Energy Wing™,  EnergyWing™    Dave Santos  of KiteLab Group has firmed trademark use.  Public notice: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/AirborneWindEnergy/message/4195

This is my first time on this group..
Very impressed so far.
I have been considering concepts in kite power for a couple years.

Have a look at my latest design...

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/fwOblGKcVSt4d-osmE8Clw?feat=directlink

I've also set up a website for public evaluation of kite power designs which would benefit small remote communities... by being made from off the shelf components... it's only new yet
https://sites.google.com/site/kitepowerresearch/

If you have any trouble with the links...
I have put a photo onto this site.

photos / roddys disk driver

each disk is providing lift / tension to the line

each disk can have kites "flown" from it's edge to provide torque to ground.

Given the tension on the lines, I doubt that you need any intermediate surfaces to support them.  The lower disks could be replaced by 3 struts forming a triangle.  This begins to remind me of Bucky Fuller's tensegrity beams. Perhaps another arrangement with more distributed compression members would be more efficient.  As drawn, the ratio of diameter to distance between disks is set by the ratio between tension and torque, to prevent collapse of the necessary line separation.  

This is one more of many "trademarks" I've seen "reserved" on this list (always by the same person).
My I.P. law knowledge may have some holes in it, but I believe to acquire rights to exclude others from using a trademark requires actual use of the trademark, in commerce, in a given geographic area. The proof required is extensive and includes packaging for a specific product, as well as sales of that product, and not just a single token instance contrived in order to force a shown "use", but an actual product, actually available, actually sold, with the actual trademark actually printed on the packaging.

Just saying you "reserve" a word, for future possible use as a trademark, on a web chat list, carries no legal weight as far as I am aware. Heck you could do it all day and reserve a million marks, becoming a legend in your own mind, but the effect would be quite limited beyond your own world of fantasy. Also, "just saying" you have solutions to AWE carries no weight if you can't build it and run it, even (especially?) if you keep getting sidetracked into related activities that seem peripherally related to the target, but do not hit the target.
"Almost" is great in "horseshoes and hand-grenades", but doesn't work out too well in wind energy.
:)
Doug S.

My understanding matches Doug's. An important, no critical, first step
is to buy the .com domain name.

Robert.

I like this design.
Yes I have seen something like it.
Similar to my designs revealed years ago.
Please see U.S. Patent 66126402
Replaces "discs" with rotors (propellers with blades)
Replaces "lines" with Darrieus blades
All blades may be inflated with helium etc.
optional central shaft
:)
Doug S.

You can look it up if you want. The trademark rules are well-established. Make up your own rules if you want but be careful how much time you waste. Don't get me wrong: I have no intent to violate anyone's proposed mark. There are a million great names one could use. Most are by far over-rated by whomever they occurred to, and will never be of any consequence to anyone else.

I can tell you from experience, no amount of blogging, no amount of claiming names ahead of the fact, no amount of designing contests, fast-pitch competitions, trade-shows, conferences, web chats, no amount of any of this stuff really matters, compared to just having one machine that works, reliably and economically.

Whether you are making power is easy to discern.
Whether you are still making power a year later is also easy to discern.
The cost is fairly easy to discern.
That's all there is to this, unless you want to live in a land of fantasy, based on believing an endless parade of false press-releases, which almost all are.
:)
Doug S.

Thanks bob
That's exactly what I was planning to look into

Thanks again Bob

to resist collapse tensegrity type struts would need set anticlockwise going down to resist collapsing force.

Hi Darin,
Please forgive the lame drawing skills there... I was thinking the kites would launch much more radially out from the doughnut...
It has now been suggested that the doughnut component rotates... thus giving a centripetal accelerated and apparent wind favourable launch for the kites.

I haven't stopped smiling since this popped into my otherwise vapid noggin thanks Dave.
You are right. The giants shoulders were all there and I just happened to chance by standing on them.
I have been thinking more about a tube/horn mounted on the tether tracker as a multi disk launching and recovery system... a rotating 3 pointed roller controller (like a stair lift pallet trolley)for linking disk kite sets and transferring tether tensioning.

love the idea about the surface torque spreading...(in that I think I eh get it) What sort of effect does that have on ground footprint and ability to track the tower exactly on it's axis?

smiling

Hi Doug,
Glad you like it.
I have a few other stackable self controlling solutions, I've been dreaming of / sketching ... but this is my current fave.

Are you sure the patent number is correct?
I'll look again under your name etc...

Thanks for checking it out
rod

Ah ha found it on google patents
Yeah kinda like drawings around 83 84...
I bet you could scale that idea too.

the trouble with these long tethers is getting them to keep pointing up and not drag all down wind... That's where I think quick steerable wee kites on doughnut rims will help scaling problems.

Another problem is getting the thing up and down quickly... To that end I must mount my horn disk launcher design on the tether ring generator.. Drawing to follow.

superb work on that patent

Found your patent Doug... love it.

to be honest ... even with all the advantages of the disk drive... I'm inspired on a whole new rig.


Central line to which ties, three kite inside tips and load balancing lines. kites orientated radially around line.
Three tethers mounted radially around this attach to the kite ends and outer balance line set ... just as you or I would have them on a tracking rotating generator... so that when the kite is in the below phase it is pulling harder... but on a tri point bar so we can
plus
a funky in-line lifter stepper auto aligner wing thing from in my head

What I'm picturing is overall really light, good at torque transfer, speed controllable and fast to erect dismantle....sounds orite

must get drawing.... it's already after 1am tho
later

Bret wrote:
...
Well some of us here are pacifists and would not want to contribute to such
research. ;-) However as this is an open list and information which is available
sooner or later gets set free, I guess it is best to discuss it here rather than
let others discuss it in secret.

I once built quite good blades using aluminium alloy tubes as the central
structural element, with the blade itself being extruded polystyrene foam and
the covering 60 gram per square meter Kevlar cloth with Epoxy resin.

Theo Schmidt

--- In AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com, dave santos <santos137@... ***Not belaboring, just commenting on your announcement. Your mark is safe with me. :)

Sure, KiteLab Ilwaco's IP shortcuts do not confer�the same�protection as USWindLab's conventional approach, but much time and money is saved up front, boosting core tech competitiveness. The same philosophy goes for�slick websites, kissing up to popular media, etc. More time is available for actual inventing and testing.

***I didn't mean to compare our efforts. Even USWINDLABS is kind of a corny name. I just thought we needed the name "U.S." on some effort that actually was trying new things. I only respond if the media contacts me, and yes, it does take time away from progress, but generates enthusiasm.

*** I had no idea. Well I've switched from string to rope for my kite, so watch out! :)

We both�produce early small-scale low-power�experiments, which is smart. We are not yet rivaling the peak power of current�top AWE power producers like SkySails or KiteGen.

****We produce I.P first. Someone somewhere said we needed new cutting-edge clean energy ideas... Oh I think it was the president. And the one before him. And the one before that. And preceding him too... and the next... for the last 40 years! 40 years of all-talk - we were supposed to all be driving hybrids by the mid 1980's!

Yeah if you throw enough money and personnel at something you can get an expensive result, but an expensive result doesn't help that much - this is energy, and the name of the game is "cheap cheap cheap". Expensive energy can be obtained in many ways.

Its like they may be the dinosaurs, and optimistically, KiteLab is a�tiny early mammal and US WindLab is a sort of funky marsupial,

****yeah KiteLab is at the stage of living underground and has lost all its photoreceptors and must now evolve new pigments in its eyes! It has no color vision! All the other organisms can see a huge spectrum from IR to UV, but this one is stuck with a blurry version of black & white for now! Oh nooooo....!!!!

Well I think if the administration or any big players were serious about developing AWE and advanced wind energy in general, they would be working more closely with this marsupial. There are lots of great solutions gestating in this pouch. I saw the problem and many great solutions decades ago. Like "hey let's make one with helium-inflated blades" - "nah that would be too hard". Could you imagine trying to get a global warming alarmist to build anything? They're be too busy going to see their therapist! They're all on medication!
Do you think they really believe in "global warming"? These people sit around and wait for more oil wells to be drilled so their jumbo-jet can get snowed in at the next global warming conference.

We the people will be the only ones to do anything about this...
:)
Hope we get some wind today! This is the calm season!

**** Yeah commerce

Hello Joe.
we did a new flight a week ago
you can see it on www.seaglider.fr on page movie 3
have fun
stephane

Le 23 août 2011 à 19:31, Joe Faust a écrit :
- Show quoted text -

Stephane,
You are most welcome to tell all stories about your air adventures.
You are invited to be joined in forum AirborneWindEnergy
in Yahoo Groups. We are featuring your adventures, but need your
original inputs.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/AirborneWindEnergy/

Lift,
Joe Faust
aka JoeF

Stephane Rousson
Tel : 00 33 (0)6 03 83 82 76
http://www.rousson.org
http://www.scubster.org
http://www.seaglider.fr

It's a sign of the times that small airports looking to survive in this rugged economy are willing to consider hosting AWE testing, etc. If AWE players can move faster than the larger economy at delivering greater fees to these airports there will be less incentive for them kick AWE players out once the economy recovers. Now would be a good time to lock in agreements with distant enough expiration dates that AWE would have a chance to move into the mainstream before expiration.

Non Disclosure Agreements? Sounds like a secret list. :-)

"Offer usage fees and partnership agreements. Include these costs in your budgets to investors." That's a great suggestion! To this budget also add conference fees and travel/lodging costs as an essential business expense.

If anyone finds a US regional airport (or a small one with not too distant international travel access) with great wind that could co-host AWE testing along with scheduled air traffic that would also allow an organization in the AWE world to rent all or part of a decent sized terminal facility at a very low price for an annual AWE conference, please send the contact info to me at pj@aweconsortium.org.

Doug are you referring to the 100K(?) grant made last year that is described here? http://awtdata.webs.com/

If so, Mark Moore's video report is available at the following link.

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=39102541

He also gave a presentation of his study to other entities in the US government in mid January 2011.

I just sent an email to your roadrunner adx with his PPT presentation attached. If you don't have it by the 19th, please send an email to me and I'll reply with the attachment.

A few manufacturers have shown interest now in prototyping this for me... others may go ahead on their own...
fun
Are you going to be peaved Doug?
Cause it really is a cool design and it would be a shame to cut the lines.

The disks are better off being spun from the bottom, by running the disk generator as a motor...!
This helps with the start-up phase immensely.

ah heck... and of course....
When the wind drops ... you can raise the tower vertically just by putting power in to spin that wheel

must just go and try a few test rigs soon

Yes that recent grant is the one I meant. The one with many times that actual grant value, in press releases covering it. Let alone the value of the time people spent reading the press releases...

The video you referred to amounts to nothing in my opinion.
A slide show with pix of Magenn and Skywindpower - they are continuing the same ole crapola - using impressive pix of Magenn without any examination of why it is not in use, why it makes little power, why it costs way too much to ever be useful.

We hear that there's more power way up there, and that power is proportional to windspeed cubed. That is not new info. All wind energy people already knew this. And lots of other people too - it is common knowledge! In every fluid dynamics textbook! Christina Archer has already exhaustively documented the resource that was well-known before her work anyway.

This is just platitudes. No real work was done, no real progress made, no contributions to the art added.
I see no assessment of the various technologies, which would, I assume, be at least a first step.
I don't see any first step here.
What I see is nothingness.
And further, I have not heard WHY NASA has chosen to pursue whatever scheme, theory of operation, or mechanism they are now supposedly building. Where are the observations of the comparative technological directions? Where's the decision tree that led to pursuit of a given design direction? That video, to me, is not a sufficient final report. That is my opinion.

To me here's what they should have accomplished:
Brush past the size of the resource as well-known and get to the meat of it: who has proposed what devices and how valid are the proposed modes of operation?
What has worked so far and how well? What design direction looks most fruitful, given your stated expertise? Like hey, how 'bout some answers?

Then if NASA is to become a player, pursuing a design of their own, please re-clarify their role with regards to the rest of us players.
Do we waste any of our time trying to convince them of anything? Asking for help? Try to include them in any way? Or are their minds made up toward a certain technology now? If so, what observations or decision points led them to their conclusions? Are they still open to other ideas?

For example, if they keep showing Magenn on their press-releases and videos, what is their assessment of Magenn? Of drag-based devices in general? Why the silence while using the images to garner attention? Do they think it's "good", or are they just "using" Magenn's impressive pictures to generate a buzz without substance? A buzz without substance - that is the theme here. What is the substance?

All I can tell you is next time you hear a big press release saying some big organization is going to make a big splash in some advanced field, get ready for a whole lot of nothing. And that is too bad because all that energy, all that access to funding, all that perceived credibility, could go toward making things really happen.

Been focused in the field of wind energy for 10 years now.
With regard to announcements of disruptive new technologies, 1000 press-releases later, I have yet to see one of them come true.
Payoff = big Odds = bad
So anyway, I for one am tired of having my hopes dashed after every new big-hype announcement, but with the web, we can at least express our skepticism in advance, instead of having to be totally silent as this predictable stuff happens (or fails to happen) every single time.
Oh well glad I can still do things here a little at a time. A little is better than nothing!
:)
Doug S.

I live in Kansas City. This one of only 2 major airports on the edges of the large mid continental wind resources. The other is Minneapolis-saint paul. I used to live at a small airport east of town where we built ultralight aircraft and often flew around to other area airports. So I have an idea of the conflicts and synergies. I would say that Dave S. is correct that this is a potentially good collaboration. The only problem that I see is that smaller airports tend to be located where the ground is naturally flat. And that means mostly low lying and low wind for launching. I think that it might be a rare find to get everything one could want, but I could look around and see what I find.

Brian

Yeah I'm talking about the deliverables listed by them at the link you provided:
***************
Key Deliverables

Development of an open database of resources
Requirements, desirements, and metrics to guide the development of concepts
Decomposition of the wide variety of concept approaches
Across the board first principles analysis to showcase the feasible benefit frontier
Understanding the gaps that currently exist, and a mapping of NASA technology expertise that can address these gaps.
*****************

Please excuse me if I missed where to find any of these deliverables. Where's the "decomposition of a wide variety of concept approaches", for example? They show a pic of Magenn - where do they examine its strong and weak points? Assess its feasibility? Why do they use a photo and then not discuss it? Where's the "Across the board first principles analysis to showcase the feasible benefit frontier"?
What's their assessment of Superturbine(R)? What do they think of helium-inflated blades? Ground gen or airborne gen? Cross-axis or axial-flow? Multi-rotor or single? What features and factors of the various technologies do they think are promising? What did they decide? Are you telling me we spent 100 G's to have one more group acknowledge that there's lots of energy up there and some people are trying to harness it?
Hey, I'm still waiting for Richard Nixon to get us off foreign oil, and for David Chu to explain why after 3 decades of global warming we are still skiing in Los Angeles, and how soon we should stop buying season ski passes every summer, for the following cold and snowy winter season.
I've seen 1000 press-releases, followed by a thousand duds, Hey I'm just sayin'...
:)
Doug S.

New:

XXLite single surface kite for paraglider use: 
Ozone XXLite: Lightweight R&D

Will this kite play in systems that generate electricity or pump fluids?

Great information.Players in AWE could push R&D of such wings.

PierreB
http://flygenkite.com

If means exist for the control of the straightness of the shaft,this scheme can become a high-scale scheme.For example a kite lifter all 20 m and with control of lift to compensate wind variations at each level.The shaft being also an element of structure this scheme could be a sort of mixt between AWECS and non AWECS where main advantages should be low risks of collision between elements.  

PierreB
http://flygenkite.com

--- In AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com, "Joe Faust" <joefaust333@...

Pardon me,

    I need to change my phrases a bit.  My position is that the OZONE offer is not a true "single-surface" airfoiled wing.     This should not lessen the newsworthiness of the offer; I just need to reserve "single-surface" for wings that fully earn such description.   

The offer is probably not a true single-surface wing. Air flow aft of the stream stagnation point or separation point goes to top surface of an airfoil and to the bottom surface of the airfoil. In the video there is clear partial bottom surface material aft of the air flow separation point. This offer of OZONE is using an airfoil format that has a top surface and some bottom surface material. A true single-surface wing has not thickness except for one thickness of sheet used exactly for just one of the two, pick your choice top or bottom, but not both. The Rogallo Wing parawing is single-surface; the gliding PlaySail is single surface; the Allison kite-glider is a single surface; but the offer of subject and the Culp Wing OutLeader (though of a single fabric) are not airfoils of single surface, as they have a shaping that brings on material below the stagnation point forming airfoil surface, that is, the bottom surface of the airfoil, even if the % of full chord is small, but substantial. Differently, look to some true single-surface PGs when applying the term "single-surface" SSPG.

JoeF

I guess for a true single-surface kite, we'd need a Mobius Loop.  :-)

--- In AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com, Bob Stuart <bobstuart@...

Yes!  Serious exploration of Bob's single surface Mobius Loop or Band:  http://www.flair.monash.edu.au/publications/pdfs/lewthomhour2009jfs.pdf

However strong is the valid one-surface mathematical Mobius Loop or Band,
there has been a running culture in material airfoils that face a thin material that is not wrapped to form D-tubes or fat leading edge structures or wrap backs into a running second deck for "single-surface" crafted wings; else such wraps and forms form thick airfoils with "upper surface" and a far-away second surface that is farther away than just the thickness of the thin material. In that relaxed culture, I get, so far:

Wrap to get thick airfoil, even using a contiguous textile or sheet of aluminum, etc.,  and get double surface wing.   The wing might be double-surface for say 15% of the chord.  If a little bit pregnant, then pregnant, even if one's ear is not the pregnant site.

Electronic cameras scan by the line, so the effect is like the old focal-plane shutters.  We should be able to take pictures of cars speeding by with their wheels as forward-leaning ellipses again if we try.  

--- In AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com, Darin Selby <darin_selby@... wrote:
================= Partial answer:

Darin, the blades stay straight in actuality. The video process and the
feed of image on digital video somehow generates a virtual curving
during viewing. An expert on video and vision could probably give the
technical reason for the apparent curving.

JoeF

Container Based Renewable Energy     video 

Container-based robotic AWECS deployment.     Leave and let play; use initial charge from container's surface solar to operate deployment of pilot lifter followed by working turbine.  Various initial delivery modes could be used, pending on need.   Seed emergency landscapes with the containerd AWECS.    Mars?  Plains.  Ice plains?  Energy for emergency light or water pumping?

 

[[tag: Pacific Power Sails, Dan Tracy, HighWindHawaii, PPS ]]

OK Dave S.:
You are now the spokesman for NASA.
Where are the stated deliverables?
All I'm asking is for people to do what they say they will do.
Where do we find the deliverables?
:)
Thanks
Doug