Acme Professor Retired

“Yes, I remember coming to with a start, when the bloody drone hook hit the canopy, to this day I don’t know if it was just luck or the bloody thing wanted me to wake up!”

The noise of the drone was louder than I had ever heard and I realised I was doing about 50 knots, so, I opened the brakes gently and slowed down and also kept slowly descending, as a result I had only about 200m height by now, but we were at least close to the field.

I surmised that someone must be driving the drone and I quickly embraced that hope, that yes if they could hook me on, then they could land me, possibly even back at the field!”

“The ambulance and police and fire brigade would be on their way now, planning for the worst?“

“Yes, Prof, they were indeed on their way to the field, as I found out later. I was really weak, but I reset the hook release to open, then the fun and games started. That drone tried and tried again, I wasn’t much help at all by then, I was struggling to stay awake, biting my tongue, all and everything to stay conscious, as I knew I had to close the hook, to have any chance of helping the drone pilot, get me down, or so I thought”.

“I guess you managed it?”

“Yes, but the Drones strop and metal ring battered the shit out of the glider, cracked the canopy good style, before miraculously it managed to get it’s ring into my hook.

After all that excitement, that was game over, I managed to somehow close the gliders hook and again passed out and trusted that somehow I had done my best, it was in someone else’s hands now, the blackness was all around me and I just couldn’t stay awake any more.”

“I guess the drone was running on empty by now, that was a lot of energy expended, chasing and catching you?”

“Well that is a good point, the drone was running very low, and in the dome, Pat had seen it go past all its safety levels, it was running very low. It could have just detached me, and returned back with the usual 10% margin, but it didn’t, it just lit up as red on the plexi-dome, but it just hung in there, trying to get me back to earth”.

“Must have been nail biting in the control room, for everyone watching, eh, Bert?”

“A few of the club members were outside, some of the ladies were tearful and the guys were just shaking their heads, the car park was filling slowly up with emergency services and the usual gawking public, pulled in by ghoulish desires from the main roads.”

“So, it wasn’t looking good?”

“No, the drone was starting to get a bit erratic, although the course we were making was good, the speed of descent was just creeping up, and it was looking that this might not be “A Survivable” landing, and I was out of it, I only woke up after the impact, to see that Giraffe’s head being decapitated, then the Elephant’s trunk being sliced off by the drones dying props before I passed out again, as much in bewilderment, as in shock.”

“Yes I heard that you had, let’s say, an unusual final approach and landing?”

“It was the wee shit, who to all intensive purposes caused my predicament and also pulled off a brilliant strategy to assist in slowing my hurtling through the air, to a survivable landing”.

“How did he pull that unlikely scenario off?”