Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),
Hi! I'm here to leave a review for the checklist challenge...hence the dredging up of this ancient work...this is for the one where you have to review a work of someone you admire..and this was one of the more recent ones I could find..sorry
First Impression: Alright, well this was a lovely ray of sunshine...I've been reviewing all sorts of sad stories YWS has a problem and then right around the halfway point of my reviewing day, we've got this lovely story. Its a pretty simple idea, but the message in there and the story itself is beautiful.
Anyway let's get right to it,
“That’s not going to fly,” he tells me. “The aerodynamics are all wrong.”
I stare at my UAV—my Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, my recreational project that I have assembled myself for many years now. It is my treasure, my secret obsession. Today I have perfected it, and today I plan to fly it.
“Look at its airfoil,” he says while craning his neck to see it as I hold the little aircraft close to my chest. “That’s not going to fly with the fuselage. Gosh, the fuselage. Didn’t you run FloEFD on it?”
Hmm...wow this suddenly feels like its a test from the future...cause I'm learning things that'll let me actually make sense of all the technical terms there...but...that aside, this is an interesting start here, we've got a conversation between a person who's probably worked very hard on this one thing and another person who's clearly trying to be very dismissive of that which well, a) seems like a horrible thing to do but also b) definitely gets your attention as a reader.
It was a project of mine, something I have worked on for a long time with a group of friends. It was a successful project at first; we have designed it based on our constraining budget, and together we watched the little plane grow into something magical—on the brink of life, fully designed, ready to be made and brought into the world.
“Come on,” he pestered on, giving me a cocky grin that read, I could really do better than that piece of junk. “Do you really think that thing will fly with its fuselage shaped like that? Oh, no. Don’t tell me you didn’t even design it out on Creo.”
Well that's a properly brutal set of paragraphs to put one after the other there, very realistic, you've got his person remembering the effort and care they cleary put into to making this thing here...and that's what they're trying to draw on as this other person just completely tries to destroy that feeling. The memories here are doing wonders to make the insults here feel just that little bit more powerful as a result.
I remember the field trip last year. We went to the aerospace headquarters and met up with the manager of the place, and when I asked him if there were any UAVs that the company was working on, he gave me a crinkly old smile and nodded, pointing to the corner of the room. It was a UAV. “I assembled this myself,” he said. “There are electro-optical sensors attached to it, and when I fly it, I drive it high up through the clouds to see the sky above it.”
“Are you listening to me?” he continued. “The fuselage is too big and bulky on one end, and that messes up the center of gravity. Your wings are too thin and long, and your airfoil does not fully support the plane.”
Well...okay this is getting a touch repetitive but then on other hand so far it seems to be reinforcing itself as we learn more and more...so that's a good sign at the very least...and we're really getting a very good sense of the backstory behind this plane even as this person kind just continues out the same flaw...
I remember when the whole team and I designed it. We high-fived each other, we smiled and laughed and celebrated. But when the time came, others surpassed us. We fell apart, one by one, at each little comment thrown at us.
Well...I suppose we've got everyone trying to make them feel bad...I am wondering if there's a reason for that though...are they like the only ones working on this UAV with the others being a bit jealous here, or is this very badly done trash talk in a competition.
“That won’t fly.”
“It’s all messed up.”
“Did you even run the tests?”
“It’s just going to fall.”
Well isn't that a compilation of very positive feedback...
He took a step forward, his face scrunching up in serious irritation. “Don’t even try to fly it.
Bumblebees have small, thin wings with a larger body.
Hummingbirds have frail, thin wings with impossible movements.
Dragonflies have short, thin wings with an uneven center of gravity.
These creatures should not be able to fly.
But yet, they do.
I turn away from him.
I throw the UAV up in the air.
And I fly.
Well if that isn't a properly satisfying ending, I don't know what is...oh wow...it such a lovely message their, you've got an increasing cacophony of just all the negativeness and then we've got this one clear voice listing off how these things that shouldn't be able to fly still and it ends on a lovely high note with the plane actually succeeding. Call me a sucker for happy endings, but this one is awesome. And as a bonus you learn a bit of moral through it too...
Aaaaand that's it for this one.
Overall: Overall, this was an awesome story to read...now I kinda wish I could also use this as the work that made me smile. Well, yeah I don't think I've really got anything else to say here, its simple and it does its job really well.
As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.
Stay Safe
Harry
Points: 253913
Reviews: 4100
Donate