Because the older male ants like these are team commanders, they are unable to do their jobs well. So only fifty young male ants followed Rambo and learned the theory of riding flies.
The protagonist watched the young male ants' first test flight with great interest. Although the overall process went smoothly and there were no safety incidents, the protagonist also discovered a problem.
What the protagonist was worried about at the beginning did not happen.
What the protagonist is worried about is whether the ants, which mostly move on the ground and are accustomed to a two-dimensional plane, will not adapt to the three-dimensional space in the air.
But this worry is unnecessary. Ants such as worker ants and soldier ants, which spend their entire lives crawling on the ground, have this problem. In addition, due to their lack of IQ, they often cannot understand the concept of three-dimensional space.
However, both male and female ants themselves participate in nuptial flights, and they are fully capable of mastering flight skills like other flying insects.
Twenty-three young male ants took off first on the fly. They had not participated in the nuptial flight yet and still retained their wings. Even if the plane crashes, they will bring their own parachute.
Of course, the premise is that the ant silk that tightly binds the body can be untied first.
The saddles on these flies are assembled by a group of worker ants trained by the protagonist and assembled in an assembly line manner. The protagonist and his secretary are responsible for the final quality inspection. The overall quality of the saddle is pretty good.
After the male ants flew into the sky, the protagonist quickly saw the problem, but he did not point it out immediately.
After the second batch of 14 male ants and the third batch of 13 male ants also took off, the protagonist finally determined that this was a common problem.
Although male ants have the imagination of three-dimensional space, they know the concepts of front, back, left, right, up and down. But when all the male ants formed an aerial formation, they were still tightly arranged in a flat formation just like when they were moving on the ground.
In fact, human air force fighters are often arranged in a flat formation, but it is usually a smaller number of formations, such as a three-plane formation or a five-plane formation.
If the ants were to engage in aerial combat, the number would be at least dozens or hundreds. If they were arranged on a plane, the formation would be too large and scattered, seriously affecting the command efficiency.
The protagonist did not anticipate the command problem of the Sky Knights, but the young male ants have already consciously followed the eldest male ant in the team, and they have a captain.
Each batch of more than ten or twenty flying knights followed the captain. During the flight, they quickly turned from a flat surface into a long snake, completely losing their formation.
"It seems that we need to think about the formation in the air." The protagonist pondered.
However, this need is not urgent at present. The biggest enemy, the paving ant barbarians, does not have the air power to threaten these flying knights.
If the flying knights are used as scouts, then there is no need to worry about the formation of one or two flying knights acting alone.
So the protagonist, who had no clue for a while, put this issue aside for now.
After the male ants completed their test flight, the protagonist encouraged them to continue practicing more, and then told them that they had been newly organized into the "Flying Knights Legion".
The "Flying Knight Legion" currently has ten squads, each with five male ants. A total of fifty male ants and twenty-three flies. Flies include red-headed flies, house flies, fruit flies, etc.
There are four squads of male ants in the legion, all of which are equipped with fly mounts, and one squad has only three flies; the remaining five squads are not equipped with flies and will be supplemented later.
The leader of this army is temporarily appointed to the eldest of the young male ants, and the protagonist names him "Lord of the Flies".
At present, this "Flying Knight Army" is the only air force in "Dongyang City", and it is also the seed of the future air force.
Of course, the more important task of the young male ants in this legion is to learn from Rambo. Aerial training is currently just a part-time job.
At this time, the protagonist began to think about whether to let the queen ants regenerate some male ant eggs. The original fifty male ants were intended to be put into industrial production, but now they were all taken up by the Flying Knight establishment.
Finally, the protagonist decided to send messengers over and let five of the queen ants lay ten more male ant eggs each to fill the vacancy.
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The affairs of the Flying Knights have come to an end for the time being. "Dongyang City" is now developing rapidly, and the protagonist still has many things to worry about.
On this day, the protagonist ran to the combustion chamber again.
Although the size of the long-burning flame is small compared to the combustion chamber, over time, the four walls of the combustion chamber have been baked dry and solid.
Before the protagonist arrived, a group of worker ants moved some clay pots into the combustion chamber and placed them in a circle around the fire.
Then more worker ants came in and piled fuel around the pots and pots.
When the protagonist came to the combustion chamber, he gave the order to light the fire.
A worker ant used a greased stick to take a little flame from the fire and ignited the newly piled fuel.
The ants quickly retreated to the area near the exit to escape the increasing temperature.
After seeing the flames burning, all the ants left the combustion chamber except for the ants who were guarding the fire and insisted on adding fuel to it.
The protagonist is trying to make pottery.
Pottery is a technology that uses clay or other non-metallic inorganic materials to make pottery and other products by heating and hardening.
The invention of pottery was the earliest use of chemical changes to change natural properties, and was one of the signs of the development of human society from the Paleolithic Age to the Neolithic Age.
The first step in making pottery is to find suitable raw materials, for which "Dongyang City" has unique conditions.
"Dongyang City" is built on a piece of clay ground. The protagonist discovers that the soil dug out is high-quality clay, which can fully meet the needs of pottery making.
Just recently, a large number of breeding farm nest chambers were excavated, and a lot of clay was accumulated. The protagonist took Xiaomi and some worker ants, tried to add water, and kneaded the clay into the shape of pots and pans little by little.
Since there is no potter's wheel, the ants can only pile up the clay bit by bit, and then smooth the inner and outer surfaces to make the finished product.
This craft has great limitations. No matter how hard the protagonist tries, he cannot make small-mouthed pottery, so he has to give up in the end.
The protagonist and his subordinates first experimentally made ten wide water tanks and ten small basins. Each water tank can store about four to five milliliters of water, while the small basin can only hold a small drop of liquid.
This batch of pottery is currently being fired in the combustion chamber.
The protagonist is waiting a little further away, where the temperature is cooler.
Worker ants kept coming out of the combustion chamber, and there were already waiting workers feeding her water drops just collected from the ground to cool her down.
At the same time, new worker ants ran in and continued to add fuel. To avoid dehydration, each worker ant cannot stay inside for too long.
In this way, half an hour passed quickly.
Under the protagonist's order, the ants stopped adding fuel, and only collected a few bits of fire and put them in nut shells for storage, and then waited for the flames in the combustion chamber to slowly extinguish.