General Chat

Royal mail have announced they are planning to use 500 drones to deliver the mail to remote places. Whilst in theory this appears to be a good idea particularly in very remote island communities. what's the risk of the wind blowing the drone off course and it crashing down say in the sea or in an area not easily accessible by road?

If the latter happened, can you imagine the disaster that would be in lost mail?

They say that if the drone suddenly went off course etc they can be overridden by someone to get it safely to its destination. Im just not sure how reliable it would be given the unpredictability of the weather.

Florence in the hebrides

They have apparently been using them to deliver mail in the Shetlands for some time and also for delivering Covid supplies all over the UK.

They can fly in fog, and presumably if it is very windy they won't take off, like any aircraft. The journeys aren't very long, so the chances of being caught unrxpectedly in strong winds are probably small.

It sounds like a great idea.

Oh I see Andy's mum, didnt know they could fly in fog. Well that's a plus then when the mail plane is grounded.

I think its a great idea and getting medical supplies to hard to reach areas too is a good thing, I was just worried about what would happen if it went down somewhere and the contents it was carrying lost.

Florence in the hebrides

Back in the thirties they tried sending mail by rocket in the Hebrides. Both attempts failed although some mail survived the explosion of the second try.

Yes Kense they did try a rocket and it failed. I saw a documentary about it ages ago.

Florence in the hebrides

A German scientist called Gerhard Zucker tried this experiment in 1934. He attempted to launch the rocket from Harris to the Isle of Scarp over the sound of Harris but it went up in smoke. Some of the original mail that survived is in the local museum.

Florence in the hebrides

There's a film about it, called 'The Rocket Post', made in 2004.

I now want to watch it!