OVERTALK
13th Dec 2003, 15:14
The True Story of KittyHawk - an Uplifting Tale from an Insider
Aviation's First (Ever) Security Threat
I was there, I just know that I was. If I wasn't, how could I be so intimately acquainted with this detail of the prelude and preliminaries to what happened that day in 1903? As the anniversary approaches, I'm having flashbacks to 17 Dec 1903 and an earlier life. I'm at Kittyhawk, standing at the base of a hill and contemplating starting Mankind off into a future of aviation.
Wilbur (stepping from wreckage of Kite): "Orville, come over here matey. I'm having second thoughts about this aviation business. A man could get hurt. Why did you let the string go, by the way?"
"The phone rang and it was some bloke called Alexander Graham Bell. Weird fella. He kept saying: "Mr Watson come here". I kept trying to explain to the ******** that there was no Mr Watson working here but he kept on and on. Finally some bird cut in and said: "3 minutes are you extending?" He said "Not bloody likely at these prices" and hung up. That's how come you ended up spearing in. I let your string go to answer the phone and then got the two strings mixed up. Sorry about that."
"Wilbur, dear brother, you're right. Let's give it a miss and report publicly that lift will never exceed weight nor thrust exceed drag. That should stave off any further flight development for at least half a century, enough to get Mankind past WW1 and WW2 at least. Then they can invent jets in time for Korea and Vietnam and have them unmanned by the time the pesky Arabs are asking to get wasted in Desert Storm 1 & 2".
"Yeah, you're right. By that time they'll have computers and they'll be able to rapidly number-crunch all the data and it saves us breaking our bones and necks. I much prefer ocean liners anyway. I hear they're building a really big one to ply between Southampton and New York. They call it the Gargantua".
"Nah, it's going to be the Titanic. I've already booked in advance"
"Well do you want to work instead on that "cloning of blondes made to order" project then? You could take one with you on that "maiden" voyage."
"Matey, you're on. Let's work on those design drawings again. That's the fun part. We were discussing whether we were going to go for talkies or a silent model. What do you think?"
"Silent for sure mate. And what was that suggestion you had for the new fem gender-clone? It had something to do with the bolas. Isn't that the lasso with the weight at each end that the Argentinean gaucho uses? It quickly winds itself around your neck and strangles you. Seems relevant."
"Yes, initially it was the Flaxen Vixen but then I thought "the Bimbola" might better fit the bill. I suggest we market them as that -and just see if it catches on."
"What about the dimensions? 36 x 24 x 36 will be easier. Less slide-rule work and it's pretty traditional in male fantasies world-wide."
"Yeah go for that. But remember that dyslexic bloke in Australia said he wanted a 24 x 36 x 36 model. That'll have to be a special order. Maybe they like their women pyramid-shaped down under. Almost as bad as the Kiwis wanting theirs to locomote on all fours and bleat. It's like they've never heard of bipedalism."
"Yeah, might be an Antipodean cultural thing. But, whatever; you've got to give the customer what he wants. Did you manage to extract that morals gland from that alley-cat?"
"Yeah, sure did. That should go down really well with both the City Slickers and the Country Bumpkins, not to mention the touring Rock Bands."
"What about that big bulk order for the Canadians? Those morals glands are hard to come by. The cats fight like Hell."
"Aah, just whack in some clockwork and the tail off a rattler. The Canux'll never notice the difference."
"And for the Mexicans? Battery-powered as we discussed?"
"Fer sure Wilbur me old. When they slow down the average mexicano will just assume that it's siesta time and whack her on a charge."
"Latino model for South America's going to be perpetually pregggers then?"
" Well them and the Eyeties seem to think that's par for the course - so who are we to argue. Just remember that the Colombians want theirs armed to the teeth and in combat fatigues. Kinky eh?"
" I notice there's no orders yet from Greece. Maybe our pamphlet got lost in the mail?"
"No, they've actually asked discretely for an under the counter Adonis variant with all the dangly bits. No accounting for taste. Froggies want theirs with a cat-walk - I guess that's a pussy-footing gait -so we'll have to get that off the alley-cats as well somehow. But the weirdest order of all must be that Eskimo one. They want theirs all blubbery. We're going to have to bother those alley cats for both their morals and tear glands. And if they're going to want them really blubbery we'll have to hook up the saliva glands to the tear ducts as well. That's some engineering challenge and we'd also have to get the fluid uptake balanced with the output at both ends.. Think about the hormonal imbalances. Half of them will end up as silently shrieking banshees and the other half as zombies. But as long as it's hard to pick one from the other, we should get away with it."
"Wilbur, have you thought at all about the liability insurance just in case this cloning thing goes all skew-whiff and we get a massive return of orders or the Church files a defect notice or we get picketed by Women's Lib? Might be we'd have to issue a product recall if it's ordered by the authorities. Then we'd be stuck with who knows how many blonde bomb-shells (and all natural blondes too, by the way). We'd probably have to meet all the alimony and palimony bills. Even Bollywood wouldn't be able to take those sorta figures off our hands -even at a massive discount for their dementia. Can you imagine how many blonde jokes we'd be the butt of?"
"Damnation, now that you mention it, that'd be a nightmare brother mine. So Orville, now that you've made your point I can only agree. The whole project would be fraught with technical risk. What if they all turned out to be frigid or nympho. Not as if they can be retrained.The liability insurance against that sort of thing would break us. Aviation has zero development risk by comparison."
"Oh well, a Man can dream. Back to the drawing board again. How did that theory of flight you came up with go again?"
"Lift = CL half RHO VEE Square ESS"
"And, just remind me,what was RHO again?"
"That's the initials of my Bank Manager. We have to see him about the loan"
"And the CL?"
"That's the efficiency of a lift. I guess we better measure that on the elevator down at the bank while we're there."
"And the VEE square?"
"Just imagine a TEE Square but in the shape of a VEE"
"Gotcha, so the ESSSSS's has got to be the smooth sound of it zipping through the air then?"
"Orville, you're a marvel. Oh, and by the way, my Pilots Licence has just lapsed. The flight examiner couldn't get his mind around the fact that he would have to be a testing officer for a solo ab initio test-pilot. When I challenged his qualifications and demanded to see his logbook he backed down and said he'd have to go back to DC and get the whole thing clarified. So you're going to have to take her up. Do be careful. Some guy called Jim Boeing is going to be there. He's a potential investor. We need his dough if you're going to buy that farm you keep on about."
"Jim Bowie? Wasn't he at the Alamo?"
"Yeah, right - and we want him to pay us Alamoney".
Oh and by the bye, these conversations you say you're having with this Marconi guy through your shower-head. Is he still claiming that he needs in on this aviation caper? What's he got to offer?"
"Dunno bruv. He goes on and on, always seems to be very distant or as if he's got a mouthful of spaghetti. But you're right. He is a poor communicator and just can't seem to get his message across. He always cuts out when the cold tap goes off anyway."
"Well keep in touch with him during your ablutions. I've got a feeling that when all this comes together there'll be a ****load of cash to be made and every Tom, Dick and Harry will come down in the next shower and want in. But let's give that pest Lindbergh the brush-off. He seems to think it's some sort of boat that you can cross the Atlantic in. Anybody who goes down to the beach knows that the birds never fly out of sight of land."
"OK, down to tin-tacks then. This idea of yours of taking the air-machine off a skid and putting it onto wheels and then making the wheels retractable. Surely that's flawed? In a moment of stress the guy forgets to put the wheels down and comes a gutzer. Isn't that an unnecessary risk?"
"Nah, never happen. But if you like, we simply hook up a loud blaring horn so that it cooks off just before the air-machine touches down without its wheels."
"Way to go bruvver. Last week you invented the count-down -and now this..... Tell you what. Start running some thoughts on a retardation device through your grey matter. We might be able to tie it in with this wheel idea. This boat anchor we're using is playing merry hell with the tail section. I wouldn't mind betting that we'll prematurely discover the concept of metal fatigue - if we don't come up with some better arrangement."
"I hears you bruvver. Orville you know what? Each time we run through that Bimbola Project and eventually reject it, our brainstorming improves 200%. You think that somehow aviation and sex are linked?"
"Nah, never happen".
Aviation's First (Ever) Security Threat
I was there, I just know that I was. If I wasn't, how could I be so intimately acquainted with this detail of the prelude and preliminaries to what happened that day in 1903? As the anniversary approaches, I'm having flashbacks to 17 Dec 1903 and an earlier life. I'm at Kittyhawk, standing at the base of a hill and contemplating starting Mankind off into a future of aviation.
Wilbur (stepping from wreckage of Kite): "Orville, come over here matey. I'm having second thoughts about this aviation business. A man could get hurt. Why did you let the string go, by the way?"
"The phone rang and it was some bloke called Alexander Graham Bell. Weird fella. He kept saying: "Mr Watson come here". I kept trying to explain to the ******** that there was no Mr Watson working here but he kept on and on. Finally some bird cut in and said: "3 minutes are you extending?" He said "Not bloody likely at these prices" and hung up. That's how come you ended up spearing in. I let your string go to answer the phone and then got the two strings mixed up. Sorry about that."
"Wilbur, dear brother, you're right. Let's give it a miss and report publicly that lift will never exceed weight nor thrust exceed drag. That should stave off any further flight development for at least half a century, enough to get Mankind past WW1 and WW2 at least. Then they can invent jets in time for Korea and Vietnam and have them unmanned by the time the pesky Arabs are asking to get wasted in Desert Storm 1 & 2".
"Yeah, you're right. By that time they'll have computers and they'll be able to rapidly number-crunch all the data and it saves us breaking our bones and necks. I much prefer ocean liners anyway. I hear they're building a really big one to ply between Southampton and New York. They call it the Gargantua".
"Nah, it's going to be the Titanic. I've already booked in advance"
"Well do you want to work instead on that "cloning of blondes made to order" project then? You could take one with you on that "maiden" voyage."
"Matey, you're on. Let's work on those design drawings again. That's the fun part. We were discussing whether we were going to go for talkies or a silent model. What do you think?"
"Silent for sure mate. And what was that suggestion you had for the new fem gender-clone? It had something to do with the bolas. Isn't that the lasso with the weight at each end that the Argentinean gaucho uses? It quickly winds itself around your neck and strangles you. Seems relevant."
"Yes, initially it was the Flaxen Vixen but then I thought "the Bimbola" might better fit the bill. I suggest we market them as that -and just see if it catches on."
"What about the dimensions? 36 x 24 x 36 will be easier. Less slide-rule work and it's pretty traditional in male fantasies world-wide."
"Yeah go for that. But remember that dyslexic bloke in Australia said he wanted a 24 x 36 x 36 model. That'll have to be a special order. Maybe they like their women pyramid-shaped down under. Almost as bad as the Kiwis wanting theirs to locomote on all fours and bleat. It's like they've never heard of bipedalism."
"Yeah, might be an Antipodean cultural thing. But, whatever; you've got to give the customer what he wants. Did you manage to extract that morals gland from that alley-cat?"
"Yeah, sure did. That should go down really well with both the City Slickers and the Country Bumpkins, not to mention the touring Rock Bands."
"What about that big bulk order for the Canadians? Those morals glands are hard to come by. The cats fight like Hell."
"Aah, just whack in some clockwork and the tail off a rattler. The Canux'll never notice the difference."
"And for the Mexicans? Battery-powered as we discussed?"
"Fer sure Wilbur me old. When they slow down the average mexicano will just assume that it's siesta time and whack her on a charge."
"Latino model for South America's going to be perpetually pregggers then?"
" Well them and the Eyeties seem to think that's par for the course - so who are we to argue. Just remember that the Colombians want theirs armed to the teeth and in combat fatigues. Kinky eh?"
" I notice there's no orders yet from Greece. Maybe our pamphlet got lost in the mail?"
"No, they've actually asked discretely for an under the counter Adonis variant with all the dangly bits. No accounting for taste. Froggies want theirs with a cat-walk - I guess that's a pussy-footing gait -so we'll have to get that off the alley-cats as well somehow. But the weirdest order of all must be that Eskimo one. They want theirs all blubbery. We're going to have to bother those alley cats for both their morals and tear glands. And if they're going to want them really blubbery we'll have to hook up the saliva glands to the tear ducts as well. That's some engineering challenge and we'd also have to get the fluid uptake balanced with the output at both ends.. Think about the hormonal imbalances. Half of them will end up as silently shrieking banshees and the other half as zombies. But as long as it's hard to pick one from the other, we should get away with it."
"Wilbur, have you thought at all about the liability insurance just in case this cloning thing goes all skew-whiff and we get a massive return of orders or the Church files a defect notice or we get picketed by Women's Lib? Might be we'd have to issue a product recall if it's ordered by the authorities. Then we'd be stuck with who knows how many blonde bomb-shells (and all natural blondes too, by the way). We'd probably have to meet all the alimony and palimony bills. Even Bollywood wouldn't be able to take those sorta figures off our hands -even at a massive discount for their dementia. Can you imagine how many blonde jokes we'd be the butt of?"
"Damnation, now that you mention it, that'd be a nightmare brother mine. So Orville, now that you've made your point I can only agree. The whole project would be fraught with technical risk. What if they all turned out to be frigid or nympho. Not as if they can be retrained.The liability insurance against that sort of thing would break us. Aviation has zero development risk by comparison."
"Oh well, a Man can dream. Back to the drawing board again. How did that theory of flight you came up with go again?"
"Lift = CL half RHO VEE Square ESS"
"And, just remind me,what was RHO again?"
"That's the initials of my Bank Manager. We have to see him about the loan"
"And the CL?"
"That's the efficiency of a lift. I guess we better measure that on the elevator down at the bank while we're there."
"And the VEE square?"
"Just imagine a TEE Square but in the shape of a VEE"
"Gotcha, so the ESSSSS's has got to be the smooth sound of it zipping through the air then?"
"Orville, you're a marvel. Oh, and by the way, my Pilots Licence has just lapsed. The flight examiner couldn't get his mind around the fact that he would have to be a testing officer for a solo ab initio test-pilot. When I challenged his qualifications and demanded to see his logbook he backed down and said he'd have to go back to DC and get the whole thing clarified. So you're going to have to take her up. Do be careful. Some guy called Jim Boeing is going to be there. He's a potential investor. We need his dough if you're going to buy that farm you keep on about."
"Jim Bowie? Wasn't he at the Alamo?"
"Yeah, right - and we want him to pay us Alamoney".
Oh and by the bye, these conversations you say you're having with this Marconi guy through your shower-head. Is he still claiming that he needs in on this aviation caper? What's he got to offer?"
"Dunno bruv. He goes on and on, always seems to be very distant or as if he's got a mouthful of spaghetti. But you're right. He is a poor communicator and just can't seem to get his message across. He always cuts out when the cold tap goes off anyway."
"Well keep in touch with him during your ablutions. I've got a feeling that when all this comes together there'll be a ****load of cash to be made and every Tom, Dick and Harry will come down in the next shower and want in. But let's give that pest Lindbergh the brush-off. He seems to think it's some sort of boat that you can cross the Atlantic in. Anybody who goes down to the beach knows that the birds never fly out of sight of land."
"OK, down to tin-tacks then. This idea of yours of taking the air-machine off a skid and putting it onto wheels and then making the wheels retractable. Surely that's flawed? In a moment of stress the guy forgets to put the wheels down and comes a gutzer. Isn't that an unnecessary risk?"
"Nah, never happen. But if you like, we simply hook up a loud blaring horn so that it cooks off just before the air-machine touches down without its wheels."
"Way to go bruvver. Last week you invented the count-down -and now this..... Tell you what. Start running some thoughts on a retardation device through your grey matter. We might be able to tie it in with this wheel idea. This boat anchor we're using is playing merry hell with the tail section. I wouldn't mind betting that we'll prematurely discover the concept of metal fatigue - if we don't come up with some better arrangement."
"I hears you bruvver. Orville you know what? Each time we run through that Bimbola Project and eventually reject it, our brainstorming improves 200%. You think that somehow aviation and sex are linked?"
"Nah, never happen".