An early work-in-progress dedicated to helping,
circuitously, precipitate the Great Mobilisation
Dare to be wise!
Kant
Straight-Six to the Site: Powered by up to three, modular, multi-clean-fueled, rotary-valved, supercharged fuel-injected dry-sump lubricated, two-cylinder two-strokes, a latter-day staff car could turn heads and heads of industry towards the myriad benefits of participating in the Great Mobilisation economy, as opposed to the boom-or-bust banality of business as usual. Pictured—clockwise, beginning with the driver—John Poston, Winston Churchill, Bernard Freyberg, and Bernard Montgomery. photographer Harold Paton
Contents
author Cimino
published 202510
subediting/typography 20260115–20
continued 20260120
Legendary Rodney Times former editor, now styled Own Correspondent, 84-year-old Jack Keys was sound asleep in the directors chair he’d availed himself. In the regatta lunchtime lull, it had been cool and peaceful in the old-school canvas square tent pitched on the sand to shade the stalwarts who’d manically typed certificates for the eager little fingers of the endless line of winners and placegetters excelling in the morning’s beach events. Minutes earlier, Jack had asked:
Now tell me, how did this new Mahurangi Regatta sponsorship come about?
Unbidden, an insurance company had stumped up an undreamed-of $1000 for the 1988 regatta, and for those for the foreseeable. Herbert Johnsensibly, to differentiate from his father of the same given first name, his second given name was invoked, styled Jack Keys was the long-time chronicler for the newspaper that had published since 1901, originally, under the name Rodney and Ōtamatea Times. Impervious to the proprietor’s attempts to encourage a more economic style, and to the entreaties of the newspaper’s ill-hiredthe paper’s reluctant, recently widowed proprietor had suffered under the misapprehension that a chief subeditor of a large Auckland daily would be an obvious candidate for the role of editor of her small, district biweekly editor, who was disinclined to die in a ditch—ever—but certainly not on a biweekly basis, Jack filled column after column, page after page, edition after edition with unrelieved type.
Warming to his subject, Cimino had just begun explaining the relationship of the sponsorship to the resident-park-ranger’s wife, when soft snoring delivered its own message to the long-winded. Cimino, thus, is acutely aware of the proclivity he shared with the testudineousgiven the author had search for this word—first-used 1692—defined as: tortoise-like… reporter, and of the irony as he sets about addressing the need for an elevator pitch, early in his novel modello.
Elevator pitches, recent experience had convinced Cimino, of the need to promptly lead into meaningful journeys of exploration that include physically traversing a landscape, not simply going up—or downalthough up, presumably, such as when the target is en route to a pivotal, board-room meeting—on the same spot, in and out of the same boardroom. The pitch, rather than elevator, could better be kerbside and super short, such as:
Jump in!—that concept I wrote you about: there’s this example nearby you seriously need to see.
Heart of Rotary-Valved Internal-Combustion Revolution: What New Zealand’s most ingenious engine-valve innovator ever, Ralph Watson, would have given to see the rotary valve he demonstrated so convincingly to world motor-racing royalty—including Jim Clark and Bruce McLaren—in this genius 2-stroke configuration can only be imagined. Tragically, because of the dictates of the market, few will glimpse the sculptural beauty of the engine, hidden inside a less-than tantalising Power Cube box. Score this either one for existential global dysfunctionalism, or, potentially, the fundamentally pivotal partner in the Light the Fuse docuseries. Stark-starring naked, is how the genius Alpha-Otto twin deserves to be seen, in a latter-day Vincent Black Shadow.
image Alpha-Otto Technologies
With the in into which the audience was asked to hop, being the supercalifragilisticjustified by the -docious—educable—compound, and the Sherman Brothers, Richard Van Dyke connections head-turning six-wheeler landau envisaged to form just the terrestrial component of a trio of head-turning vehicles, Cimino is confident that its sudden appearance won’t go unnoticed by their chief-executive-officer mark, much less, the mark’s entourage. At this juncture, should the target fail to disguise an overwhelming lust to look under the fabulously long hood—or, to examine the boot-mounted hard-spare-wheel-covered spare that had deftly deployed to whisk the vehicle’s rear into the improbably small space they’d left, immediately astern—that would be interpreted as a very good sign. And when the footpath-side forward two-thirds lifts to reveal twin, dazzling, naked, twin-inline—supercharged, multi-net-zero-fueled—Alpha-Ottos, and the ceo’s second-in-command exclaims:
They’re never, no, they are ! They’re the guts of the generators we have got to… fuck me, sorry, sorry, that’s one there , for fuc… for crying out loud! [mouths] Cheque’s in the mail, Cimino!
…that would be interpreted as an exceedingly good sign, particularly if said ceo a.) invited said 2 i c along, and b.) issued instructions that his diary be cleared for the following x hours.
Fantasising this salubrious point of a pitch, Cimino is reminded that the Light the Fuse mission dictates he comprise no part of any actual kerb-pitching party; his near-pathological inability to other-than serially tangentalise would derail the entire presentation. In the project’s early, proto-modello one-man-band phase, Cimino can only trust that his luck-of-the-Protestantputative, since he embraced atheism as a 12-year-old, despite his adored Catholic mother. Cimino’s paternal great-grandfather was the last serially practicing Protestant of his immediate family—and practice he did, with compassionless, stockwhip-wielding ferocity-Irish–Italian doesn’t desert him—that, and his passable ability to respond, one-on-one, to the eyes his audience glazing over before full-blown narcolepsy is precipitated.
Previously, Cimino, had been hoping to hear of progress with a promising-sounding—plus potentially serenely sonorous—compound 5-stroke that might v 9 -power a veritable CountIan Flemming’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang inspiration ZborowskiIan Flemming’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang inspirationesque landau. The powerplant, more rationally, could have been a three or a six, even twelve, but for sheer shock value, it would have been a nine. In the event, while waiting, waiting for news of any 5-stroke progress, a genius revisiting of the 2-stroke burst upon the internal-combustion universe. Bringing the efficiencies of the most massive piston-engines on the planet—those that, virtually single-handedly, drivepossibly simpler to say power, given we steam-power when strictly, we should say coal-power the world’s 2.25-billion-deadweight-tonnage fleet of big ships—to the scale of motorbikes, co-founders David Dusseau and John Krzeminski, with their engine, have married superb thermal efficiency with the ability to adapt to combust multiple non-fossil fuels, on the fly. Thus, under the long bonnet of the tūī-liveried 6 wd staff car envisaged, lurks two, naked 2-cylinder Alpha-Otto engines with their electrically-driven dynamic superchargers plus another within an Alpha-Otto powerstyled Power Cube cubestyled Power Cube. While having all six cylinders—or more, who’s counting!—on display would be that much more motorhead eye-candy, the incredible modularity of the mere 100-kilogram-by-100-kilowatt package is an existentially more important message to convey.
Acutely aware of his proclivity to tangentalise, Cimino decided—rather than fight it—to make it a feature not a flaw of the project, which after all, was not aimed at the casual reader, but at the mere handful of people who might word-of-mouth be persuaded by intermediaries to see past its quirky, modello-novel style and content, and earnestly contemplate its underpinning premise. Aside from the terrestrial, of the other two vehicles, the most preposterous is a rotary-exhaust-valved-2-stroke-powered amphibian spotter plane capable of taking off from the nearest football field or farm damconsented or nay—the farm dam, that is. Circling languidly at 40 knots or less, would allow for the unhurried, Shawesque contemplation of ‘why nots’ literally from on high. Third head-turning vehicle, is an in-motion-charging autonomous ‘guards van’. Combining bird-cage / cupola, and bay-windowed viewing-lounge, bunks, and caboose attributes and styles, not least of all the spacious whistle-stop back platform. That the Light the Fuse caboose deserves its own chapter is in part because of the latter-day Ferdinand Magellan name of the first armour-plated caboose, deployed by Franklin D Roosevelt’s envisaged hybrid compound-steam–in-motion-charging autonomy.
Chapter 16 will likely begin with a seeming tangent too far: the drawbacks of New Zealand’s serpentine, narrow-gauge railway networks, the antithesis of Brunel’s Great Western Railway. But if the formidable Isambard Brunel lost the battle to have his 2140 mm broad-gauge track standardised, his opinion of New Zealand’s choice of a gauge 6mm shy of half1067 mm that width1067 mm is not difficult to imagine, nor a lesser engineer failing to prevail in Aotearoa, with mere standardadopted 1845 and used by ± 55% of the lines in the world using it, including almost all of high-speed rail gaugeadopted 1845 and used by ± 55% of the lines in the world using it, including almost all of high-speed rail. Upside of that pre-turn-of-the-19th century-tunnel-boring-technology rail gauge is that the guards van can readily deploy pneumatic-tired wheels, outboard of the rail wheels, for modest on-road manoeuvres and diversions, at subdued urban-road-speeds…
To be continued as Chapter 16
Engine of One’s Great Mobilisation Dreams: In the twin, once-you-see-it-you-can’t-unsee-it / why-didn’t-I-think-of-that sentiments of a magnificently enlightening, anonymous Bosnian YouTube content creator, the rotary-exhaust-valved-2-stroke solution of Alpha-Otto Technologies is genius. It also illustrates why the Great Mobilisation demands intelligent, technological collaboration, as opposed to endless, biosphere-dooming zero-sum, blind-market-leading-the-blind, business-as-usual, laissez-faireism.
screen capture Alpha-Otto Technologies
Seriously undersquare rotary-exhaust-valved multi-fuel two-stroke In a less comprehensively-dysfunctional world, sufficient billions would already have been thrown at exploring the potential of Alpha-Otto Technologies’s genius rotary-exhaust-valved two-stroke for the large-scale production of several options to be imminent. Many motorheads—including this writer, whose long-time friend is a large-vessel marine engineer—have lived their lives in abject ignorance of the fact that the world’s largest internal-combustion engines, such as those that power the vast bulk of shipping, are two-stroke. Testing the efficiency-extremes of say an electrically supercharged 500cc, contra-rotating-balance-shafted, seriously undersquare—big-ship bore/stroke ratio of 0.384in the league of the 25,601.8-litre Wärtsilä-Sulzer RTA96-C—single-cylinder, would be profoundly illuminating. That such a two-stroke engine might potentially compare acoustically with the un”Maxine, Tony’s here!” Sarah would sing out in the electronic-data-processing department at the back of Motorspecs as she detected the note of Tony’s 50° V twin over the unrelenting din emanating from the intervening building housing the computer-card punches.forget”Maxine, Tony’s here!” Sarah would sing out in the electronic-data-processing department at the back of Motorspecs as she detected the note of Tony’s 50° V twin over the unrelenting din emanating from the intervening building housing the computer-card punches.table authority of the record-breaking 998 cc Vincent Black Shadow, is a dark-soul-of-the-night-dispelling hope that would be impossible to put a price on—the modular multi-net-zero-carbonoperational zero-carbon-emission-liquid-fuel engine of the Great Mobilisation, electric-hybrid powering everything from small marine vessels and auxiliary-in-motion-charging-road-vehicles to off-grid work camps.
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Liquid Fuel from co2 Breakthrough: Although not the first to produce liquid fuel from carbon dioxide, Dr Ziyun Wang, right, in collaboration with researchers at Chinese institutions has developed a cost-effective alternative, particularly applicable—presumably—to powering those public-transport modes that can’t practicably be grid-powered—intercity buses and inter island ferries spring to mind. Least said, meantime, of the far from affordable, sky-high cost of hydrogen-fuel-cell mobility.
image University of Auckland
Rotary-valve 5-stroke modular generator Conceivably, the rotary-valve of Jim Clark–Bruce McLaren-astounding New Zealand engineer Ralph Watson could be married to Gerhard Schmitz’s stringently fuel-efficient 5-stroke to form the double-compound-v 3 heart of the ch2o2specifically, formic acid liquid-fueled small modular engine-generators required, at-scale, to zero-carbon-power everything from interisland ferries and intercity buses, to bulldozers. Regardless of their precise pedigree or configuration, such generators are needed in numbers commensurate with the Anthropocene biosphere’s current burden of one billionpredominantly private, 1.31 billion in 2020 light vehicle fleet, projected to be 2.21 billion by 2050 – International Energy Outlook 2021 private light vehicles—unless the profoundly inspired inside-out Wankel of Soviet-trainedDr Nikolai Shkolnik considers he was advantaged by his broader-than-American engineering training Dr Nikolai Shkolnik and his mit-trained son Dr Alec Shkolnik is indeed so superiorly thermally efficient—and can be made sufficiently clean-burning and reliable—that it does succeed in burying all new forms of the reciprocating piston engine, after its 312-year-and-counting reign. Same-same, in respect, and with the greatest respect, to the implausible-sounding Patented 1-Stroke double-swashplate, horizontal square-four engine—in either its silken opposed-8-pistontantalisingly, 8-piston but 4-cylinder!, or muscular unopposed-4-piston, configuration. In a halfways rational world, the megamobilisation global procurement process would already be scoping the Schmitz–Watson modular generator, possibly sized to power a householdor modest private light vehicle—essential in the deeply unfortunate localities where reliable grid-electricity is no longer, was never, or is never likely to be, reliably available.
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Six-degree-separated v 9 liquid-fuel-head fantasy A 6° v might not sound like any sort of v-cylinder head-turner at all, but a bank-angle of 6° might be as much as makes sense, given anything more would put the cylinder heads in the bank of big low-pressure pots too far away from those of their counterparts in the high-pressure bank to be efficient, much less be serviced by a single, rotary-valve valve-train. The almost-inline v 9’s potentially infinitely harmonisable exhaust acoustics, however, might sonorously compensate for its less-than-Detriot-90° v8 machismo.
In the event, unless the genius rotary-valved two-stroke morphs into a three-cylinder three-stroke compound, it could be that niether v 3-, v 6-, v 9-, nor v 12-compound forms a significant part of the beyond-urgent Great Mobilisation.
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Disclosure The author of this novel modello is no longer the secretary of Mahurangi Action Incorporated or the Mahurangi Coastal Path Trust. The content published here, however, is that of the editorially independent, independently funded Mahurangi Magazine.
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