were once I night-stopped.

So from all of this and despite nearly taking a lump hammer to all three pieces of equipment ~ and the way things will pan out it would not make much difference if I had of done ~ I've drawn conclusions.

But those will have to wait for another day, as now I've got to go and drive a truck.

Malcolm McLaren, who managed the Sex Pistols and was behind a punk-rock culture that spread worldwide, was told at school that he would inevitably fail but should do so spectacularly... and it's what we in the West should do.