surface for intercepting the cable 12 and hooks 10 can be mounted on the rear of the fuselage 8 as shown in fig5 it should be appreciated that in an alternative embodiment an interceptor having a retrieval pole may be employed to prepare for retrieval the aircraft 28 pitches up from forward flight with its thrust line near horizontal into hovering flight with its thrust line near vertical rotor thrust 20 is adjusted to balance aircraft weight the thrust vector 20 is tilted along the approach path 42 and the aircraft 28 slowly draws the rear surface of its fuselage 8 across the retrieval cable 12 the cable load indicated by arrow 17 causes the aircraft 28 to tilt further along the approach path 42 as indicated by arrow 19 the cable 12 slides along the fuselage 8 as shown in fig5 and through a gate 22 into a hook 9 retrieval is then completed in the same or similar manner as for the helicopter 1 in fig1 the aircraft 28 finishes hanging nose down on the cable 12 again this would be impractical for a manned aircraft but quite acceptable for an aircraft that is small and unmanned fig6 a 6 b 6 c and 6 d show another embodiment in which a second cable 46 is attached to the cable supports 13 adjacent and essentially or substantially parallel to the snag cable 12 the position of this second cable 46 is such that the aircraft is intercepted as it rotates around the snag cable 12 and so comes to rest in a more nearly horizontal orientation than that shown in fig4 the height of the snag cable 12 can therefore be reduced and.