Duel In The Somme – Page 17
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I am reminded of that episode in Firefly when Mal punches the obnoxious noble, only to learn that he just challenged the man to a duel, only to learn the dual is traditionally fought by sword which Mal has no knowledge of, only to learn the nobleman is an expert fencer whose killed several people already to duels... Our pal Zorro just learned he is outmatched, and perhaps more disheartening that Lorraine knew he was outmatched when she agreed to the wager. Of course, we already know from the start that Kelso is going to all but shoot him down, and maybe finish the job.
To be fair, she may not have calculated the odds on who was likely to win at that point...
Imagine that you are a highly skilled swordfighter. Now imagine that you are going to swordfight someone. Would you let your opponent make your sword?
There is an amusing Society for Creative Anachronism song telling a story of a person who did single combat and
tripped over his blade. It is later noted in the song that the blade was made in the opposing camp's kingdom.
That was a great Firefly episode. (Heck, which one wasn't?) But we don't know that Kelso is going to win--in fact, I'm pretty sure he won't. The solution, I think, lies in one of the earlier pages. Tom needs to get TOBIAS to pay less attention to his plane, so it falls more slowly or does something else it shouldn't, or he needs to get TOBIAS to "forget" what it's supposed to do to a shot-up plane so Tom can do something else instead.
In other words, he needs to take a hint from Douglas Adams and distract his plane to make it miss the ground.
Episode summary:
I have bad news, and REAL bad news.
Bad news: Kelso's a real pilot.
REAL bad news: Kelso does stunt flying.
And yes, realistic physics will hurt rather than help Tom.
Dang.
So it may come down to how well he can cheat.
At least he knows this.
Perhaps his simulation isn't failing, either. He may be trying to fly an accurately simulated plane like it was a video game plane, and his plane is getting shredded by his inexperienced efforts.
To be fair, X-Plane and Microsoft Flight Simulator are both highly regarded for their flight models--especially X-Plane. They are much more than simple "video game planes". So if he's good enough to be instrument-rated on several aircraft in both programs, he probably know enough about flying to avoid bonehead maneuvers which would obviously shred a real aircraft.
Eh... you guys realize that she never actually agreed to anything, right? She thinks the entire idea is ridiculous. As she attempted to demonstrate to both of them with the antlers request. But neither of them really listened, although Kelso listened less than Zorro did.
It may come down to how much Kelso knows about the old airplanes,
and how much cheating would be needed. It could get to the point that such would not work because the amount of cheating needed would be detectable to someone who really knew the planes.
She did actually 'incentivize' the project, remember?