2018-06-15 Skyboard 4/4

I finally had the chance to try out surfing thermals.

Twelve hours later, I was on the road with my truckload of tools. The balance of my plan had gone without a hitch. After a few hours of sleep, I had stowed my flight gear, locked up the barn and farmhouse, and walked to the nearest town. I caught a bus at the corner store and slept most of the way back. From there, I hired a taxi to take me out to the lab. As we approached, I kept an eye out for loitering government sedans. Nothing.

I took a few minutes to gather the security system cameras and storage but did not pause to examine the imagery from the last twenty-four hours. I disabled the trackers in the truck, pulled the truck out of the building, closed the door again, and drove away. At the first pullout, I reassembled my phone (of course I had pulled the battery before flying out) and texted my friends at the glider club. The message was brief and nothing Newton could use against them, but I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye. I also contacted the landlord to say that I was vacating the building. Then I disassembled the phone and disposed of the pieces.

The drive took less than half the time of my earlier flight. En route, I picked up another burner phone and messaged Al Nadeau: DROP EVERYTHING. FLY HERE ASAP. I WIN. YOU'LL LOVE IT. COORDS FOLLOW.

In a remarkably short time, he messaged back: THIS I GOTTA SEE, with his arrival particulars. I told him to rent a car, as we would need the additional vehicle, and I would message our rendezvous location once he was on the ground.

Of course, I didn’t message the coordinates of the barn. I might as well have sent an engraved invitation to anyone trying to track me down. I waited for Al to arrive, messaged him to leave the airport, then told him to follow the truck with the hydrogen molecule drawn in the dirt on the rear door. No problem.

As he pulled in the driveway behind my truck, I hurried to roll back the now well-oiled barn door. As Al approached, I reached inside and flipped the switch for all the overhead work lights I had installed. I gave him a wide showman's smile. "Welcome to the future of flight!" I gestured to the open barn and the skyboard within.

Al's mouth dropped open. The skyboard pressed up against the new padding on the barn's loft beams, her keel a meter above the floor. Half the mooring lines hung to the floor, and the other half secured her loosely to the beams. All the rigging was clear or translucent. The ceiling lights shone through the deck and diffracted rainbows through the keel's water ballast. She was beautiful, and to judge by Al's response, absolutely stunning to newcomers.

"Dude. Give me the tour." Al's eyes never left the skyboard.

I walked him around inside the barn, up one side and down the other, and we climbed into the loft so he could stand on the skyboard's deck. I talked Al through every part of the skyboard's rigging and materials, lingering over the parts I thought we could patent.

Al's reaction to the skyboard was everything I had hoped for. He enthused over every detail and would not calm down until I took her out for a demonstration run.

"Robin, do you need me to handle lines?" He was eager to help, looking up at me from the barn doorway. Any conventional LTA would have needed a multi-person ground crew.

"Not just yet. If you would, just stand by on the off chance something goes wrong." I cast off the remaining lines and lay down on the deck. Slowly and carefully, I used the thrusters to push down from the barn beams, then vectored thrust to back the skyboard out of the barn without touching beams, floor, or doorway. It took practice and work to make it look easy. Fortunately we had a calm day for this demonstration.

Once clear of the barn, I stood up in the pilot's position and shifted for the best balance. "Walk along behind me, please, Al. I'll keep her near the ground." I made a slow, wide circuit of the barn at half walking pace so Al could keep up without tripping in the tall grass. He was absolutely drooling over the skyboard.

"Do you want to try it?" I winked and grinned. I backed thrust to hold position.

"Oh, now you're just being cruel. Of course I want to try it! How do we do the hand-off?"

"Take a step onto the bottom rung of the rope ladder at the stern."

"OK, done." Al's weight on the ladder pinned the keel in the grass under the stern.

"Don't move, and don't climb any higher. I'm going to slowly climb down the bow mooring line." I walked carefully to the bow, staying to the center line, and slowly eased over the edge and down the mooring line. When I reached the bottom, I stood on the end of the line and kept a bight around my hand. This left Al holding down the stern and me holding down the bow by foot and hand. If we both stepped off and let go, the skyboard would rise out of sight in moments.

"Climb up the ladder slowly. Don't slip, and don't fall."

"Climbing aye aye" The airship bobbed as Al's weight moved up the ladder.

"We can get nautical if you like." I was keeping a close eye on the skyboard, ready to make adjustments if anything went out of balance.

"Permission to come aboard?" Al was at the top of the rope ladder.

"Permission granted. Slowly and carefully. Stay on the centerline. One step at a time until you reach the foot bindings."

Al was good at following directions. So few people are. He reached the foot bindings without incident. The skyboard was level and trim.

"OK. Put just your toes into the foot bindings. That will position you for best neutral balance without restricting your motion. You should not need the foot bindings unless you attempt high roll or pitch maneuvers. Don't do that yet. Got it?"

"Got it."

"I have the remote control. I control the thrusters. You control your balance. Got that?"

"Got that. I have balance, you have power."

"Try five degrees port roll and recover."

"Five degrees port roll, aye aye." Al leaned a bit to his left. The skyboard rolled slightly. Al straightened. The skyboard leveled off. He smiled broadly. I could tell he was having trouble containing his enthusiasm.

"Well done. Try the other direction now."

Al repeated the action to the right. Roll, recover, level again. No problem.

"All good. Now try putting one foot a half step astern."

He did. The bow tipped up a bit, pulling against my hand. The stern dropped a bit too.

"And recover."

Al resumed his balance position at the center, and the skyboard leveled out.

"All good. At your convenience, try out your range of control by balance alone."

"Free exercise, aye aye." Al spent the next five minutes discovering just how far he could move while retaining control of the skyboard in the pitch and roll axes. He was clearly having fun. Time to take the next step.

"Now I'm going to apply minimum thrust at the stern to move you forward. It will be up to you to steer by balance. Feel free to give engine room instructions as you see fit, pilot."

"Engine Room! Ahead maneuvering thrust!" Al's face looked ready to split he was smiling so hard.

"Ahead maneuvering thrust aye aye." I advanced the thruster power just a notch. I knew from my practice that even a little power felt like so much was happening. Easy does it.

Al was careful and had experience as a pilot and as a surfer. That combination made his first skyboard flight a safe and uneventful circuit of the barn, with barely a wobble and nary an overcorrection. From his reaction when we reached the starting point, you'd think he'd just won the Tour de France.

I carefully schooled my face to impassivity. "Ready for the hangar?"

Al's face fell, then his eyes rounded.

"Yes, you can do it. We’ll take it very slow. Just keep it centered. I'll take care of the altitude and thrust."

Al looked determined. "Hangar approach aye aye."

I adjusted the stern thrusters to point the bow at the barn doorway, then set them for minimum thrust. I adjusted the skyboard's altitude to center in the barn doorway as well. The rest was up to Al's steering.

He was so concentrated on making a precise approach that I had to remind him to duck.

"Al! Low bridge!"

He dropped to the deck just before he would have been scraped off by the barn door lintel.

If he thought I would let him forget that, ever, he was mistaken. I can be just a little evil.

Once we got the skyboard moored in the barn again, it was clear that Al was hooked.

"Okay, genius, what do you have in mind? You've clearly won the bet. What do you need from me?" Rarely has the loser of a bet looked so happy to concede.

I sprung the outline of the business plan I had sketched out in my head. Al immediately started making improvements and poking holes, which is what I expected and trusted him to do.

We worked frenetically over the next few days to finalize the details of our business plan, our contracts, and most importantly, our first patent applications. We communicated over encrypted links with Al's in-house patent attorney. We worked from my notes, then brainstormed any other variations we could imagine. It was crucial to make the patent applications as broad as possible but narrow enough that they would be difficult to deny.

We worked up a separate set of patent applications for the skyboard itself. Instead of naming specific materials, we described the necessary attributes of each component. One interesting byproduct of this approach was that the patent itself indicated most of the low-hanging fruit for improving the design.

I was particularly careful that the skyboard patent would cover any shape or size of upper deck. I was happy to play with the skyboard as a sport vehicle, but I envisioned lighter-than-air platforms being used for a variety of purposes. The crucial innovation of a flat, solid upper deck on a self-refueling LTA opened up an enticing new field of design.

We still had to find an external team willing to sign the most cautious non-disclosure agreements we could draft. FAA regulations specified that a "recognized Technical Standards Committee" must document that the aircraft complies with the relevant regulations. Without that documentation, any FAA inspector we encountered could express a different opinion and shut us down.

Fortunately, Al's enthusiasm for flying meant that he had contacts in the industry. We were able to locate a committee that had a respectable history of inspecting and documenting ultralights. They were very nice about coming to our location and had no problem with the NDAs.

The committee members were obviously trying to remain professional, but once the bare bones of the inspection were over, they became as enthusiastic as kids on the first day of summer holidays. I think we re-ran the maximum speed runs nine times, since every committee member wanted to try it out. At least one was a little disappointed that the 55-knot governor I had built into the propulsion system was so efficient. The stall speed test was a joke (airships have no stall speed), but we did it anyway. Our policy was to dot every i and cross every t, so no one could challenge the documentation later.

One modification Al insisted on was the substitution of helium for hydrogen. Because I had been so conservative in my design, it was possible to get a usable quantity of lift with the same envelope volume of helium. I didn’t like that she handled more sluggishly, but Al said he didn’t notice the difference. It did remove any objections about flammability.

After the first patent applications were filed, we felt we could take a break and relax. I finally had the chance to try out surfing thermals, and that turned out to be as much fun as I had hoped.

The process we worked out was to use the skyboard's lift to sidle up to a thermal. You could also enter the thermal and ride it up like a conventional glider, but that was both slower and bumpier than just flying up. Once at a good working height, the pilot trimmed the skyboard for a slight negative buoyancy by increasing the neutral gas and reducing the lifting gasbags in the envelope. Once the skyboard started to drop, the pilot steered into the outer edge of the thermal.

Water surfing is about riding the interface between the water and the air. Skyboard surfing is about riding the interface between the rising thermal air and the falling or still outer air. That interface is invisible, turbulent, and narrow. Like water surfing, a novice can quickly pick up the basics, but it may take a lifetime to master the art.

Gosh, it was fun.

It was easiest to keep the skyboard close to level, slightly down at the bow, and let the shape of the hull guide the board forward. The blunt stern and sharp bow made it easier to slide forward than back. If you were feeling adventurous, you could step forward and pitch the bow into a sharper dive. If that got a little too thrilling, stepping back to the center position would bring the skyboard level again, and the bulk of the envelope would gently brake the descent. It really did take a determined effort to do anything dangerous.

For the gliding purist, you didn’t even need to use the ducted fans. Once you got to a thermal, you could cut all thrust and then maneuver solely by shifting your weight and trimming the lift. You could even dispense with the HUD and rely on the telltale ribbons around the deck perimeter, or simply trust the feel of the deck under your feet.

Smooth deck underfoot

Sunset gleams, soft breeze aloft

Motors hum homeward

I was happy with my inventions. That said, I was just as happy to turn over the exploitation of these new processes and technologies to Al's company. He loved the management, playing the people and paperwork game. He was also honest and was satisfied with the share of the proceeds that he earned. In turn, I was satisfied with the percentage reasonably due my initial inspiration and work. We made a good team.

I went back now and then, if I was between projects or he let me know that a new application might be of interest. More rarely, Al called me with a technical problem that his engineering crew could not solve. They were good people, but sometimes it did take my unique skill set.

Once the skyboards were in production, I donated one to the glider club that had helped me. I hope they had fun with it.

Al did such a good job in exploiting our technologies that you still see my inventions in the air almost everywhere around the world. Sport uses are a tiny fraction, commercial transportation is a larger share, and the observation and recreation platforms are almost ubiquitous. It still gives me a good feeling to see them in the sky.

Eventually the irrational fears died out, helped along by the increasing rarity of helium, and hydrogen became the default lifting gas. Hydrogen was such an important part of the global energy economy by that time that efforts to suppress its use were futile.

Less visible but more important are the micro-architected materials and the transparent aluminum derivatives. Almost every manufactured device is smaller, lighter, and stronger because of these technologies. The cumulative effect is almost incalculable.

The most important lesson for me was that I needed private, secure spaces for my work.