I witnessed an interesting animal like behaviour in a recent kite test.
Low wind sunny day fun test... So I attached a stiffened symphony beach1.3 variously to my powersled lifter.
When attached to the rear end drogue attachments; the wee kite thrust up and down... Remined me of a little terrier boy dog trying it's luck on a doberman.

Roderick Read
15a Aiginish
Isle of Lewis
HS2 0PB
kitepowercoop.org

Daisy: designated as Drive shaft or cable loop?
Explain

Roderick Read
15a Aiginish
Isle of Lewis
HS2 0PB
kitepowercoop.org

Let the tale WAG the dawg
So 3 speak

Roderick Read
15a Aiginish
Isle of Lewis
HS2 0PB
kitepowercoop.org

It's neither quite a laddermill loop nor a driveshaft.... (the  classic soft rotor options)

But it definitely works even though it can't exist....

Can you define a Daisy kite?

Roderick Read
15a Aiginish
Isle of Lewis
HS2 0PB
kitepowercoop.org

Yes that magic word fixated on by the eternal newbies: "crosswind".  That would be like a boat design forum where idiot newbies remained ever-fixated on the word "floating" as though they were on the cutting edge of boat design by noticing that boats usually have the ability to float. 
"Yeah, I got a PhD, so MY proposed boat drawings employ the newly-discovered theory of "flotation".  Of course, Ya know, I'm with the department of the navy, so you'd have to expect such sophistication from a guy like me..." (polishes fingernails on shirt)
"Well, yes (is this the movie "Idiocracy"?) at some point, they have to bring in the heavy-hitters like me - the big guns - the guys with the advanced degrees, from the largest, most sophisticated agencies, to truly make things work."
Sound familiar?

Hi Dave S.
The most important thing is to keep the name "Doug" at the forefront, as you fixate on Doug's every word.  Thanks for using my name in every sentence in every post.  This indicates to me that you realize I am the one who understands all this stuff.

But your logic is a bit lacking sometimes:  I tell you people like Paul and Mike are not really relevant to the active wind community, and your response is that Paul said something good about Mike.  Yes, but who in the wind industry has ever said "I learned something" from either one of them?  Do you know what previous jobs they had?  Heard anything about why they no longer have those jobs?  Are you familiar with what real wind energy people say about these guys?  Ever heard the saying "those who can't do, teach."?  What wind turbine has any journalist ever designed?  You think they are relevant because they come up first on Google since they communicate well to the teeming masses.  We are supposed to be beyond the teeming throngs of the ignorant though.  But not all of us are.

Have you ever seen those little vending machines that sell fake spiders, etc., when you walk into a supermarket?  Ever notice how little kids are fixated on them, while you, a more sophisticated adult, are not impressed?  Ever tried to explain to a kid how they should not be so impressed with the fake spiders?   Well the same is true of wind energy journalists:  People IN the industry are busy DOING wind energy, and may feel that the journalists, far from being THE repository of knowledge, are mere tag-alongs who may know a few facts, but big deal, in their world, who doesn't?  Maybe the journalist might INTERVIEW the wind practitioner to LEARN SOMETHING.  But they are not teaching wind energy people anything.  They are most impressive for those who are lost and for whom every simple fact is a "new discovery" worthy of years of continuous debate.  Just as it may take the kid many years to get to the point that the fake spiders in the glass bubbles are not even interesting, not WORTH a quarter, just something to pass by, wind energy practitioners seldom seek the counsel or agreement of mere journalists.

Such journalists merely relate their observations of what IS.  They are great at what they do, and entertaining for people who would like to learn the basics of wind energy, but beyond that, they are not cutting edge researchers.  I'm trying to see why anyone would think their opinions on new ideas are really all that relevant.

I guess the answer is, these journalists are very good at noticing when "new" ideas are very old, or when designs violate the most basic well-worn and easy-to-understand principles of wind turbine design.  And I guess after seeing hundreds or even thousands of losing designs, it gets pretty routine after a while to debunk them.  After all, they usually all make the same mistakes.

So I guess if your designs, or your level of thinking on the subject, are at such a low level that you are violating these basic principles, these defects may be noted by these journalists, and if you remain in a state of ignorance, you may see "debating" these simple facts as your only avenue of escape.  As though  journalists define reality, rather than just describing reality, as though mere words can change that reality.  Your error would be thinking that thousands of years of learning go by the wayside just because you have showed up on the scene.  Consider that the "newborn baby" may not be wind energy, or airborne wind energy, but YOU.  "Wah!"

If Wubbo "walked away from" laddermill" because the idea turned out to be  "not so good", why is he celebrated as a great thinker for promoting the idea? 

Why did they keep calling a reeling kite "laddermill"? 

If "Spidermill"  is good, where can we see one? 

If Wubbo's ideas were good, which one works the best?

 If Wubbo "walked away" from "his" idea, why is he celebrated as a great thinker for having that same idea? 

I'm sorry Dave if I'm asking anyone to make any sense.  I understand nobody is used to that. 

Maybe you can just fill in the blanks:
"Wubbo is (was - sorry) a great thinker because he thought of _________."
and
"UDelfts is highly competent in wind energy because they have built and run _______ with the results ________".

Hi Joe.  I guess what many part-time, armchair inventors don't appreciate is how mundane and easy-to-think-of their proposed modifications are, while not appreciating the difficulties their proposals would add.

The original versions proposed by Ockels and myself would naturally keep the upwind and downwind sections from contacting each other.  That went into the design.  Every working surface would help keep the entire assembly airborne - every working surface would be holding itself up, all the time.  That also went into the design.  It would be self-aiming.  One more design consideration.  The upper support craft, along with the upper pulley-wheel, might not even be necessary at all!  A nice, potentially neat package.

Then, the after-the-fact "I'll bet you never thought of THIS." crowd comes in.  I've never had an invention that did not engender a whole train of too-late commentators, thinking that it is suddenly THEM who is the true genius, and THEIR version that is the REAL version, and that the original inventor could not have POSSIBLY thought of the highly-advanced concept the after-the-fact add-on inventor thought of.

All I can tell you is, once one starts down the road of thinking up laddermill for themselves back at a time when wind energy was hardly a blip on anyone's radar screen, that same acumen leads to thinking of a thousand variants and modifications, laid out in an array in one's mind.  That is not to take anything away from an Ockels, who thought of laddermill independently years later.  If I kept the idea on ice, he was free to publish it as new - for him, it WAS new.  But that doesn't mean it was new to EVERYONE. It wasn't new to me, and your idea for a modification was not either.

People have ideas for improving wind turbines all the time.  Usually the same few ideas in some slightly new form.  Like a funnel to concentrate wind: It works, but is not economical, since it must be solid, whereas a propeller is not.  Simple, yet we see professor after professor claiming some "new" version, and it will never end.

Let's look at what your modification takes away from the original laddermill.
1) Every surface is no longer helping to lift the machine - you must provide enough lift to lift the ENTIRE energy machine, from an extra, separate, independently-constructed kite or flying machine.  Like adding a duct, it probably uses too much extra material to be economical.
2) You remove the ability to aim.  Typical stuff newbies don't even notice.
3) You add at least one new, separate ground anchor point to pull the machine vertical;
4) that anchor PULLS DOWN on the newly-added flying machine, making your kite at the top to be even larger than enough to just lift the machine itself.
5) You added another wheel at the top whereas original laddermill may have not even needed a top wheel - more weight for your kite to lift
6) You need to add a structure to separate the upward and downward sections - even MORE weight for that kite
7) Despite your upper flying machine, the lines will bend downwind at the middle, and you will never achieve strictly vertical motion without adding the Dave S. box to contain it all the way up and down and make it into a rigid structure.
8) Otherwise, you might get enough tension on the lines to keep the machine CLOSE to straight and vertical along its entire length, by STILL FURTHER increasing the size of the upper kite holding the entire assembly in the sky (a kite which was not even necessary for the original version of laddermill)
I could go on and on and on - one could probably write a book on this and still have aspects remaining unmentioned.

Yes we inventors think of all this stuff very quickly, eliminate most of it as unworkable, and try to present a few simple ideas that actually have a chance to work.

And please remember all the other references to laddermill equivalents that were not only THOUGHT OF, but BUILT AT A UTILITY SCALE in the 1980's - "your" idea is to turn one of those by 90 degrees.  Do you really think you are the first to consider this?

So if you really think you have all this worked out, file a patent on it and release it to the world.  Any idea that has not been documented is open for being patented.  Even if it is "obvious" to a "genius", that doesn't count in the patent world.  It's only if it isn't obvious to an average practitioner of the art.  So have at it! 

One thing you will learn if you want to be an inventor:  Most ideas are great on paper, since you can pretend they will behave exactly as you wish.  Try actually BUILDING and RUNNING one of your ideas and you will get a taste of reality.  The machine will not follow your orders.  It will do what it wants.  Stuff you never thought of.  There will be 10 or 20 unforseen deal-killer behaviors that will take years to overcome, if you can get something to work at all.  In the end, it must perform better than, and be cheaper and more reliable than, what already is.
:)

And also in the news: pogo-sticks will be tomorrow's transportation solution.

Wow, kite-reeling.  How did they think of that?  Hey Joe, isn't this YOUR invention, by the way?
I like the part where it says:
"30 kites at 100 kW per hour will fit on one football field"
What exactly IS a "kW per hour"?  A new unit of measurement? A kW/h?  As opposed to a kWh?  So how many kilowatts does it make per minute?  Oh, the same amount?  How 'bout per day?  Oh, same amount again?  So wait, Watts, a unit of power, which is energy per unit time, already takes into account time?  Who knew?  More "new information".  Maybe Mike Barnard has an indispensible "opinion" on that one.  As though simple facts and the inability to comprehend them are even open for discussion...  One thing they taught us in engineering 101: get your units right.
Idiots to the umpteenth power.
I think they are ready to debate a journalist.

Continuing to investigate Connaught:

correction:

correction:

Off topic.


PierreB

"Its simply not true that no real wind expert ever reads MikeB, as you incorrectly asserted."   As usual, it's beyond you if it can't fit on a bumper sticker.  I try to point out that wind people do not normally read beginner wind energy material, such as that offered by journalists attempting to explain windmills to the common person, and you extrapolate it to no wind expert "ever reads" Mike B.  Of course it happens that an expert will occasionally read an article by a Mike B or a Paul G.  That does not even imply that wind people are their main audience.  Their thrust is to communicate with people who know nothing about wind energy, like you.  And you then confirm that you are the proper target audience by fixating on their every word and offering (threatening) to "debate" them. They merely offer simple facts, most of which are not debatable.

Nah
You used the words Perhaps and driveshaft.
I do see similarities between stacked Daisys and a superturbine... But it's soft, without any hard nor central shaft.
It's also much wider diameter.
Similar to stacking any kite... Thre will be some loss of direct control over upper levels.

The ring itself is very ladder like.

Looking pretty windless for this weekend kite festival. But there is a good chance of lighting. So I might be producing electricity tomorrow
Help!
Roderick Read
15a Aiginish
Isle of Lewis
HS2 0PB
kitepowercoop.org

These people are dead stupid.  Cold Energy has been around for a while - all lies.  A junior-high-school kid could make such a lying website - are you impressed?  Everything they write will never happen.  If you believe any of it you are dead stupid too.  Where has ANY kite-reeling system ever shown any promise, let alone actually performed as a reliable, economical, energy production system?  Does the world really NEED one more lying, idiotic, dead-stupid, kite-reeling pretender?

OK great, so
1) tell me exactly WHAT a "spidermill" is;
2) explain why it is so great
3) explain why nobody is building and running one, if it IS so great.
4) Supply links to a picture and/or explanation
5) tell us about one that has been built and run
6) relate how much power it makes
I was NOT talking about YOU thinking Ockels was a great thinker.
I was talking about UDelfts and all the rest who have made him a household name in the still nonexistent field of AWE.
I'm still wondering, if laddermill was not worth building, why call a mere kite-reeling setup by that same name? 
If laddermill was not worth building, why celebrate Ockels?
And if we DO celebrate Ockels, as I do, since he and I think alike, why does nobody promoting his good name build one of his ideas, since they have all those PhD's, grad students, and millions of dollars to work with?  If Spidermill is the new Ockels answer, and they are simple and effective, why do the Ockels team not build one?
I'm sure you have an answer.  Sure, so do all the big organizations.  You all have an answer of how you can go on talking forever while never producing a single useful thing.  As long as somebody will provide money for doing nothing, people will take it, and pretend to be doing something.

Do you ever shut up?  What a bunch of drivel.

"similarities between stacked Daisys and a superturbine... soft, without any hard nor central shaft...much wider diameter" SuperTurbine(R) patents show versions using only strings, no hard driveshaft, and soft kite-like working surfaces.  (That was so people like Joe F could not come along years later and clim to have thought of it first. I stopped at over 100 drawings but could have reached 10,000 versions if I had had the time. The absolute requirement for a hard driveshaft and hard blades for a SuperTurbine(R) exists only in limited minds of people who either can't read, or are mentally challenged, like a Dave S., constantly seeking ways to either build my ideas, or claim they did, without acknowledging that I published them first.

I could have told you Dave Fender claimed to be in the process of AWEifying Fuk-U-Shi-man at least a year ago, when he was contacting me. I tried to explain to him that:
1) Fukushima needs working solutions, not undeveloped and unworkable garbage;
2) the best place to work out such working solutions is not Fuk-U-Shi-Man, since there is so much radiation there.
Why ake things more difficult than they need to be?  For the sake of an impressive-sounding press-release?
Here at my place would be a much better site for developing AWE.
He wouldn't listen.
Unfortunately, people are often driven by headlines and emotion, more than logic.
I can guarantee, no kite-reeling system will save Fuk-U-Shi-Man
I can pretty much guarantee, for that matter, no kite-reeling system will ever pan out for any use, anywhere, anytime.  Kite-reeling for electricity generation is a bad idea, a poorly conceived concept, not well thought-through.  People who pursue it are idiots.

Thanks, Doug,
I will address each point over time over several posts, as I
get time at the computer.

Addressing your first point:
Notice that any kite system generating energy must provide lift. The
severe lifting assembly respects the crosswinding downgoing driving
rung wings; such is a source of severe energy production. The severe
driving upgoing rung wings provide some of the net lift of the system.
The having of a dedicated lifter system is on purpose; in the system,
there is not any effort to get rid of the dedicated lifter system. The
dedicated lifter system may operate in higher chosen altitudes while
the driving rung wings remain doing their driving. You are very
neat to notice that the Faust variant has down-going driving rung
wings that are NOT providing net vertical positive lift; such is for
good reason; the downing going rung wings are using robust
negtive-system lift dedicated to driving the groundgen; give the wings
design to maximize the crosswind down-going down-lifting operation;
such is one of the plusses of the variant that you admit was not in
the your first laddermill excursion. In the Faust variant, it is a
pleasure to increase the upper lifter system just so the down-going
rung wings may drive even harder downward. When the robust lifter
assembly uses train tactics, the challenge of scale is highly
mitigated; but the variant allows any variety of top lifter system.
Any net positive lift of the gross system forms increased opportunity
for net energy production.

That is a start towards facing your first point.

Best,
~ JoeF

On 7/18/14, dougselsam@yahoo.com [AirborneWindEnergy]
<AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com

Keep the door open for the reel to be in the lofted wings or even in
mid-tethers, not just in the lower anchor realm. CC 4.0 BY NC SA
~ JoeF