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.

Power Up #1: Back to School

Back-story's this: Colin's over the South China Sea, drafts design for an octocopter built round a framework like a phone-box for 'teleporting' people from A to B. Enters a comp in California, realises even child-size personal air vehicles aren't the easiest thing to check in as baggage via London, Dublin and New York to SFO.

Learns much, specially how much it costs to make anything to fly anyone anywhere.

Donates working prototypes to museums in Weston-super-Mare and Doncaster where they hang to this day, and scales things down to nearer 50% to continue with a series of different designs of human-carrying drones; most of which octocopters to assure redundancy of operation.

Wakes up one day to realise something he was developing long before drones viz. flat-pack boats could benefit from the same method and means.

Develops a mono-ski and a catamaran flat-pack, the latter not necessarily the most efficient but wholly more practical, especially as it can be scaled eventually to carry his royal self.

Has thus inherits eight motors, battery-packs and speed-controllers from the final scale effort at flying people, with which he determines to get something ~ anything ~ on the water for his and your edification.

So let's look again at the table up top. There are three versions of our U7 motor and as I didn't know what I was doing I went for the lowest kV or slowest revving, which is turning the largest available (22") propeller.

The data's for that version running at 24V, but the eight packs are each six-cell and produce only 22V. Looking at the second column we see that the max amperage we can drive through he controllers is therefore less than 35A.

And what ESCs do we have? 80A, which are (a) five times more expensive (and times by eight), and heavier than say a 40A designed for a fixed-wing; which works for us now that it's also a plane (albeit a hydroplane) that we're developing.

So I call a round-table with engineering to ask what the difference is, and when one begins to tell me as I stroll the table I realise he's reading from a phone and hit him over the head with a baseball bat, just like Robert de Niro in The Untouchables:

For one of the joys of working on a boat ~ albeit a flying hybrid ~ is that I can use product designed for a much larger fixed-wing market that comes with lower costs and lighter product. And a battery eliminator circuit (BEC) incidentally is something that can be included in the circuit so as to draw power from the pack supplying the motor, so that a separate source is not required for the receiver (RX).

An additional issue I've had in trying to get the Flame 80A ESC to talk to a motor is that (a) it's a piece of clever-clever shit and (b) its instructions go something like:

    You put this wire here

    You put that wire there

    You press button

    We go for noodle*

Specifically instead of a simple throttle calibration (the controller has to know when that joystick is at the top and bottom of its range) it includes this in three options none of which work: much like an EV that can't be fixed by yourself at the roadside.

Having tried once to get the Flame 80A P.O.S. to work I'll probably not try again on the basis a definition of madness is doing the same thing over and again, expecting a different result.

Plan is therefore to retain them for a rainy day. We did have them hooked up to a Pixhawk controller, though that's the royal 'we' and far beyond my own pay-grade.

All that we need do is get four lift motors running in tandem, and as we've seen, we can do it by hooking each up to a separate receiver as the lady with big breasts was explaining yesterday.

Reasonable? For all we need do is get one pontoon up and running on this basis and then it's a question of rinse and repeat and we're at least as far as static runs, albeit without differential.

Which is anyway a task for another day, like Scarlet O'Hara's Tara, isn't it Gromit?

* Ed. And that's the last time T-motor will be supplying us...

Transmission Accomplished

PRESS RELEASE

I'm delighted to showcase for you today this first of TELEDRONE's base stations and a significant investment in the UK. I should like at this juncture to thank the UK government for all it has done toward this ground-breaking development, which was a free sausage roll at Manchester Airport under the 'Eat Out to Help Out' scheme we benefited from during the pandemic. I should also like to thank Percy Adcock for the use of his angle-grinder on a bank holiday.

The transmitter (removes black silk cover to whoops and hollers, but the dry ice generator has failed) is a Futaba T16SZ that with the help of NASA ('s baseball cap) has been heavily-modified in order to control flat-cats, and which we've christened the T16SZZ-TOP.

As Steve Jobs and I used to say over enlarged prostates and carrot juice, not what you add but what you take away that counts in life... and as a gesture this day I've asked for our vending machine to be taken away because it's costing too much.

Accordingly a top-of-the-range ZZ-TOP has all switches and dials removed by angle-grinder ~ as we're known for with coffee-makers ~ leaving only those controls you need in life...

A THROTTLE, A SIDESTICK AND A SLIDER!!!

(Dropping the mike and throwing an Issey Miyake polo-neck into the crowd, he exits right to tumultuous applause that exists mostly inside his head).

Appeal

And while we're on the subject of charitable efforts involving airlines, today's appeal by a guest celebrity on Radio 4 comes on behalf of bored pilots everywhere:

Good morning. As you lie in bed, are you aware that at this very moment nearly five million passengers are in the air enroute somewhere entirely unnecessary, and that they have to be flown there by someone? Well that 'someone' has to deal on a daily basis with a six-figure salary and being sat around pools in the sunshine surrounded by half-naked young women.

Worse than that they must endure hours of boredom in the cruise, now newspapers have largely been withdrawn, with only a warming Earth to look at out the window.

But you can help and you can help now by recommending this blog to someone dear to you that has to work as an airline pilot. Nowadays due to the wonders of modern technology pilots are able to download blogs and podcasts to the company-supplied take-off performance tablet ~ along with Pornhub stills ~ to study during the cruise without ever anyone needing to know.

As you may know, we at the blog do what we do for our simple love for humanity, and that even includes you. We never advertise, and what we achieve for Blogger and the billionaires who own it is achieved wholly by word of mouth.

So act now if you would, in remembering those more fortunate than ourselves. Just email a link to those in need, and send me a cheque no matter how large or small... remembering to mark it "I saw you coming" on the back of the envelope.

Today's appeal was delivered by a top influencer and his dog, Gromit. And following the news it's over to the Church of Latter-Day Bloggers in Cockermouth, where the very Reverend Percy Adcock leads the daily worship.

Safe (Air) Space

I was intrigued to read about an Easyjet captain being signed off with stress and anxiety after sleepless nights worrying about the effect airlines are having on the planet, along with all the rest of what we do on a daily basis. As the man on the AMOC video pointed out, civilisations are less able to react ~ and ultimately survive ~ to changes that proceed gradually, as against those like an inbound meteor which advertise their arrival.

At British Midland we'd a co-pilot in Teesside who annoyed one captain in particular for having lost his nerve and being unable to take flight; instead paid to kick around the office pursuing gentler pastimes like photocopying. It is I think a reason why both pilots getting signed off for whatever reason and conscientious objectors are deeply unpopular: because it's the rest of us having to recover the dead bodies on a daily basis instead.

Whilst a drop in the ocean and a piss into the wind, the organisation he has joined is a worthy cause which I can only applaud. I've flown rich, dirty old men* with young ladies in an executive jet to Nice for lunch and had friends do the same albeit in Pisa with giveaway flights on Ryanair.

In neither case was the cost to the environment or our eventual well-being factored into an economics equation that appears ever less fit for purpose.

I would join myself, except for the fact that after 15,000 flying hours it would look too much like a death-bed conversion?

* Ed. He's only jealous.

AirKamuy

I had intended to highlight how this Japanese company was following the footsteps of those people in Australia who supply fixed-wing drones made of cardboard: never mind the product, what can we do with the box?

Their second product however is more noteworthy altogether. They rightly point out that fixed-wing aircraft are unwieldy on the ground and in deployment and recovery ~ but more capable in the air, whilst multicopters feature the opposite benefits and dis-benefits.

Accordingly they've a drone that can retract its wings like a bird in flight to operate as an altogether more compact and manoeuvrable multi.

Note that like so many species out there like our own dear cat it draws upon its four lift-motors for take-off and landing, and an independent unit for operation in cruise.

Their website, which is delightfully simple like our very own unlike the clever-clever sites that ultimately advertise vaporware, speaks of how they hope to become the world's largest manufactory of fixed-wing drones with such innovations.

Kon'nichiwa!

Ed. Not altogether original if we are to consider Pterodynamics' 'Transwing' too?

Ruining AMOC

Research in Utrecht concludes a collapse of the AMOC occurring in phases that last 400, 25 and get this... 2 years. It keeps the UK free of glaciers and days in London from hovering around -20C, besides the accompanying collapse in food production. Unfortunately too it coincides with a corresponding collapse in the intelligence of the people governing us.

Coldest I've ever been was flying in Harbin, the only place I've been that threatened the lower limit (-41C) for using the APU to get the aircraft toasty before you board. 

It was also (a) the fastest walkaround I ever conducted and (b) one of the stickiest runways I've ever landed on, blowing snow at that temperature on par with rubber.

The question for us to ponder this evening is why bother developing a flat-pack at a time you could be doomsday prepping, but then you could also ask the orchestra why they kept playing as the Titanic too sank toward the depths?

Here then to cheer you up I've included Vincent's own impression of the AMOC:

Plan B... 4D?

We're not coming this way again, as my old Instruments instructor Rapid Ron used to say, so before we move on let us touch upon that optional way pontoons might be driven. For when I ran the flat-cat by a man who'd spent a lifetime modelling RC, fear was there may not be enough steering authority absent rudder surfaces viz. by thrust alone.

If the obvious solution in view of my antipathy toward added complexity of servos is reversible thrust, the news is good. For not only do motors run in opposite direction in view of three cables connecting them, but T-motor are known to have produced a servo and propeller designed to do so on demand:

Bad news is it seems to have been taken off the shelves, as is often the case with Chinese stock that isn't shifting fast enough. It was only there in the first place for ~ I told you modellers were nerds ~ men with nothing better to do than fly 'planes backwards. You read that right, tho' it does also provide the perfect means of doing doughnuts in catamarans.

And there's more, because Futaba ~ daddy of RC ~ make a transmitter I alluded to aimed at tanks when they're not aimed at others. With two self-centred joy-sticks, either is moved fore or back to drive both tracked vehicle and flat-pack catamarans. It's called a 'surface' transmitter as it is designed for just that viz. terrain or water:

Finally I'd love ~ and know you would too ~ to control the pontoons independently so that if you were to swap one out, power supply and circuitry goes with it and the new one's oven-ready. To enable it we'd have to use the same transmitter to talk to independent receivers, but according to Google that's possible, as explained here by a woman with a large chest. 

Studying it I got an erection, which eventually I blamed on the multicopter:

Bind multiple mammaries in one bra

Ed. The ability to fly backwards is known as 4D aerobatics amongst nerds, who for 6D draw on friends to shake their chair and spray water.