A full panoply of mass transport by kite systems will unfold in detail.  Some mass transport arrangements will not be "relay" and some will be relay. Niche service requirements will invite some arrangement over the other.    This present "relay transport" thread  is joined with other discussion threads in the general "mass transport" theme.  In particular, rail, aerial cableway, traction, rise-let-down cyclic cableways in a kind of wave-front sliding, etc. ; and we join http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/AirborneWindEnergy/message/8827  in the mix. 

Land footprint for some crosswind-cableway AWES could approach zero. 

footprint of a kite system, AWES footprint,

• AirborneWindEnergy/message/8834
• crash zone
• anchor operations
• downing zone
• airspace use
• land use
• operations and maintenance access
• current best practices
• future visions
• free-flight AWES, FF-AWE
• Special siting cases: terrain-enhanced, offshore, hay farms,
• v

I do like a bit of extra fluff on rigging lines, looks funny and yet is so practical.

The bridle pulley guide offered by drTuba isn't the cheapest of this type of product.
However, It has definite advantages, certainly over a stock ring... the greater bending radius stops rope cores degrading... and the seprate tying position keeps the two ropes from rubbing.
The economic argument for soft shackles is a bit stretched too.
Ok with time on our hands we can get a few tied (10 minutes explanation on web... I love knots and am scared of that one)...  my dainty mouse pushing, househusbndy digits will be shredded after making two of those.

try buy a low friction rigging ring and a soft shackle online. It's more costly than the bridle pulley guide.

Thanks for clarification there Dave.
Yep I concur ... my kids can tie a figure 8 on the bite in seconds.
Super solid knot and not much strength degradation.

This kiteforum post alerted me to the potential problem with rings and line.

I'm not sure yet if this would be an issue with the line fixmykite.com were recommending...
They suggest it has a more round profile ... so I suspect it has a filled core and rings would be a problem.

(News for those familiar with wind energy - a TOUGH business!!!)
Southwest Windpower closing the doors
Last days for local turbines?

http://azdailysun.com/news/local/last-days-for-local-turbines/article_31662958-c28d-5af4-99ee-8f0e6f19f595.html
Company officials are staying mum, but it looks as though a pioneering
Flagstaff manufacturer of backyard wind turbines is closing its doors for
good.

Carol Curtis, the director of the Coconino County Career Center, said
employees were told by Southwest Windpower officials Wednesday that the
facility in Flagstaff was going to be closed and they should "leave
quickly."

Attempts by the Arizona Daily Sun to reach company officials for comment
Wednesday were unsuccessful.

The doors of the facility in west Flagstaff were unlocked Wednesday
afternoon, but no staffers were available to talk to a reporter.

Multiple phone calls to the Flagstaff manufacturing plant as well as its
administrative offices in Broomfield, Colo., outside Denver went unanswered.
The company also has offices in Germany and a joint venture in China.

Mike Sobolik, the chief financial officer for Southwest Windpower, did not
return calls from the Daily Sun seeking comment.

Recent developments point to a scaling back of Southwest Windpower's
operations, if not a shutdown.

The wind turbine manufacturer laid off 14 employees in December, one of a
series of layoffs the company has had over the last three years.

The company has sold its AIR line of turbines to a company out of Lakewood,
Colo., called Primus Wind Power, and it has also has stopped selling its
Whisper line.

It is not clear who would manufacture the company's top-selling model, the
Skystream 3.7, if Southwest Windpower were to close.

The wind turbine manufacturer also refused to take a $700,000 federal
stimulus grant to help build the next generation of its Skystream wind
turbines in 2011.

Southwest Windpower had previously considered opening new offices on the
East Coast earlier this year, when the state of Delaware offered the company
a $1.2 million grant to move into a 6,500-square-foot facility.

The company would have spent $4.5 million of its own cash on the deal, but
those plans were eventually scrapped for undisclosed reasons.

It also scrapped plans to produce the Skystream 600, a more energy-efficient
version of the company's popular Skystream 3.7 model, because officials said
the newer model was "not reliable."

Curtis said any laid-off employees will be eligible for re-employment
services through the county career center.

Joe Ferguson can be reached at 556-2253 or jferguson@azdailysun.com.

Yeah and get it funded by that airborne wind energy credit union too!
A whole nation where every delivery is from kite-supported string transport! Heck, why not! A steam punk future. Coal-powered biplanes dueling with handheld chainsaws! Supermodels swinging to work like Tarzan through the sky!

These discussions bring to mind a fantasy discussion in the 1800's of a future airline industry, delving into the specifics of how the airborne tracks will be connected to the airborne railroad ties.

Like "Stone Soup", the idea of airborne wind energy generates a thousand peripheral imagined yet irrelevant details, while nobody even tries ten easy ways to do AWE NOW, and when the soup is done, the stone is still there, unchanged.

AWE remains an "impossible" dream, no matter how simple it really could be, with the largest and most impressive companies declaring victory ahead of the fact, constrained in a self-applied straightjacket, unwilling to simply build simple machines that would just work, with nothing to show in the way of a useful AWE product.

Guys, remember, no matter how many vegetables you add, in this case the soup actually IS supposed to be stone soup. The vegetables are irrelevant. You gotta end up with the soup based on the actual stone, Not a new credit union, Not another federal grant, Not another lying aerospace entity declaring their own genius based on zero results, or on a rendering based on one day of enthusiasm, Not a new idea for a string-based transport system that would have been a fantasy breakthrough in the 1800's...

Airborne wind energy - remember? How many kWh can you make? How cheap can you do it?
:)
Focus people, focus!

--- In AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com, Rod Read <rod.read@...

"Airborne Wind Turbine" of Germany has apparently evolved its concept into an offshore dense array of LTA turbines with parallel rotating tethers to drive goundgen. This may involve licensing Doug's patent for rotating drive-rope AWES, or at least contribute R&D to that option.

The Pointillist rendering on the website is maddeningly vague-

http://www.airborne-wind-turbine.com/schwebendes_windrad_deutsch/schwebendes-windrad-dasteam.htm

Full paper is a pay-to-read deal from hourly rent to PDF  (from about $4 to $41 or so)         [I did not purchase view rights.

This space is open for European AWE players to gather and form one AWE voice for facing such as the EC. 

As a kid, I Once stole a swede, with some friends, from the farm where I now test my kites.The system should be used for agricultural purposes more ethical than that. It was a Dave S design. I redrew it. Can't believe I've been just admitted to the swede incident.

http://powerlab.fsb.hr/neven/pdf/Harvesting-high-altitude-wind-energy-for-power-production-The-concept-based-on-Magnus-effect.pdf 

Hey Brother Joe:
Magnus effect has not worked out in wind energy as far as I know.
These guys are a bunch of foreigers - ya know, funny-sounding names from strange countries? They probably even hsve foreign accents and stuff. Maybe even speaking foreign languages. They may even spit phlegm from their throat when they talk! Some of these guys seem to get some pretty strange ideas. Logic seems to be perpetually on vacation in lands with names too long to pronounce. If Magnus doesn't work very well... If Magnus hasn't turned out to be useful anywhere else, why would it suddenly be the key to AWE? I have to say, without torturing my brain to get through this article, in wind energy, in aviation, anything Magnus is suspect. My vote? I'm giving this one a thumbs-down. Wa wa wa.

A very nicely written article - thanks

--- In AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com, dave santos <santos137@...

Yeah whacky! Scotland has one more letter than America...
So how come the Welsh and Irish are so daft? hmmm tricky?

A Scottish proposal to test the Magnus effect... (*and a cool engineering must see for everyone else, even the dozy yanks)
Re-rig the Falkirk Wheel with sails.
A bit like my idea of re-purposing the London eye as a wind gen.

Shame the wheel only takes 1.5kW to turn (That's amazing!)

simplified rigidity tethering  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX6kJKjg4y0 

The "pick-and-place" parafoil rig recently identified is closely related to a family of new rigs suited to drive a groundgen or other pumping work.

Instead of a mass to be moved, the load is a workcell (interfaced with either a recoil mechanism or a short crosswind cableway). There are many variations possible, but all similarly isolate the control inputs from the work using pulleys and perhaps a string whipple-tree.

The simplest version is a multi-block (pulley) on a line to the anchored (short-stroke yo-yo) groundgen. The parafoil lines run from an anchored control-bar, thru the flying multi-block, and up to the kite. 

Many trigometric variants are possible; some offer maximum load-velocity surge with a dynamic soaring boost, others place the control in interesting locations crosswind and downwind, with even a "dogstake-flying" position where the kite launches more or less from the control location, with the groundgen as the upwind anchor.

These rigs do not loop freely, but preform figure-eights. The beauty of them is that they harness a stock powerkite, with only two anchor-points and a groundgen added. They are fairly insensitive to wind direction, although belaying across an anchor field would be a common adjustment.

This type of rig is even simpler than the older (loopable) one Roddy blames me for, while confessing to sheep-rustling; a capital offense in Scotland, until 1998.  :) Sorry if the word-picture is hard to visualize, but Roddy's video gives a sense of how simple, yet powerful, these new rigs will be. A single person should have no trouble handling a 50m2 parafoil for up to 50kW surges.

CC BY NC SA





----- Forwarded Message -----

It was not a sheep... it was a swede...
what use would I have with a sheep
mehhhhhhh!

A Kite Carousel be broadly defined as a large vertical axis transmission/generator driven by a circle of power-kites. A KiteLab Group refinement avoids crowding kites on a turntable. Instead, the kites are anchored spaced apart around the generator, each contributing phased tug inputs to a massive central crankshaft, as a "rotary-engine" of potentially GW scale.

The new rigging method for easily converting a COTS parafoil into an AWES "workhorse" can be multiplied into a Kite Carousel at minimal cost and complexity. The radial pumping rope-drives are airborne, so they don't need ground supports to keep them clear of the ground.

For a simple, cheap, early demonstration of aggregated carousel power at a MW scale, each kite could be manually flown, in-phase, by an expert human pilot. Future versions would be automated in due time, with power-kite controllers like the many in development.

CC BY NC SA

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

Learn something new each day from Rod: 

In order to speed up AWES R&D progress, an AWE Encampment strategy has been devised. The first "official" Encampment, open to all serious developers, is soon to begin outside of Austin, Texas, and will run about a month (Texas AWE Encampment (TAE)). 

A bit of explanation helps to understand why the AWE Encampment process is essential. Veteran tech developers know that real progress is fundamentally driven by a day-to-day process of hands-on experimentation. Starting from background study and marginal functionality, thousands of small improvements emerge in constant testing, a handful of key "working discoveries" are siezed on, and the result is often-enough a winning design. This is the famous Iterative Spiral, as a proven "social Genetic Algorithm" for engineering optimization.

Unlike many tech challenges, where shop-rats in a garage or warehouse in San Jose is enough, AWES operational R&D is fundamentally an outdoor activity, of vital "field-work". A specific key to productive AWE development is to have a windy location with nearby shop facilities, and build "flight-hours". Local human and social factors also count. See previous posts about what an ideal AWE R&D kite farm would be. AWE Encampments are similar in function, but with a sort of festival-event dynamic added. Kite-powered music is a special feature of early AWE Encampment theory. Kite training (and recreation) will be a synergistic Encampment attraction.

Follow-on AWE Encampments will occur worldwide, as local conditions allow. The Pacific NW will host a follow-on Encampment (after Texas). Scotland and Italy Encampments are in feasibility planning. The request for a German AWE Encampment component never got a reply from AWEC2013 planners, but a Northern EU AWE Encampment could bring together a lot of the greatest talent in a more intensive format than a conference can offer.

A movement of AWE Encampments will coordinate the knowledge harvest via social media. The Net allows to telepresence field-work, to eliminate excessive travel need. Long Encampment visits also maximize the worth of travel carbon-offsets. Many folks will be able to attend regional Encampments, as the movement matures.  Eventual "endless" AWE Encampments can even directly transition into the first permanent economically self-sustaining Kite Farms.

The open AWE Encampment model is a product of open-AWE circles working under Cooperative Principles. Therefore the use (and prevention of abuse) of the AWE Encampment (TM) model is hereby assigned to the Kite Power Cooperative as CC BY NC SA IP, to be managed for the benefit of all stakeholders.

Consider starting the AWE Encampment for your region. The first-ever event, the Texas AWE Encampment, needs you. Please help in any way you can.

Contact Ed Sapir to participate-  edoishi@yahoo-com

--------------------------------------------------

Quazi-encampment models that did not work so well-


- Short duration field demonstrations.
- Commuting to Hawaii.
- Remote "middle-of-nowhere" experiments.
- Public beaches, urban parks, congested airspaces.
- Private test sites with "not-invented-here" and "stealth-venture" biases.

Another proven bad idea, taken to the sky!
It sounds so impressive:
"Aerospace Research Institute" oooo - "institute" - big word!
Remind you of anything closer to home?

At the Windpower tradeshows we often see such fanciful and colorful turbine designs from Korea. Researchers from India have built and tested a similar machine here in an actual windfarm. We had a vertical-axis machine installed a mile South of here - it lasted maybe a year? FloWind vertical-axis turbines festooned early windfarms but none survives today...

After 50 years of throwing one "Professor Crackpot" after another at the vertical-axis turbine concept, there are virtually NONE still in operation today. But heck, why pay attention to experience or reality for that matter? Sure, you wanna make a better turbine? Start with something that completely sucks! Good idea!

I am continually amazed of the extreme degree to which:
1) wind energy is a magnet for crackpots
2) Airborne wind energy is a Supermagnet
Why do people confuse "leaving the ground" with "abandoning common sense"? Is there something about things known to completely SUCK that attracts people? All I can say is THANK GOD I have (half) a brain that WORKS! And I truly feel sorry for all these people.

"Yes we want to develop airborne wind energy so we need to start with the absolute WORST turbine design possible to insure we will fail"...
Oh My God it sounds so ridiculous and yet it is what most people trying AWE immediately do. I swear, sucky turbine ideas are like a magnet! There will never be a shortage of highly-credentialed IDIOTS (what else can you call them at some point? I mean really?) that will be endless drawn to the worst ideas - it almost seems like the worse an idea IS, the more crackpots it attracts! Look at Magenn - the worst design EVER and maybe the most publicity EVER!

By the way, how is NASA doing with their kite-flying? Do you think they are making any power yet? Of course they cannot be bothered to report on this list, now that the initial "lying" introductory portion is past, (We're going to have a wind energy breakthrough - tomorrow!) lest certain people hold their feet to a fire... and ask about "results" - which they said going in that they were (whew!) lucky they were not expected to deliver any of...

"We're going to develop a revolutionary new type of wind energy and, luckily for us, we're government-funded so we don't even need any results! How fortunate is that?" Well if you don't care about results, it is indeed fortunate to not need any. If you want to fail, you are perfectly set up for it. Great move crafting the excuse before getting started in this excuse-driven world.

We in the real world of small wind turbines have just watched the market leader, after 10 years and NREL helping them design "breakthrough" turbines, with more government funding for "certification" and at least 10 million in funding from GE Crapital, announce they have now abandoned all models and are going out of business. To this day, out of hundreds of small turbine models available, almost NONE can be expected to survive the first good storm. And that is just people trying to get a single turbine on a tower to behave properly.

This business of wind energy aint easy!
The business of lying and getting funding is far easier.

So, go ahead - lie and get funded and build something that will not work or that will quickly break - heck why not - everyone's doing it!
:)
Doug Selsam

Well I "done tried to tell you" statements of future improved wind energy devices are almost guaranteed to be LIES. I told you the teams would fail. I told you most ideas for airborne wind energy have been long-disproven on towers, or more likely, the ground (since most p.crackpots are not up to the "tower stage" yet...) "Our (vertical-axis) (sucky) turbine is SO great it can work at ground-level, in a turbulent urban environment"... (oh no not THAT again...)

We've seen SO MANY of them for SO MANY YEARS. The AWE crowd is the least likely to succeed, the most clueless of all, since most of them want to start by discarding ALL known good ideas, or are unwilling to learn what WORKS, to pursue exclusively BAD ideas... (the never-ending fight for ignorance)

It seems impossible that so many people could declare the same simple goal to make airborne wind energy a working reality, and yet almost none pursues a course that holds any promise, or even makes any sense, given what is known about wind energy now.

Oh well blogging won't do it either, but I will say, I told you going in that it would be like this. Been there, done that. Already seen this movie in a different theater...

:)
Doug Selsam

I think the way it works is that if you want to direct research, you either need bags of money, or an uncommonly pleasant personality.  Either one usurps most of the brain power that might be useful for technical work.  Rationality only gets a chance to motivate people in the rare emotional calms.  

The following article covers old basics and interesting new findings from the success of the conventional wind turbine world. There is no mention of a plague-of-liars that Doug claims characterizes the Wind Turbine Design Field.

Note that gearboxes are no longer seen as a major problem area (in EU-funded reliability studies), but enable cheaper and lighter units, which is consistent with the design needs of small AWES flygens. The Doubly Fed Generator has gained standard acceptance in conventional wind, and likely will also with AWE groundgens. 

Another interesting fact we noted before is that cyclic gravity loading on turbine blade roots, with cumulative fatigue, is the major scaling-law factor that ultimately limits HAWT scaling along current lines. The largest rotors that cope with this are far too massive to fly plausibly, so the conventional wind turbine design basis is a dead-end for large-scale AWE units, but leaves open the possibility of future triumph of wind power by mega-scale AWES based on purely tensile soft-kite principles-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbine_design%c2%a0

This new research represents a bridge from conventional wind-power engineering to the weight-discipline required for AWE-

“..."The fabric we’re developing will be tough, flexible and easier to assemble and maintain. It represents a clear path to making wind even more cost competitive with fossil fuels,” said Wendy Lin, a GE principal engineer and leader on DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA-­E) project."


...The hope for the new blade technology will be to help encourage the development of larger, lighter turbines that can capture more wind at lower wind speeds. The new approach to making wind blades would also reduce the often-pricey capital investment that is associated with installing a wind turbine as components could be built and assembled onsite, meaning design engineers would no longer face hassles with manufacturing and transportation limitations. Another bonus: the blade architecture will be built to achieve a 20-year life span and runs without regular maintenance to the tension of the fabric..."

Testing pending-

http://www.nrel.gov/wind/news/2013/2066.html%c2%a0

"This new research represents a bridge from conventional wind-power engineering to the weight-discipline required for AWE"

 

I strongly agree.When blades will become enough large,light and cheap,AWE and conventional wind turbines and also mixes between them (ASWES for example),can take off and compete with fossils.

 

I think DougS denounces rightly the ineffective designs announced in big publicity stunts,but these designs prosper above all in the field of the small turbines,or first AWE designs.Concerning AWE I agree rotating motion of flying member is probably the better way (better than reciprocating motion,more efficiency,less structural stress):turbines for AWE have not to be so different from conventional turbines.But concerning specific issues for AWE,a key word perhaps is:hydrogen.

 

So R&D for both AWE and conventional wind turbines should be made,concerning at least blades.

 

PierreB

 

 

If a rotating rigid system size is limited by cyclical gravitational loading, that can guide unit size limiting for arraying these systems.
However to minimise the gravitational dominance, consider using a stretched net cone as the mounting shaft for a multitude of light blades....
maybe like an inverted one of these ..

Alternately on a static cone...
Can flipwings be mounted around a stretched cone net to make it jerk expand and contract against a central line?
Like an emergency braking chute being set / reset , turned on and off. (Or like lifting and dropping  the rising component that smooths the opening of a sports chute.)
Too dependant on no broken lines.

Can nets of bearing rings be set on a stretched cone, hosting skybow arches, which drive other lines, pumps or gens?
Too snaggy

Every system has some form of cyclical loading. even a simple slow draggy sea water bag pumping behemoth.

Its a long process, Assessing the limitations of available solutions and solving for best fit.

Clean Energy Patent Growth Index  (CEPGI)

Invited are any notes from art world of Christo that may affect the craft in the world of AWE. 

Sharing this interesting account of Kite-Biking, which is in fact a wonderful form of AWE. Note the sound idea for a kite retraction refinement, but its usually possible to find a temporary anchor to allow walking down the kite, if under-running it with the bike does not bring it down-


----- Forwarded Message -----

DaveS,

 

One more time I disagree:technical debate comprising technical disagreement,yes in case of mutual agreement for such a debate,but public systematic questioning of AWE players, no.

 

PierreB