Chapter 775 775 Complete and Flying
As threatened, the witches of the morning shift were there to wake Wolfe up promptly at dawn. They had already finished all six of the engines for the cargo plane, and they were ready for Wolfe to come and set up the spells for the main structure of the aircraft.
Once this first setup was done, it would be much easier for them to make the successive aircraft, but everything had to be perfect to get all the parts to line up correctly. Such a large vehicle was a precision bit of engineering, and though they had directly stolen the design after it was tested, they couldn’t afford to slack at all in the quality control for their replicas.
Fortunately, they were using strengthening magic, so even if their alloys weren’t right, they would still survive the stresses of heavy use. But with the higher ranked witches working on the project, they had a pretty good idea of what they needed out of the metals that they were using.
There was a certain amount of flex required out of the wing, not too much, but too little and it would be brittle. But on the other hand, the fuselage should be much more rigid. The original designers had managed to create without magic what it would have taken a Rank Two witch to design with her spells, and the team was very impressed when they read the specifications.
For Wolfe, this part was much easier. They were making the ribs and spars for the fuselage and wings today, and they were all very similar parts, but scaled differently to match the size needed. That meant that he didn’t need to make whole new arrays for everything, he could just duplicate and alter the one that he was working on repeatedly until they had everything in place.
It was time-consuming, especially the magically installed bolts that the witches wanted to test to make sure that they would be removable for service. It seemed a bit ridiculous at first, but when they found the first one that had been misaligned and overlapped the part, creating a solid piece, it all made sense to Wolfe.
So, he altered the construction spell, having it create the bolts outside the part, and then use Earth Magic to twist them in and torque to spec.
That added more time to the construction, but no matter who was casting it, the spell should function properly in the future. It would also let them make the bolts as a spare part individually without a new spell. They would just need to isolate that spot in the construction and only activate the bolts, then collect them for their repair project.
The project was moving smoothly, and by the time that Wolfe called it a day, somewhere near dark, they had the full frame of the aircraft and the cargo floor installed, with the basic structure of the cockpit plotted out, waiting on instruments and interior.
While they worked, the extra members of the design team were busy with the Incubi Kingdom representatives, making plans for the next orders. They wanted a passenger version, so they were designing a tray to fit in the cargo bay that would hold seats for various sized Demons.
The cargo version had folding seats along the sides so that the crew could sit while in transit, but the passenger version could hold two hundred Incubi on top of a layer of cargo, or sixty Wrathbringers, without the cargo space beneath them due to their size.
That was a huge improvement on the usual caravans and convoys that moved people and goods around the Demon Realm, and they could hire a higher ranked bodyguard to protect the aircraft in dangerous areas much more easily than they could get a whole team of them to protect a caravan for a week.
The Demons were incredibly excited about the prospects, and they had big plans to build six new runways as soon as they started taking delivery of their orders after the emergency with the Monster Tide was over.
On the third day, the interior was put into the aircraft, and the exterior sheeting was put on before the wings and engines were attached.
That left the fourth day for the small details, like the air spell to maintain pressure in the cabin, the actual flight spells on the plane, other than the ones that were on the engines, and the final tests and checks before the plane was lowered to the ground and prepared for its first test flight.
That was days faster than they thought they would be ready, but as soon as they had the first one rolled out of the hangar, the witches and the crew were already starting on another one, using the stored mana from the giant pile of mana crystal that Wolfe had left behind for them.
Cassie smiled as she watched the test pilots, one witch and a Bloodletter Demon, who was roughly human sized, but with powerful leathery wings, went through their pretrip checks.
The Demon was Rank Five, and confident that he could get them both out in case of emergency, or in a worst-case scenario, he could create a shield that should protect them from most impacts with the ground.
It was a necessary safety procedure for a test flight, and every new aircraft would have to go through it, just to make sure that there were no hidden defects or missed fasteners. The spells should keep that from happening, but errors in the casting did sometimes happen, so you could never skip the tests.
[Cargo vessel X1 beginning test flight.] The pilot announced over the radio, and the six massive jet engines roared to life, causing the massive vessel to hurtle down the runway, then rapidly pull up and over the tree line.
Janet clapped and cheered as the plane took off. “It looks like the Gravity Magic is working properly, they were up within the short runway limits that we designed the spells for, and the flight speeds are stable. They’re working on the trim adjustments now, but I think that it will be within parameters.”
The plane made a series of complex aerial manoeuvres that would be disastrous with a load in the bay, but everything seemed to be going smoothly, and the pilot was in a good mood when they announced that they would be returning to base to load a cargo shipment and make the first delivery run.
“Congratulations, ladies. You now have a functional assembly line for cargo aircraft. Let me know when you have another design, like a small passenger jet, or another version of the pontoon plane for dropping supplies on difficult locations.” Wolfe informed the excited engineer.
“We definitely will. Thanks for taking so much time to get an entire process set up for us. You have no idea how much time that is going to save us, and the four hundred million Demons of the Incubi Kingdom, who are eagerly awaiting their turn to get one.”
The Incubi representative was nearly shaking with excitement at the prospect of getting to have jets of their own, but Wolfe’s mention of small passenger jets was even more exciting. A load of passengers and some cargo was great for general use, but he definitely knew some of the Nobles would want private planes to charter, so they didn’t have to fly with the merchants.