Thanks DaveS for your false assertion ["This is the new MikeB topic thread you requested"] as beginning your new topic; but you can produce such a false assertion on any topic, as I planned on my precedent message.

 

PierreB

DaveS,


Dr.Mark D. Moore rightly points that AWE covers numerous fields while companies are focused on technical features of their project. MikeB points the challenges and problems like both huge land used and no other possible use due to safety concerns, high level of maintenance, difficulties to install a farm due to tethers...

But actually none of examined schemes can maximize the space used...

 

PierreB

 

  

Using spaces in AWES schemes

= Underground or in water depths
= Ground surface
= Airspace near ground surface
= Airspace to 500 ft AGL
= Airspace to 500 to 2000 ft ASL
= Airspace 2000 ft to 18000 ft ASL
= Airspace above 18000 ft ASL
= Downwind adjacent spaces
= Spaces surrounding AWES operations
= Spaces interior of the AWES parts
= Spaces on the surfaces of AWES parts
= Spaces "involved" during AWES downtimes

While operating AWES of the future, how might the "involved" spaces be utilized? 

How might safety be maintained for the various multiple uses in the "involved" spaces?

What AWES schemes seem to invite multiple uses in the spaces that are "involved" in the AWES operation?

Use coordinating?
How to manage multiple uses of "involved" spaces where AWES operate? Control? Prediction? Status awareness? Coordination?

============================
We have already some historical text addressing some of these matters. Yet we have a good distance to go for robust mastery of the topic. My view is that we are at bare beginnings on maximizing the value of spaces in which AWES will be involved. 

This post just introduces the topic. It is expected that posts on this topic may arrive for years to come.

========================
Some search tags: soil uses, land uses, land-surfaces uses, airspace uses, air space uses, water uses, air uses, farming, hay, crops, entertainment, transportation, signaling, advertising, recreation, payloads, kite applications, kite-system applications, communications, shade, shading, water production, kite patents, weather, wind, air, liquid air,
========================
It is to be observed that there has already been several uses of "involved" spaces where AWES have been operated. Consider what occurs at a large kite festival: recreation, picnics, advertising, exercise, sales, flags, ground bouncers, fishing, entertainment, nursing, education, romance, art, exploring, plant growth, aircraft overflights, nearby boating, car driving, bicycling, napping, renting, photography, medical caring, talking, reading, ...  all coordinating to some degree in a relatively common set of spaces.

DaveS,



Both you and me and others agree AWE is for (eternal?) future. Let us examine how onshore and offshore HAWT evolve: actually diameter of rotor goes towards 200 m. Do not forget far offshore wind speed does not vary so much by the altitude. For some reasons, including technic and rules of air (FAA in USA) AWE projects are now limited in 500-600 m. If (and it looks quite possible) HAWT reach 500 m with no increase of mass of materials (it looks also possible with recent technologies), AWE will be only in small niches excepted if in the same time AWES evolve towards huge devices of 1 km diameter and more with 1/10 mass of correspondant HAWT.

"soft-wing dense-array concepts will prove wrong non-experts who dismiss AWE as unable to safely coexist with other land-uses..."

Soft-wing dense-array concepts for MW-scale implies tens tons of traction, kms of different moving ropes etc. for a dynamic use: not easy to imagine other uses on the same land. And how is launching and recovering, maintenance, change of materials?

 

PierreB

 

 

 

 

  

Nobody ever said early 1980's utility-scale sideways laddermills in Tehachapi "proved" anything, only that they were tested there in the 1980's, negating claims by others (such as Joe F.?) to have "invented" crosswind laddermill after that date.  By the way, the Linear brand version is ridiculous and will never pan out, believe me, and I will not elucidate any swine with the details of why.  Learn it for yourself.  Build one and see what happens.  Duh.  You'd besurprised.  "Heyyy, wait a minute..." My efforts to educate fall on deaf and unappreciative ears, so I am done trying to convince anyone of anything.  Wallow in your ignorance.  Dave S., with his limited, skeptical brand of thinking, can express doubt that I considered slight adjustments to my original witnessed & notarized recorded version of "laddermill" in the 1970's.  That does not make it so.  It just means I did not spend all day every day further having every design adjustment notarized.  At least I had the first version witnessed and notarized, but nothing is enough for some people.  I thought I explained the whole thing pretty clearly, but to some people, clear explanations don't register.  Given the fact that I arrived at the first AWE conference, with the first steady-state AWE system capable of running unattended, which did run for two days, while the rest argued about kites, microwaves, and whether the wind was stronger at height, one might give me a little more credit for veracity, but pearls before swine, what would we expect but further argument toward ANY fact offered, in AWE?

Obviously this kid was not hampered by a PhD or association with a major university, Google, NASA, Boeing, WOW, UDelfts, MIT, etc.  (By the way, a 20-foot windmill should be rated at 10 kW, not 400 Watts.  And a 400-Watt windmill weighs less than 60 lbs., not needing two blimps)  But besides that, here's an idea that at least works, that you could set up, connect, go have lunch, and come back and find it still running.  No pretense of the need for computers to control it.  No obligatory photo of 20 milk-and-cookies "grad students" having "a breakout session"...  It is just a decent, simple implementation of AWE.  Not complicated, not difficult to figure out.  No half-million-dollar computerized outer-space-looking-yet-useless base-station needed.  Nice job, kid.  This is what I mean when I say there ARE NO serious teams in AWE.  This kid has outperformed the celebrated "Magenn" (laugh track?) with his eyes closed and both hands tied behind his back, and rivaled the celebrated Alaskan donut blimp (which I predict will fail at the first strong wind.).  What's next, a teenager sending a manned mission to Mars?

Dave S. your limited thinking amazes me.  Who ever even implied a mechanical box-like structure for a flying laddermill?  The Linear (brand) attempt to utilize the principle is just an example of the general principle being used.  Only an idiot would try to fly the Linear brand box.  Why even discuss laddermill "variants"?  You're never going to build one.  Laddermill has great potential, in my opinion.  The fact that nobody has ever bothered to give it a decent try is not the fault of the concept, it is the fault of all of us.

Yeah let's discuss more irrelevant stuff Ockels "invented" but that nobody sees fit to build.  So now it;ls all about "Spidermill", eh?  "Spidermill"...  Right.  What the hell is a Spidermill anyway?  More Dave S. nothingness?  More comments by idiots about absolutely nothing?   Wow, this conversation is getting so exciting!

Correction: Mike Barnard is NOT an expert in AWES.  Nobody is.  It doesn't exist.  Nobody will be a demonstrated "expert" until the actual useful art of AWE emerges, at which point anyone who can read can become an expert.  Mike Barnard communicates basic facts about wind energy to the uneducated masses.  That is why the current crop of would-be, wannabe airborne wind energy people are fixated on Mike B.'s every word: They are know-nothings.  Real wind energy people do not even know his name or read anything he writes.

Yes Joe I can confirm I considered every laddermill "variant" seen so far, at high speed, as a teenager.  Just think about it: the mind who can come up with it out of the blue is most likely to immediately begin considering all the "variants".  And I had a couple of decades to expand on the basic idea, with no obvious competition. Had I known someone 40 years later would question that, I could have spent my entire teenage years drawing and notarizing every stray thought that coursed through my feeble brain.  But since I didn't, you'll have to take my word for it.  The one version I had witnessed and notarized should at least lend some credibility to my story.  The history of my inventing is other people pulling out endless "variants" trying to claim they thought of them before me.  Yes, it does get old constantly telling people "I already thought of that."  Nice try, but it aint so.  :) Oh well, inventors, like everyone else, have persistent issues to deal with in life.  That's OK, I can handle it.  I just like inventing.  Hopefully, my inventing will be helpful.  That's all an inventor really wants is to be helpful.

Nice Job Roddy.  Now you can start stacking them to get to a SuperTurbine(R).  :)

Yes be sure to read the comments of the noncomprehending, on the irrelevant!

"We agree with the common critique that almost all AWE companies tend to focus too narrowly on one idea." - you forgot the words "that sucks".

Lloyd was the original "Professor Crackpot" character, most noted for inventing the flux capacitor... :)

DaveS,

Too much emotion, no technical arguments. In the present forum there are several players in AWE (RodR with his last nice realization, yourself with an amazing AWE with a turbine on the line, DougS with Laddermill and flexible ST with kite or balloon as lifters) which is a combination between kite art and wind energy. I think DougS can educate you (and us) about problems in wind energy so in AWE.

 

PierreB

Doug,

You waste your potential by posting such an assertion. Please do not reach DaveS'level!

 

PierreB

Pierre: You DO realize my comment referred to Christopher Lloyd, right?  (Ever notice how jokes become not-funny by the time you have to "explain" them?...) Similar to wind energy - once it is explained, most of the goofy ideas turn out to be merely jokes that are, at that point, no longer funny.

Dave S., yeah, like I said, nobody in this project was hampered by "credentials", or you can bet the result would be 100x as expensive, with mere excuses, rather than an operating system, as a result.  PhD's seldom solve problems, they just find new aspects of the same old ones, so they can get more funding, creating perpetual problems that are, somehow, never quite solved.  It's called "job security".  You may have heard of it.

Since this amateur project "blows away" anything you have done, I'd stop pretending to sit in judgement of them, or me, for that matter.  The ironic thing is, a project like this could be done by almost anyone determined to just do it.  You claim to have tested more AWE systems than anyone.  Which performed the best?  Which results are you most proud of?  Which seems most promising?  Which made the most power?  Which will you commercialize?  What important things have you learned in your research that you can pass along to the rest of the class?

Wayne used the term "venetian blinds" several decades after me.  I was still just a lad, using that term quite often in describing further versions of my 1970's teenage concept that was later named "laddermill".  What other term would you use to describe multiple blades hanging on two strings?  Oh wait - I forgot: ladder.  OK so we have "ladder" and "venetian blinds" as terms to describe the obvious to the unimaginative.  

Let Wayne bask in the glory of his own inventions, such as mutually-inter-reeling free-flying kites beaming their power to the ground via microwaves.  Since Wayne would barely let anyone at the first AWE conference get a word in edgewise in his promotion of the 2-kite free-flying reeling microwave beamer as the ONLY "reasonable" solution, I will remember him for that.  That boring afternoon was somewhere between agonizing and excruciating.  I think Wayne deserved a "Germy" award for boring an audience to death.

I find it amazing how many people are trying to claim partial authorship for the laddermill concept these days, long after the fact.  Here's your wake up call, armchair geniuses:  Every aspect of laddermill you have ever considered was thought of decades before AWE was even on your radar screen.  If you are such a genius, so good at believing random "variants" you are capable of stumbling across after the fact are improvements, why not make a version that works?  Try doing something new.  Try thinking of something new.  Show us what you got!

How much power has a "Spidermill" generated?  What aspect of your stated "Spidermill" is "a mill"?  Where can we see a picture of a Spidermill?  Where can we see data of power output?  Methinks thou art full of empty blather.
Here's another of my inventions:  The Spider Bass Guitar:
http://www.ugo.com/image/184744/tarantula-bass

 

DaveS,

A time again you are topic-off.

 

PierreB

DaveS,

One more time you are off-topic.

 

PierreB

Doug,
      The Tehachapi experiment was not a kite-lifted crosswind laddermill; their exploration did not have priority over the Faust AWES employing full-loop vertical-attitude all-rung-wing driving variant.  The Tehachapi experiment materialized a tactic that had been in wind energy public domain already for many decades as illustrated and described in early patents, foundation for sailing around closed loops with various wings.   The Faust simply kept crosswinding of the wing rungs within the kite system realm instead of ground-towered loop holders.  If someone commercially uses kite-system-lifted vertical loop of rung wings in order to obtain crosswinding of driving up-going- and down-going rung wings, then I will knock on their doors for some respect.  Tehachapi group did not use such tactical combination.
~ JoeF

Generally examiners make a good job (US or French or others) by providing a preliminary search report then the final search report after eventual limitations of claims. In search reports a document classified as X relates a pertinent anteriority regarding novelty preventing valuability of patent excepted if claims are limited if it is possible.Y, regarding inventiveness is also a pertinent anteriority requiring an answer. There are hundreds patents being able to cover for each only one or two features but depending from each other.So evaluations are complex. But patent die after some years., and in AWE far before marketing.

 

PierreB

 

Joe, let me try to explain this to you in a way you can understand:
You are known for starting the idea of a magazine oriented around hang gliding.  You published "Low and Slow" magazine - a name I remember from my youth, and, if I read correctly, Hang Glider Weekly", and maybe one other?
(Nice work, by the way...)

OK now imagine, decades later, you are on an internet forum for some new form of magazine publishing, except for some reason, nobody on the forum knows JACK SHIT about publishing a magazine, they just are all full of idiotic ideas of what a magazine should be, and most of it makes no sense whatsoever.

Imagine some moron on this forum tries to say HE invented "Low and Slow" magazine, except HIS version has a table of contents.  Some OTHER moron replies "No I invented "Low and Slow", except MY version has a "Products Review" section, where manufacturers can earn a free article by purchasing a full-page ad.  A Third moron claims HIS imagined version of "Low and Slow" had a slick, glossy cover, printed in color, AND a "Letters to the Editor" section.

Next, the morons want to debate whether YOU had ever thought of any of those features for your magazine, as opposed to these ideas being THEIR "original thoughts" pretending that they were somehow contributing to the art of journalism.

You'd be so beside yourself you'd want to punch anyone that stupid and arrogant right in the nose.  "ALL decent magazines have a table of contents - or COURSE I thought of that" you'd say, just as I say all decent wind turbines are cross-wind, and "of course I thought of that".  

Just as you'd say anyone insisting THEY had first thought up a "Low and Slow" table of contents was delusional with way too much time on their hands, I have to say the same about anyone insisting THEY were first to think up such pedestrian refinements as angle adjustments, to what was called "laddermill" decades after I had first documented the basic concept.

Like having a glossy cover printed in color, a "Products Review" section associated with ads, and a "Letters to the Editor" section are routine in magazine publishing, arranging wind turbine working surfaces to avoid the wakes of other working surfaces is routine - yes yes yes, all minor adjustments that could almost be described as "obvious" in retrospect, and all "variants" that I mentally "saw", laid out by the thousand, faster than I could ever talk or write about them.

Just as it would be unlikely for anyone unfamiliar with magazine publishing to make retrospective suggestions for a "Low and Slow" hang-gliding magazine that you had not already thought of way back in the 1970's, the same holds true for what has been named "laddermill" in my case.  Please have a little respect for a fellow thinker, and give me credit for knowing something about what I was doing, just like you knew what you were doing publishing magazines.

So if you'd like to go on thinking the likes of you and (ahem) Wayne German... have had any relevant input or have introduced new, original thinking, on the laddermill concept, all I can tell you is my thinking is so far beyond anything you guys have come up with that it would make your head spin, but I just don't talk about it all.  I'm light years ahead of you guys, just as a point of fact.  Wish my ability to build could keep up with my ability to think.

I would have never revealed my early documentation of the concept at all, except that Ockels published his version, the idea was now public, so I at least wanted to expose my earlier documentation, which takes nothing away from Ockel's effort, but more confirms him as also having some valid ideas in AWE.  Anyone who comes up with one of my ideas is on the right track.

Since then, humanity has failed Ockels (and myself) by never even trying to build one.  All I can hope is I get to it at some point. or failing that, someone else does.  As I have poited out so many times, and nobody has the vision to realize I am serious: I have more GOOD ways to do AWE than I can even count.  The reason all the teams are failing is BAD IDEAS.  Garbage-in/garbage-out.  Not that complicated.  If ANYONE is actually SERIOUS about AWE, please contact me, and, with the right agreement, I'll be glad to set you on a productive track to success.
:)
Doug Selsam
714-749-3909 cel

Sounds like someone should get any pumping kite concept to be useful for generating power at all, then the next step would be to use a whole stack of kites to get more power.  To start discussing versions named after spiders and trees as though THEY are somehow THE answer ignores the fact that nobody has demonstrated a single pumping kite useful for generating economical power.   Obviously, if one kite could work, adding more kites could make it work better, but to go on playing the name-game as though all that is needed is a more clever name for adding more kites, completely ignores the task at hand, to generate wind power at a lower cost.  If one deal loses money, multiplying it merely loses more.

Lately I've been frequenting the Crestline hang glider launch site, since it is an easy drive from my house, super-fun, and a nice, green, enjoyable place with a great view.  You can see Catalina Island in the Pacific and far beyond, from the mile-high crest of the steep hill. 

Well, my girlfriend and I were invited to a party at the landing zone below, celebrating the 20th anniversary since this new landing zone had been built by the government to replace the old one that they were obliterating with a water project.   (That water project also created beautiful Silverwood Lake 6 miles from my house). 

Anyway, we could not resist showing up at the party, and we got to see quite a show including at least 100 hang glider and paraglider landings.  One guy just liked to spin in his harness while his kite kept flying straight.  He also liked to just  fly backwards.

We enjoyed a great catered dinner for only 10 bucks each, and they even had music.  Next, just as it was getting dark, 4 experts flew in for a real show that made anything you've seen at the circus pale in comparison:  They were dive-bombing us til their gliders screamed with pain, then pulled up into loop after loop, trailing smoke the whole way. 

There was one guy on a nearby training hill, flying like I used to, low and slow (Like the name of Joe's magazine) - of course I thought of Joe and the old days when I saw him running and wiggling his legs a few feet off the ground as he glided down the slight slope.  Come to think of it, the people who invited us had told me I could fly that kite too but we never got around to it - too much other stuff going on.  Definitely fun.  There is way too much fun stuff to do here in Southern California.

Thanks, Doug, for the analogy and claim set.
I've not used for myself "have invented" with regard to my description
of an arrangement that I can find no preceeding textual or material
evidence; none in your patents, not in your reveals, etc. ... until
recently where you claim to have thought of all variants that have
surfaced, so far, for laddermill-like arrangements. You are welcome to
approach any commercial user of what I described and win whatever
respect you might from them; there will be you and I at their door;
they will see your claim and they will see my dated reveal; they will
respect you and me the way they wish. I will tell them how much I
respect you as a thinker and inventor; I will also tell them how
deeply curious I find that all of your published text missed the
arrangement that the Faust described while even taking a couple of
years to muster up the claim-all-variants position.
Notice that the Faust arrangement is not a matter of "angle
adjustment" but a full dislocation from the main lifting tether set in
order to have a opportunity to have a taut true vertical hold on the
loop assembly. Your laddermills may adjust ladder angle, but what you
show leaves the main tether in forced catenary without the Faust
dislocation of the loop. Your angle adjustments remain dependent on
the downwind fallback of the system's tether set; the Faust
arrangement can assure verticality for the loop even using low L/D
lifter systems.
Titles to magazines are not copyrightable, but the text inside can
be copyrighted. Anyone without redress may have a Low & Slow magazine
on hang gliding or any other subject; titles are not protected. A Low
& Slow magazine with interesting content might be bought; a Low & Slow
magazine produced with empty pages might sell and be used as a sketch
book. The variants of laddermill in your files and head might include
some best variant. I trust and believe that you have lots of ideas
that are exciting to me and probably many others. However, your recaps
and past notes support--in my view--that you probably missed the Faust
arrangement. But, I guess you claim priority for the Faust
arrangement. In total, so far, then, I guess we will both be at the
door of some commercial user with our hand out for some respect. Yet,
note, I do not claim "invention" as I await full analysis of the yet
incomplete kite-technology record prior to 1978.
I have only a gut suspicion that prior to 1978 someone may have
used a Faust kite-system-lifted arrangement with plumbed loop with
working-driving sails for the upgoing and downgoing sectors of the
loop. Such would be a natural for lifting people up and down while
avoiding treks and trolleys along the main lifting tether set.
Best,
Cheers,
JoeF

DaveS,

Generally (for USA it is a little different since examination and search are combinated, so your reference is relevant only for US office) an international search report  Search report - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia  is etablished by numerous national patent offices (including France) and also for international applications (PCT,European Patent Office ), that with the same categories, for example "X" as "highest possible level of relevance".

Concerning my AWE patents, search reports was quite correct: examiners have no problem with AWE in spite of the great number of patents.

My idea is search reports + whole process (observations, new claims...) allow a good appreciation of what is new, inventive or no.

 

PierreB

 

DaveS,

Generally (for USA it is a little different since examination and search are combinated, so your reference is relevant only for US office) an international search report  Search report - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia  is etablished by numerous national patent offices (including France) and also for international applications (PCT,European Patent Office ), that with the same categories, for example "X" as "highest possible level of relevance".

Concerning my AWE patents, search reports was quite correct: examiners have no problem with AWE in spite of the great number of patents.

My idea is search reports + whole process (observations, new claims...) allow a good appreciation of what is new, inventive or no. Such an appreciation can be complex due to numerous variants.

Before writing things like KiteGen (or another company) 's patents are relevant or no, a careful examination is needed, point by point, at least in the same level than examiners do.

DaveS by far you are not the authority to determine if some patent is relevant or no, but you can give an advice of course;it is only an advice. 

 

PierreB

I am sorry for doubles. The first one messages did appear later on KiteGen forum.

PierreB