Wow, i-i-it's almost like someone has been here before!  W-w-w-wait, so you're saying a gyrocopter eh?  L-l-l-like U-u-using a- a- a- a- a a wind turbine rotor to fly?  Who knew?  What a bout a whole stack of gyrocopters?  Running the same driveshaft?  I hope I don't draw the ire of any obsessed, highly-obnoxious nutcase by asking this question: What is "half wing drag"?

Example for a turbine perpendicular in apparent wing and implemented on a soft wing (FlygenKite): area of wing 1.5 m²;  lift coef of wing 1.2; drag coef of wing 0.3 ; drag of wing 0.45; so the drag of turbine does not exceed 0.225, the diameter of turbine being roughly 0.5 m. Ratio lift/drag = 4 without turbine; ratio lift/drag with turbine = 2.66 .

Before making a stack of gryrocopters knowledge of torsion transmission of rope on great length is needed. Measures of Doug' s flexible AWE are needed.

 

PierreB 

DaveS and all,

 

To simplify my precedent post, do you think by experience or intuition if a Gyrokite can be piloted crosswind to increase apparent wind on rotor by flying in figure-eight or in loops? What are supplement equipments needed?

 

PierreB 



Dave S. your fixation on word definitions is noted.  I could not even begin to read the paper presented.  More drivel no doubt.  The gyrocopter, when first introduced, was known as a "flying windmill".  What else does anyone need to know?  When I first saw SkyWIndPower back when they first hailed from Australia, I thought "Wow, amazing someone is actually catching on to the obvious: "WIndmills want to fly" but I was disturbed that "Professor Crackpot" had already ruined the recipe!  "That darn professor is everywhere!" I thought.  Professor Crackpot had decided to ruin the otherwise perfect, simple, and pretty-much-proven concept, by removing a blade and adding a counterweight!  "Oh NO!", I thought, slapping my forehead and reeling back (whereupon I fell off off Niagara Falls, but was one of the lucky survivors) "How could they take a proven and simple concept and immediately RUIN it with some douchebag unproven "Professor Crackpot" crap???"  I could see the dandruff on the eyeglasses and the beard, right through the metal counterweight.  Yeah, right, add a useless weight to your kite!   Er um I mean gyrocopter.   A weight that gives no lift, no power, and which eliminates the perfect aerodynamic as well as dynamic balance of a rotor!  Just to be different!  No!  This can't be true!!!  Why does Professor Crackpot infest every place where level-headed scientists and designers should be in charge, and immediately RUIN every stinkin' new project by injecting some goofy "new idea" just so he can think he is "a little more of a genius" than regular engineers and designers?  Hey Professor Crackpot, why don't you go and bother some gyropter pilots and tell them they should get rid of one blade and replace it with your stupid freakin' weight?  Or go bother some airplane pilots and designers and introduce your one-bladed airplane prop to shake everyone's airplane apart?  How 'bout one-bladed boat propellers?  Let's all sink our craft for science!  But no, he's gotta ruin what couldda been the first good, working AWE system what, 20 years ago?  Gosh, why didn't he add maglev bearings too. since there's no problem with existing ball bearings?  That would make it more of a beard-scratcher, wouldn't it?  And he'd be more of a genius, wouldn't he?  Cuz magnets are mysterious, right?  And adding more mysterious stuff makes it better, right?  Well?  You can't make this stuff up.  Nobody would believe a story so stupid.  To this day I am puzzled that SkyWindPower has not led the field of AWE but instead seems to languish.  (Much like myself as a matter of fact!)  I do not understand why SkyWIndPower does not have a working system by now.  But we all get busy, right?  Now its gardening season, and we all have a lot of yardwork.  Gosh, (yawn) I've got a lot of important stuff to do around here.  Oh well, I guess the future of wind energy will have to wait to we geniuses get around to it...

Of course it can and why isn't everyone who claims to be serious about AWE doing it?

Sure, instead of building anything, you can spend all day trying to herd cats and do tons of (mostly electronic) paperwork.  Maybe you could get a hundred otherwise qualified people to spend a year doing nothing but flying to conferences!  A further recipe for zero progress.  Why not just tie everyones' hands behind their backs, all across Europe, and call it an AWE research program?

DaveS,

 

"When you offered to develop an H2020 AWE R&D plan,..."

Concerning maybe WheelWind (http://wheelwind.com ) ,but I explain again it is dot possible due to formalities.
Concerning "H2020 AWE R&D plan" such an "offer"exists only in your head.   

 

PierreB

DaveS,

 

"I could not imagine you only meant to work alone, with no EU partners.."

You have too much imagination.

 

PierreB

Thanks, DaveS.    Recovered most related. But I am still looking for Gabriele's (?) graphic. 

Toward Gabriele Betti's art on topic, begin post

What do you think is the greatest achievement of WOW to date?

What's the most useful machine the Euro teams have come up with so far?

"wind power guide for dummies" - that's funny!  :)
hey I was watching a kite energy TED talk video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95jUGS9Ic-w
I noticed the closing comment was "The Wright Brothers used kites to develop aviation, we are going to do the same with kites." (what he was really thinking), then he realized he was SUPPOSED to be talking about wind energy (Oh yeah, that's right - almost forgot!) and he quickly corrected himself and mentioned "wind energy", as an almost forgotten theme.
To me this shows the interest really is "flying kites" and that is about it.
Nice to hear "The Wright Brothers" mentioned again.  Funny but I seldom of ever hear any successful wind energy project mention "The Wright Brothers", while almost ALL the failures do.  Oh well, keep trying.  :)

At least The AWE Forum  is the good place to develop a psycho-social analysis of AWE players.

 

PierreB

Dave S.:
None of this stuff is worth reading.  Especially in a few years of you still "not getting it", to go back and read these rants, you will sound like one real idiot.  Garbage-in/garbage-out.
Show me something that works.
Forget people trying to hide behind a bunch of math or nebulous tomes that start with no clue, and lead to nowhere.  Why bother reading it?  It's like listening to people who show up at conferences promising to do X by date Y, then you never hear from them again, or they conduct some meaningless halfway-there study that leaves everyone hanging.
You think you can "write" your way out of meaninglessness, with clever strings of words, and when your words fall flat, you start defining your previous words to try and make them seem like they ever were meaningful.
I see everyone distracted from even a decent starting place, on down the road of nothingness.  Kites can pull.  Whoopee-doo.  The idea that cloth or animal skins stretched across a frame can "pull" was the first, prehistoric thrust toward wind energy, and that place seems to be where you will forever be stuck - the ancient time before wind energy emerged as a useful art, as it continues to not do as a result of any effort on your part.
:)

AWES can pull, push, lift, and turn and in various ways over these actions.

Colorized clip is by ~ JoeF. 

Translation of the patent is invited.

https://www.google.com/patents/US8319368  to reach all matters.

Doug, You seem to be unable to process the rapid progress in AWE. Its up to you to keep the ST in the game, but insulting all professors is self-sabotage. You seem intent on making sure the ST is never included in serious comparative testing, which would finally prove if your years of unmatched claims were justified. The real waste of time has been all your off-topic posts about skiing, grooming, and backyard wind turbine crackpots. The Forum will thrive when you finally give up your sour attacks on the AWE community, particularly aerospace academia. AWE is succeeding along sound paths. Try to focus on actually helping the community, rather than being a sore loser. The NASA-derived soft-wings (NPW & parafoil) are kicking-butt; KiteShip's OL and Mothra too; beat them or join the party, Good luck, daveS

Rod, Its been stated in the past that three tethers is merely a minimal simple case, and adding more may be just the obvious extension of the method. Loyd had his own brilliant "tri-tether" concept, which also extends naturally. We want a minimal count under KIS. Doug and Pierre, Please at least create a new subject for your personal comments, when you have nothing to add to the technical topic. TIA, daveS

Hey Dave S.
Your ass-kissing sucking-up to perceived authority figures is very transparent.  You attempt to redefine the character "Professor Crackpot" as "all professors" transitioning to me, somehow "insulting all professors", leaving you and all those professors neatly aligned against me.  That would seem to completely validate you and everything you do, making it aligned with "all professors".  That would be like saying the character "Dr. Doom" refers to all doctors - idiotic and off-target, as usual.  Most professors know they don't fit that cartoonish stereotype, and most real "Professor Crackpots" are not real professors, it's just a term.  A figure of speech.  Your reasoning is so weak and desperate.  I guess pointing out my lack of progress is the best you can do to validate your own lack of progress.  My lack of progress is due to having too many projects, whereas yours is due to cluelessness.   If your effort were driving from LA to NY, you'd be tipping over on a tricycle somewhere in Canada by now.  Yes I agree that AWE is in my hands to make it work  - nobody else seems to be on target.  So, OK then, you can have all the professors.  All the king's horses and all the king's men- you can have them.  You can have one professor to tell you the wind is higher at higher heights, and another "professor" who tells you flying things need to be light weight, wind energy needs to be affordable, and any system will need to be tested.  You needed someone to tell you that?   Some people don't need the crutch of a professor to inform them of every common sense well-known fact, but if you need the emotional reassurance, have at it.  You can have the professor who announced wind turbines lifted by blimps in the vacuum of Mars, and the professors who say reeling kites will power the future.  And you can have all the warmers with their 97% concesus of warmers.  You can have the "engineers" with their renderings of stealth-looking tethered planes who never build what they render.  And you can have the occasional bearded and spectacled crackpot promoting 100% solidity flapping wind energy solutions.  Yes, they are all yours.  Have fun with them, and see if you can do it without bothering people involved with wind energy..

Yeah remember when Dave S. was going to have everyone "profiled" by one of his relatives who was a "profiler"?  That will solve AWE!  Yes, what AWE needs is endless distractions.  Do anything except solving the problem.

Yeah, here is a well known Pr.Crackpot's syndrome: making it falsely complicated when Mother Nature makes it simple. Let us go fly a kite! But why three tethers and three anchors where a single anchor is sufficient? Sure! I remember you want make some wind energy.So replace useless tethers with blades and make a rotor. And you add other rotors on the same shaft. All roads go to... After that you measure efficiency.

 

PierreB

 

Wow that is "high tech".  Reminds me of how people chill a beer on the finger lakes in NY state:  use a rope to lower it to a cool level.   A few years ago, Cornell University saw how good it worked and now they pipe that same cool water to the campus to cool the buildings.  Ever wonder why we pay one bill to heat our homes in winter, and another bill to run a refrigerator in that artificially-heated environment?  Wouldn't you think, in areas where the ambient air is cool, we'd use the cool air for refrigeration?  Aren't we wasting electricity to cool food to 40 degrees, when it is 40 or below outdoors at least half the time?  Why not pipe outdoor air into the fridge? 
Answers:
1) The refrigerator manufacturer wants you to use the fridge til it breaks so they can sell you a new one;
2) The electric company makes more money selling more power, though they also save building a new plant if they can get you toconserve, but it has beeen noticed that they first shave you usage, then hike your rates when they start losing money from less use;
3) You have mice, insects, and infestation problems, not to mention someone could place a smoke bomb at the outdoor cool-air intake, for a practical joke.
Still, it seems that the refrigerator is redundant and unnecessary at least half the year in many locales.  But does anybody even notice all that wasted power?  Not likely.  Hey wait a minute!  What about an "AWE" system that glides up to the stratosphere and cools some crap, then use the temperature differential to generate electricity?  Wait, isn't there some very rarified altitude where the air is technically thousands of degrees, though very thin?  Use that!  No wait, an airborne system that pipes coolant between various altitudes.  Gabor?
Hey how 'bout this: Just pipe the cool air from way up high, down to Earth, to use for air conditioning!   I wonder how many millions could be raised before anyone figured out the air would be heated by compression as it descended!  I could just see the profethor cleaning off his glatheth to take a thecond look: "For thome reathon, thith air hath been heated on the way down"!  :)

Attachments :

This is an interesting paper.  Our location here in the High Desert of Southern California experiences many "Dust Devils".  Most people have seen a Dust Devil.  A Dust Devil is similar to a tornado or waterspout, except it is not as strong as a tornado, and it often occurs in sunny weather, rather than a storm.  This wind-powered facility gets probably 20 direct hits every season, estimated from several direct hits I personally experience each season.  I've seen two turbines, a couple hundred feet apart, both operating at high speed, aimed in opposite directions.  The aim of each changes quickly, and it is easy to understand why:  You have fast winds moving in opposite directions, in close proximity.  You try to take cover if you have time, but often a dust devil comes as a surprise if you aren't looking, and all you can do is close your eyes, hold your breath, and cover your head.  On some days, one can see several major dust devils across the landscape.  They can reach thousands of feet into the air.  What you see, from a distance, is a column of dust and sometimes trash, plastic bags and flowerpots, even lawn furniture, etc.  Usually dust devils occur when overall windspeeds are not very high.  High winds tend to prevent the formation of dust devils, however in high winds you can have many other types of surprise turbulence.

Yeah, not only have such solar wind towers been proposed, I can think of TWO (2) Solar Tower Projects in the news a few years ago, that were supposed to be actual projects, really being built, rather than just "proposals".  I hate to mention it but we in wind energy have seen so many such pronouncements, such as  "The new world trade center building will be powered by built-in wind turbines!", that we seldom believe them.   That was really in the news.  Paul Gipe and I both let people know that one would never really happen.  "Lies, lies and more lies!", we had to tell enthusiastic wind newbies back when people believed in global warming.  One more thankless job.  "Yes they will - you guys are bastards, and besides, The Wright Brotherssssss...!"  (Most wind energy "news" is all lies, all the time.  Think 'whale bumps".)
Nonetheless, I personally think a solar wind tower is a REALLY COOL IDEA.  It is actually one of my favorites, and there are so many ways it could be done, such as running one up a mountain.
BUT, having said that
(drumroll please)
I think we need to grab that idea by the ankles, turn it upside-down, and shake it to make sure Professor Crackpot is not hiding in there somewhere: ("Duh-huh! Hey kidth!")
Any tube with a fluid moving through it presents resistance to the flow by cumulative friction and turbulence.  The longer and thinner the tube, the more resistance.  So it might behoove anyone contemplating artificial solar-powered wind towers to calculate the friction losses, especially if your tube is a mile or more long, and thin.  So anyway, after hearing the solar wind tower for-sure projects in Australia and Spain several years ago, I decided to hold my breath until I hear how they are working.    M'Kayyyyyyyyyy?!?!?!?!?!?!?
:)