Once Janet was satisfied that she wouldn't fall out of the plane, and the plane itself was pointed down the clear ridgeline to the south of the river, with the spells all double-checked for functionality, Ella gave everyone the thumbs up and began to add mana to the motor from the stored crystals.
For the first flight, she intended to refrain from using her own mana-gathering ability to feed the plane so that they could see how well it flew on its own and for how long.
It would be without cargo, but that had seemed a bit ambitious for a first flight with an experimental design, no matter how many rickety versions might be flying around the swamps of Morgana Coven.
The plane was surprisingly loud, with the propellor being forced through the air by the electromagnetism spell on the motor, and as Ella increased the power, the plane went from stationary to rocketing forward and lurching into the air in only a few seconds.
"That's impressive." Wolfe congratulated the Noxus Elder who had drawn the plans.
"They were designed to be loaded with everything that the rebels owned when they fled from the Hunters since we were usually on the ground, and hitting a flying airplane is difficult. With no cargo, they should take off in under ten metres.
I don't think she increased the throttle very fast. She was just seeing how it reacted. See how it's wobbling? She's adjusting the trim tabs, as we talked about. After that stabilizes the plane, she will begin to actually maneuver it." The Elder agreed.
The wobbly flight contained for most of a minute, but it slowly stabilized, and then the plane turned into a slow bank, and Wolfe could hear Janet let out a whooping cheer of celebration.
By his best guess, the plane was doing about ninety kilometres an hour, which was nothing compared to the military planes, but much faster than anything could move across the ground without a smooth, maintained road.
If you pushed the dirt bikes, sixty or seventy was possible, but that was hard on the rider after a while, and the plane's flight looked quite smooth.
They flew around for most of an hour, scouting the area and marking the villages that they could find as well as potential landing spots on their map, before returning and sliding to a stop on the ridgeline a hundred metres from where Wolfe and the Elder were waiting.
The twins and the trolls broke into thunderous applause for the spectacle, and Wolfe jogged over to see how the flight went.
"How did it go? Is the mana consumption within the acceptable range, or do we need to tweak the spells?" Wolfe asked.
"Mana consumption is stellar. With the minor gathering array you put on the crystals, we are at a net fifteen percent charge used per hour at cruising speed.
I'm not sure what speed that is, as we have no instruments of any sort, but it looked pretty fast. Plus, if we let it sit, we should regain twenty percent per hour, so if we are doing delivery runs, the unloading and reloading time should be nearly enough to recharge the plane, and then we can keep flying without any input from the Pilot other than activating all the spells."
"So, we can call the delivery plane a success, can we?" Wolfe asked.
"I would say so. We will need the twins to make a small hangar for it out here so that we don't have to take it apart and mess up all our trim adjustments, but other than that, it's ready to go after the Festival.
ραndαsΝοvεl.cοm There might not be anyone in some villages to trade with us. They are gathering all the spring berries and grasses to supplement their supplies. We saw people everywhere when we flew over." Ella agreed.
"Well, at least they will recognize us when we come for the first delivery. The Elder says that if you power up more quickly, you should be able to take off in ten metres when you're empty, so you don't need a huge runway." Wolfe told her with a smirk.
Janet was untying her seatbelt and climbing down from the plane to do an inspection, so Ella took a few seconds to make a pair of proper harnesses for the pilot and copilot.
She could fly just fine, but not everyone in the plane would be able to, so a bit of effort put into the safety measures would be a good thing.
"This thing is going to be great. We could fly to the larger town in Myrrh Coven and pick up anything we wanted in only a couple of hours." Janet announced when she finished inspecting the airframe for damages.
"Was there anything that we needed right away?" Wolfe asked. He had no problem flying the plane over with Janet or another witch from Myrrh Coven if they actually needed supplies.
"It's the opposite, actually. We have all been making things, and now we have stuff to trade. So if someone goes to the city, we can trade for Myrrh Coven cash, so we can just buy whatever we need when the topic comes up.
Having cash on hand would be great once we have the ability to get around easily. The stronger witches can already fly pretty quickly on their staves, so they could get to the border in a real hurry or even visit the villages outside the Forest every few minutes instead of walking for half the day." Janet explained.
"That makes sense. Travel speed makes everything easier. The next time the Wastes come under attack, we will be much more able to retaliate than we were this year.
Getting around on the ground took forever, but now we can fly over the hard parts, so we can get there in a hurry. Maybe we should make some grenades or something to throw at the humans from the air." Wolfe joked.
"One issue at a time. We need to start moving the food to the villages both in and outside of the Forest so that our new allies don't starve. It's not going to happen right away since they got so many ration packs, but if we don't start working on it, the food will spoil." Ella reminded them.
"Alright. If the fine trolls want to guard the plane for the night, we can load up the boat and start making deliveries tomorrow. If nobody is at the village, or nobody in charge is there, we will just leave the delivery at the entrance for them and come back for more until we've delivered a whole boatload." Wolfe agreed.
Those were nearly magical words for the trolls. They loved guarding things. They were guarding the entrance to the Forest right now, and with a plane added to that, they were in charge of both the route in and the means of travel out.
That was a pretty good level of responsibility in their minds. Certainly enough to show that these witches had some respect for a Troll's capability.
Wolfe was just happy that they were so easy to please. If they wanted something that was actually hard to fulfil, the twins would be having a much more difficult time earning the loyalty of their new Familiars.
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