Excuse me Dave. I didn't suggest that Wayne would have stumbled with $15M. I was simply postulating that had he received $15M, your opinion of him would be different.

Windenergienutzung mit schnell fliegenden Flugdrachen.On p.8 on-board generator:"optimally increase system drag by 50 %" and p.12-17 Loyd's formula and application for reel-out system.

Under Dave Lang's control,thanks for corrections:

I think this formula can be also used for on-board generator:with optimal propeller-generator kite speed is 2/3 the kite speed without propeller-generator;nor with reel-out system (Dave Lang's system?),relative wind (for an optimal simulation) is also 2/3,so kite speed is also 2/3 the kite speed with non reel-out.

Makani often quotes Loyd's formula.

Tip speed of the propeller can be too high with dynamic use;rough example wind speed only 10 m/s,kite speed 50 m/s,tip speed of propeller 250 m/s,next to Mach .85.

So Sky Wind Power uses a static configuration with jet-stream.

PierreB

If you proceed with the last approach and first compute the momentum captured then you can estimate the exit momentum essentially the same way. Difference the two and you can compute drag. Alternatively compute the captured momentum and then compute the energy  you anticipate extracting with the turbine with an allowance for inefficiency and again use the difference to come up with a drag number.

Dimitri,   Wayne would have cast a wide net with 15 million for AWE & the results after four years might have been fantastic. My opinion of him then would have probably grown, if that is what you now want to suggest.   If you want a positive example of early aero-industrial ROI for AWE to emulate, that would be Glenn Curtiss,   daveS

Dave (Lang),   The short-term "vertical blinds" idea is based on conventional sails, not exotic tethered-foils made in ice-caps.   Harry Valentine did a nice depiction of his own vertical-blind-like scheme as a ropeway across a gap. He identified the concept as a "laddermill turned sideways".   In one deft flash this makes of the laddermill a crosswind technology making power both directions.    Simple wings for such a mill might be a trisail or membrane "hotwing", which reverse camber in each direction, as Harry showed. One can say this concept matches the sailor's idea of "putting on sail" as much as possible. Tacking kite arches are related.   Wayne independently came up with a similar vision to Harry. KiteLab has used "tall-ship sailing in the sky" as a metaphor for these "dense-array" ideas. KiteLab intends to prove a variation vertical blind concept where membrane wing-mills fire in place in sequential synchrony. They are held up by a pilot-lifter arch.    Image in JPG  Some working demos are near ready, all the pieces work ;^)   http://www.energykitesystems.net/DaveSantos/hisweep.mpg   daveS

You should check out the intro from the 1974-1975 television series Wickie the Viking, especially around 50 seconds :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB6KY7Xnzd0

clip from the neat share:

KitedShip.jpg

Some of us have been involved in exotic sailing methods for many years, one of the royal paths to AWE. We have followed this project from its "table-top" beginnings to its present triumph.   Congratulations to Spork & friends on a fine performance. Note Joby/Google sponsorship, so there is always hope they will see merit in low-complexity AWE as well.

• http://kiteenergy.blogspot.com/2010/01/big-news-from-china.html
  
• Seems like there are some odd translation notes here: http://www.articlefield.com/27600/kite-power-industry-of-start/
  
• Seems to have some related note:   http://www.dltcedu.org/index_5/html/80245.shtml
  
• Alternate spelling, perhaps:  Zhang Jiangsu
  
  
• I've no find yet of the California corporation.
• http://www.dltcedu.org/index_5/html/80245.shtml  Translated: "Recently, Dogging, Shandong, held in 2009 Clean Energy International Summit Forum, the California days, Chairman Dr. Zhang Jiangsu Fang Co., Ltd. introduced its own R & D of high-altitude wind power technology, and disclosed in the Guangdong Province has established China's first high-altitude wind power demonstration projects."

 

• As yet, no finds on Skyhaul       and no finds on Skywind
  
• 
  
• 
  

1st High-altitude Wind Power Project Is Full of Variables   Jan 21, 2010

http://www.sinocast.com/readbeatarticle.do?id=39623

 

Eco Hydrogen Limited

Inventor:  Jens Schupp

http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/images4/PCT-PAGES/2010/282010/10079365/10079365.pdf

Kite Deployment

http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?WO=2010017630

(WO/2010/017630) VARIABLE AIR SURFACE WIND POWER GENERATION
by James P. Moore

 

The term "father", for something that doesn't yet exist, and may never exist, seems a bit premature. Typical of this almost nonexistent "virtual" blogosphere-centered art. I don't suppose he has a small working model?
:)

Over the last 3 days I've talked personally with Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos (CEO Amazon), Eric Schmidt (CEO Google), Dean Kamen (inventor Segway) and major figures from MIT, Caltech, other universities, Rocky Mountain Institute, Santa Fe Institute, Kleiner Perkins & other venture groups, (200 of us total) here at Techonomy 2010.
http://techonomy.com/

I've been hammering the point of advanced wind energy for all 3 days.
I was lucky to have been invited. I hope the time, effort and expense makes a difference for any or all of us to wake these people up and help them transition from identifying clean energy problems, to solving them.

If they don't know about it, they can't do anything about it. Oh and I also met Maria Bartiromo here (Business Anchor for CNBC) as they were a broadcast partner. She is really nice and, yes she looks exactly the same in person.

Only problem with these events is I cannot build any turbines while I'm here. It is really nice at the new Ritz Carlton in Lake Tahoe. I will be glad to get back to eating normal food though - I can see why all these rich people are so skinny. :)
Doug Selsam
Selsam Innovations / USWINDLABS
http://www.selsam.com

Thanks for representing us all Doug.
Looks like a wonderful event.
- Dimitri

--- In AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com, "dimitri.cherny" <dimitri.cherny@... Was non-towered tethered kite systems mentioned during the conference by you or someone else?

Thanks,
JoeF

Aviation technology reuse is an essential R & D strategy for AWE. One of the best concepts in this regard is the glider-kiteplane based on conventional high-performance composite-built gliders. There is no flygen or conductive cable to haul around the sky. Towing aloft & operation on a tether is a standard glider method, boosting confidence. A range of surface work can be done, from reelgen pumping to electric vehicles. Unpowered kiteplanes can be flown at will by towing/winching about, so motor/gen kiteplanes have no particular operational advantage.   Early AWE glider & motor/gen kiteplane take-off & landing methods copy classic gliding at the same scales. Common practice is to release tether & land conventionally. A hot glider requires a fairly long airstrip, not because its roll-out is long, but especially to prevent undershoot. If a long runway is not a satisfying solution, some proposed ideas are less promising. Landing a fast glider kiteplane in a cradle is like hanging up a phone by throwing it across the room. Landing nets are a grotesque large-scale solution, but these are desperate times.   Glider accidents mostly happen during short periods of take-off, towing (tether-mode), & especially landing. These are complex flight states. A recurring glider failure-mode is to foul the landing wheel with the tether when both crowd near CG. Many safety rules read like this- coopIP/fairIP

Attachments :

awecs01.jpg

Mentioned in talks with individuals.
I'm currently trying to make as bit of headway with Eric Schmidt CEO of Google & Kleiner Perkins.
We'll get there.
Doug Selsam
http://www.selsam.com

Interesting - I don't quite understand it but, if you need a generator, let me know.
I have a question regarding 2-line steerable kites: If one places 2 anchors in the ground, spaced apart laterally to the wind direction, and attaches the 2 control lines to the 2 anchors, would the kite tend to do figure-8's on its own without being tended? Are there any kites that could stay up without crashing in such an untended state?
Doug Selsam
http://www.selsam.com

Doug schrieb:
Why should they do figure of eights? I guess it might be possible to build an
"analog computer" using weights and springs to steer a kite such but my guess is
that it would only work in a very steady wind.

What does work is to just keep the kite flying downwind high above. I did this
using Flexifoils. As the kite drifts or yaws to one side, the line angles change
and bring it gently back. Again this only works in reasonably steady wind. Gusts
caus the kite to overshoot and the ensiung yaw after a gust may cause it to go
completely out of control.

I treid to build a system which would keep the Flexifoil spinning steadily by
passing one line through a ballbearing swivel connected to the other line and a
bit of rubber cord to cause some asymetry. I didn't get it to work but didn't
try very hard. Normally a Flexifoil will spin steadly without doing anything but
will lose height slowly. Therefore one of the lines needs to be relaxed slightly
when it is in the "down" side so that it keeps spinning without losing heigth.
Whether this can be done entirely with rubber cords I never found out.

Theo Schmidt

Doug,   Actually could use a 5-10 kw generator if the marine unit a fisherman is donating does not show soon. Several 1kw class systems are near completion & its time to scale up a notch.   Yes, a two (or four) line kite can be set up to do a passive-eight "Dutch Roll" oscillation with its lines "staked out". The problem is tuning it as windspeed varies; in higher wind it wants to loop, in lower wind it settles into a stable flight, so some sort of feedback is needed to widen the operational range.   daveS   Note: Forgot to mention that the new crosswind solution can tow the kite back & forth in calm & keep it aloft, by motoring the generator.

Theo,   The simplest way to passively keep a looping kite off the ground is to put up a pilot-kite behind it. Just a little bit of pilot input keeps the looping up. Figure-of-eights are safer for a single kite oscillation, the occasional loop hardly matters as the kite regains altitude. A "dancing" kite with a tail is a natural oscillator. The use of simple elastic & pendulum adjustments can make a kite a usefully programmable self-oscillator.   If anyone out there is trying to get power out of a kite system & its not delivering, the common cause is faulty tuning somewhere, particularly between kite & load. Tune properly & the magic starts,   daveS

Yours for the price of boxing and shipping. Something less than 200 pounds. Pretty blue color. Has less than an hour of time on it. Worked great last time we used it about a year ago but we've moved on to something different. Email me at dimitri@highestwind.com if you'd like it.

- Dimitri

Attachments :

Could you provide some details such as a brand or model number? Permanent-magnet or induction? Do you really mean synchronous or is it really asynchronous?
A close-up photo of the nameplate would show most of the pertinent info and is how most motors are sold of E-Bay etc. Links to pix?
Thanks
Doug S.

Got a video of SkyEngine1 making power? 500 Watts continuous?
Doug S.

Doug,   Hoping to get good video at the festival, have only bench tested so far by manual yanking to ~200 watts. The Concept 2 rowing machine at the core of this SkyEngine is best of its kind, even raced seriously, & athletes sustain over 400w for a few minutes. The kites selected are small, but still superhuman in a medium breeze, & don't get tired.   So my best guesstimate is around 1kw peaks with about .5kw sustained. The load-binder lever can take about 5kw but the rowing mech is probably limited to about 2kw safe limit. Note that the pilot holding the reins stays out of harm's way upwind of all machinery & anchor. I'm adding short launch-assist & kill-lines to the pilot position.   After i get bored with "research airbrake" mode the flywheel will be packed with some concrete & a utility generator added. For now, i'll drive a little ponygen (skatewheel chucked in a cordless drill).   Never go for big power too fast. This machine is to relentlessly refine design, like its dozen or so KiteLab ancestors, before scaling. It will nicely demo simple portable windpower without towers (total system weight ~50lbs).    daveS   PS Wayne German is seeking a rideshare to WSIKF2010 from PDX. Monday is the best technical day, but any day all week is good.

Oh I see you still haven't actually run it.
I could have sworn you were offering it for sale as a finished, tested product. Wish I could make it to your kite event - sounds like fun.
DS

Doug,   You wrote: "I could have sworn you were offering it for sale as a finished, tested product"   The pre-production SkyEngine prototype is bench-tested & finished, so you weren't that far off the mark.   Current AWE alpha platforms have collectible historic value. These early first-to-market products are custom built. Order yours before its too late,   daveS

Yeah that's why I save all my broken remnants of exploded prototypes: For the future Superturbine(R) museum! For example we have the rusty prototype with blades made from 2x4's from Home Depot that outpowered the market-leader Bergey at an 8-foot diameter, as meaasured by the world's leading wind energy author, Paul Gipe. How much you wanna give me for that? It's sitting in a field and I don't have time to go pick it up! How much do you think your obsolete fitness equipment will eventually fetch? I'd really feel better about this purchase if I saw a video of it working... hey you've got me on the fence - just the teeniest persuasive fact could pull me over (!)
:)
Doug Selsam
http://www.selsam.com

I'm having trouble believing I've gotten so lazy as to not go out there and take a photo of it, but I have. It's exactly like the one on this website.

http://wanhui.en.made-in-china.com/product/leomBRjWAHcD/China-ST-Series-Single-Phase-AC-Synchronous-Generator.html

If you're really serious about getting it, I'll make the extended effort to prove it really exists.

- Dimitri

 

Alexander Muzhichkov

This folder of files is reserved for the contents, images, announcements, etc.
of Alexander Muzhichkov

See his Presentation #1

Hi All

I want to make a control pod for a 5-10m parafoil kite. I though I'd
post my findings here and ask for some advice before having to
reinvent the wheel.

My idea is to steer on the brake lines of a 4-line parafoil kite. A
control pod is mounted below the kite where the kite's bridle lines
come together. I'm sure many people have played with this type of
system. I am trying to find workable actuators for these lines.

I suspect the forces in the brake lines to be less than 10N. I thought
of having two small spools to pull the two brake lines in or out for
steering. I suspect that winding the spools out can lead to tangles as
the brake lines will not always have tension on. The logical solution
is to have the actuators go into free wheel mode when you want to let
line out, so that the kite can pull line off the spool when it wants
to. Ideally a gearbox should be used, since the force is rather high
for a very small motor, and the speed should not be too fast. The
problem with a gearbox however is that when the motor is off, the
torque required to turn the output shaft is too high for the kite to
pull line off the spool. If doing away with the gearbox and driving
the drive directly, then the motors turns too fast and is too weak to
control the kite.

Does anyone have any ideas to overcome this? My ideas are:

- try stepper motor- speed is solved, but torque is still questionable
if I keep the size of the motor small
- find some gearbox with very high efficiency so that the kite line can pull it
- find a very slow motor with large torque (any ideas)
- use some other winding system instead of a spool (any ideas?)

I am sure people have solved this problem before. If anyone knows an
easy solution that you won't mind sharing with everyone I'd be very
grateful.

Regards

Christoff

Christoff,   10N sounds pretty slight for aggressive control required in turbulence. You might fly with some brake on & relax one side to turn at lowest input force. You may also put in some elastic-return to assist brake pull or crosslink the brakes so that one is relaxed as the other gets tensioned. This balanced set-up can be done with just one servo requred.    Its hard to beat by price, weight, or performance Radio Control (quarter-scale) airplane/sailboat servos for the kind of duty your kites require. Available servo controllers are also very cheap & versatile, with computer interface options now common. The cheapest RC products are OK for prototypes that fly only a few sessions, but choose metal gears if long rugged service is desired.   A heddle pulley pulled by the servo to deflect the brake line can decouple reeling from control force. It can also provide tailored compliance to protect the servo from surge/shock loads that might damage gear teeth. Sailboat servos come in linear motion versions, if that works better for you than ordinary rotary servo motion.   Stepper motors are obsolete. They have very poor power-to-weight & do not really provide failsafe indexing. You might choose to drive a worm-gear or screw-jack for robust position holding, if the speed is fast enough.   It would be most cool if your control pod had a small shrouded-turbine generator to keep batteries charged, as forced-landing before full-discharge is a problem no seems to have addressed yet.   Have a lot of fun!   daveS

Hello,

I am just building a control pod for a kiteplane (about 20 m²).

We often use windshield- wiper motors, because they are very cheap
and have a high torque.

We use them with a 5 cell LiPo batterie. This is more voltage, than they
the nominal voltage of these motors, but it does not happen often, that
you have to apply the full voltage to the motor, so there is no problem
here.

If you want more info, just write me a private email:

u.fechner@tudelft.nl

I work at ASSET (www.kitepower.eu).

Best regards:

Uwe Fechner

Christoff Muller schrieb:

$60,000 EAA ELECTRIC
FLIGHT PRIZE CHALLENGE EAA COMMUNITY
Scott Wick of Wicks Aircraft Supply, John Torode of Dynon Avionics, Jim Irwin of Aircraft Spruce & Specialty,and Nate Calvin of AeroLEDs joined with EAA President Tom Poberezny (left) in announcing the EAA Electric Flight Prize.


$60,000 EAA ELECTRIC
FLIGHT PRIZE CHALLENGE EAA COMMUNITY
The Experimental Aircraft Association is offering a $60,000 prize to the individual or corporation that can demonstrate the most promising level of achievement in Electric Flight at AirVenture 2011. The prize has been made possible by equal contributions from AeroLEDs, Aircraft Spruce & Specialty, Dynon Avionics, and Wicks Aircraft Supply.

"The four companies that created the prize are all actively involved in the sport aviation movement," said EAA President Tom Poberezny. "They, like EAA, recognize that much of the innovation in the aviation world has come out of homebuilders' workshops and the creative environment that is part of AirVenture Oshkosh. EAA is pleased to join with these forward looking companies in creating a challenge that will lead to the development of an electric aircraft that we might all enjoy."

The Electric Flight Prize is one of a number of steps EAA will be taking over the next decade to support and stimulate research and development in the field of electric powered flight. "The organization is committed to encouraging new ideas that lead to innovative products," according to Poberezny. Criteria for awarding the prize will be announced in the fall when an assessment of the status of electric flight is completed.

Poberezny added that he hoped other leaders in the EAA community would contribute to the prize over the next 12 months to enhance the challenge.

For entry forms and competition criteria, please write EAA Electric Flight Prize
P.O. Box 3086
Oshkosh, WI 54903-3806
or visit www.EAA.org.


HOMEBUILDER'S
HANGAR DEDICATION








Aircraft Spruce & Specialty Co., a leading distributor of homebuilt and certificated aircraft supplies, has donated $100,000 to the Experimental Aircraft Association to sponsor the new Homebuilders' Hangar on the EAA grounds at Oshkosh.


During the annual EAA convention, Homebuilders' Hangar will be used for presentations by renowned aircraft designers and builders.

There will also be social area, message boards, and displays featuring Homebuilt Grand Champion aircraft dating back to 1953. Homebuilders' Hangar was dedicated on July 26, 2010 at AirVenture with remarks from EAA President Tom Poberezny and Aircraft Spruce President Jim Irwin.



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