Acme Professor Retired

On each corner was a neat compact powerful drone type of machine, with some wiring leading into those frames, presumably in his mind, they were the power cables, attached to batteries inside those frames, extending the flight time and power available.

In fact it looked like parts of the frames were detachable… mmm that would explain how to quickly charge this large drone-crane… ahhh that’s what it is, it’s a large launching drone-crane, that’s how to get these gliders aloft.

This big drone with its spindly but strong legs was just a flying crane, like a drone version of those huge soviet helicopters, which were all crane, and had very little cockpit apparent.

The drone has a hook with a short strop with metal rings on each end, suspended in the absolute dead centre of the “flying frame”.

The power cells were square and looked like they were easily interchangeable, complete with double safety locking devices, which would be a useful way to rapidly re-power the frame, and of course it could also be recharged normally, without taking it apart, and it would change like the fast chargers on the latest electric vehicles.

Yes that was a nice properly put together little view of the future of gliders, those gossamer light wonderful machines, ah the freedom that would give.

He nodded off, as that had of course been a lot of thinking!

It was a beautiful day, and there he was at the Aboyne Gliding club, The Deeside Gliding club situated in ever so picturesque Royal Deeside, in the Scottish Highlands.

In the control room he was taking to his old mentor, the chap that taught him to fly all those years ago. He had worked for one of the defence contractors on missile guidance and radar and all that good stuff developed at pace with lots of resources during the cold war, ah the good old days, resources and talent were thrown at defence and of course attack! What complete waste of resources that had been, if only politicians had worked through the problems, instead of using every trick in the book to hold onto power, and use fear and division to keep on top of that festering heap, masquerading as “Western Democracy on one side and “Socialism gone bad” on the other side.

So, there he was standing beside Bert, his old friend, who was in charge for today’s flying, well, let’s say he was monitoring todays flying, as the AI algorithms were running the show with their usual unnerving accuracy, tying all the data available, analysing it from air traffic control to the weather to any emergencies reported, all to make the flying as safe and as enjoyable and trouble free as possible.

Controlling the “Drone” grass cutting tractors, who doubled up as ground tugs towing the gliders into position, prior to flying and after landing. These nice machines even helpfully kept the wings off the ground.

“I never get tired of watching those ground drones, pulling the gliders around. Remember, Prof? When we had to haul them about by hand with that smelly unreliable old diesel tractor? It would take 3 of us, keeping the wings straight, all that pushing and pulling and grunting and swearing. Did we really do that?”

“Aye, Bert, that we did, and we took turns at everything this AI setup is handling now. I must say the airfield has never looked better, the ground drones water and feed the grass with just the right nutrients, and bio friendly weed killer, to make it so bloody green.”
Bert laughed, “Bio friendly, weed killer, what, the hell, does that even mean?”

“Aye, an oxymoron right enough, but those AI developed genetically altered grass seeds are mixed up with strong root systems that just overpower the weeds, I just hope they don’t put it into the kids milk at school, god knows what we could end up with!”

Bert laughed, he was used to the flights of fancy of “The Prof” and he knew it was always well intended humour.