In wild scene echoing great American folktale John Henry versus The Machine, startup drone company declares it can best German male lower leg for wave measuring accuracy!

Perfection from the heel of das boot up to das knee.

I am currently sitting down to a breakfast of poached eggs in hollandaise, asparagus dusted with chili, pancakes smothered in rhubarb in Germany’s vibrant Berlin. Delicious. Last night, it was the Sleeping Beauty at the Deutch Oper performed with exceptional flair by the Staatsballet. Phenomenal (more later). And there may be nothing this country can do wrong including unlocking the long-debated mystery of how to most accurately measure wave height.

Ahhh the German male’s lower leg. Say it loud and there’s music playing. Say it soft and it’s almost like praying. Scientists from the United States discovered the secret after teutonic Sebastian Steudnter achieved number one surfer in the world status by riding its largest wave. But how to measure? Yes, his lower leg and debates were instantly settled from the low-balling Hawaiian isles to the utterly insane offices of Surfline.

But the bend of history is moving toward automatization. You certainly recall the American folk tale where John Henry, a steel drivin’ man, took on a steam machine in a race to see who could pound the most railway stakes into the ground. Henry won but died in so doing.

And now an evil unmanned drone has set upon the beautiful German male’s lower leg. From industry source Drone DJ:

Meteorologist Teddy Allen and algorithm expert Milan Curic are the driving force behind Henet Wave, a startup they created using a sensor packing drone to accurately measure the size of waves their fellow surfers can never, but ever agree on. The pair has attracted other swell riders and geek-inclined teammates to develop their technique of deploying a UAV equipped with a high-resolution altimeter and sophisticated GPS monitor over breakers. The results have been accurate readings of liquid dimension are currently “calculated” with too much pure eyeballing to be entirely reliable.

The duo formed Henet – from the Egyptian for “pelican”– in 2020 after reading an article about a women’s big wave surfing competition. The piece debated aspects of how winners of competitions were determined, with the element of size oddly being less of a factor than “making” the giant swells – that is, riding them all the way to the end.

“To us the bigger debate should have been the ability to differentiate between a 73-foot wave and a 69-foot wave using subjective methods,” the startup’s website recalls, with Allen and Curic immediately deciding approximative appreciation was flawed to begin with. “Henet was born… (and now) guides surfers into the new world of purely objective real time XXL wave measurement.”

Damn the machine.

Long live the German male’s lower leg.