Rod:
It reminded me of Spiral Air Foil, which is an oxymoron since a spiral has no leading edge or trailing edge and does not use a "foil". The only "new" aspect of a spiral air foil is the addition of that word "foil", which is inappropriate in the first place, since no foil is involved at all. Other than that I do not understand your post.
:)
Doug S.

Dan'l:
What evidence do you have for that statement?
Can you point us to a source?
:)
Doug S.

Sorry Dave:
I stand by my assertion that I have not heard anything promising from you or Wayne. It's not my fault. Don't blame the messenger. I only say that, because you two brag so much, and are so adamant about how crucial your theories are to AWE.

After 10 years of debunking crackpot turbines, I tend to know what works and what doesn't. I don't believe in your theories claiming reasonably efficient methods to capture energy from the wind, and have seen no evidence of such efficency. I do not consider either of you as actually active in the field of AWE, and I believe your "welcome" to the CEO of Google, who may or may not even be personally involved at any level, and as far as we know, may not even know about it, is a very transparent and desperate grasp at self-glorification, trying to imply that you and the founder of Google are peers, and that only now that he is "involved" (according to you) will you shift from being as irritating as you possibly can to Makani, to attempted ass-kissing the CEO of Google, attempting to make it seem like you are not only on his level but just a bit above. "Ah, welcome children - someday you will be as wise as me"... mmm hmmm

Like I said, if you were actually involved in AWE it would be something. Please don't try to kid the kidder: shaking a self-winding watch using a kite does not really consititute solid AWE research. It is just one more way you can make barely plausible statements in your endless effort for self-glorification without having to ever produce any real power. Any idiot could lift a self-winding watch with a kite, right?
:O.....
Doug S.

For those wishing to investigate licensing open source hardware
It's worth looking at
http://mach30.org/open-source-hardware/

For those of us wishing to showcase our work ...
http://2013.oshwa.org/participate/
might be worth considering

Sure Dave S.
Ever seen a super-enthusiastic sports fan? Yelling in the stands, screaming at the coach from 500 feet away, studying the players, nitpicking every move from their favorite teams?

That screaming sports fan, however much he may yell, is not an NFL player, not on a team. He imagines his theories about the game are superior, but has never coached or played the game. He knows all the gossip surrounding each player, tries to get to know as many sports stars as possible. He confuses playing ability with personality, unable to distinguish between them. He loves to argue loudly in the stands, between beers.

But he's not really an athlete. In fact he's not even really in shape to play. His true skill is quite limited. In his own mind, he is a legend, but he can't throw a pass more than a few feet. He just "feels like a sports star" but could never make it through 5 minutes of spring training.

There's a difference between doing it, and screaming about it.

To Dave S., the screaming sports fan in the stands:
"Hey Ref - That player was offsides! Where's the flag?! The Ref sucks! If I was on that field I'd show 'em how ta play the game!"

There you go trying to make it all about personalities again.
Because Dan'l was "agreeing with Rod" it removes any requirements for accuracy?

The Archimedian screw has been around since, well, Archimedes. That was 2000 years ago. Since then it has been amply applied, as a partially-enclosed pump, for raising water to a higher level. It has never found a use when not at least partially-enclosed.

Those screw-based water pumps were powered by what? Low-solidity wind turbine rotors. The Archimedian screw was then used to impart movement to water. The part that COLLECTED the fluidic energy was a low-solidity rotor, like we use today for lift, propulsion, and collecting energy.

So, as far as I can see, people who are not IGNORANT figured out that the best use of a screw was pushing a fluid, whereas that same mechanism was powered NOT by another \Archimedian screw, but by a low-solidity wind turbine rotor. That has been well-for over a millennium.

Nice of you to try and make an excuse for Dan'l, saying he has even anecdotal evidence, but anecdotal evidence is what ALL the crackpot idiots who refuse to look at history claim to have.

In this case, I see no evidence of even anecdotal "evidence". All I see is people who have proven they know little, if anything, "just saying" that a non-enclosed Archimedian screw is "better at harnessing a flow than producing a flow", with notyhing to back it up, except "Rod said".

Well then why have these screws always been used for PRODUCING a flow? Why have they never been used for COLLECTING energy? Is it because you two morons know something that everyone else missed in the past 2000 years? Why weren't Archimedian screws placed into the air, to power the Archimedian pumps, if they are better at collecting energy than imparting energy to a flow?

Dave S., if you could make sense for even a moment, it would be refreshing. Meanwhile, I have to admit, your endless "fight for ignorance" is great entertainment!
:)
Doug S.

Try this one:
Aerodynamics of Wind Turbines [Hardcover]
Martin O. L. Hansen (Author)
http://www.amazon.com/Aerodynamics-Wind-Turbines-Martin-Hansen/dp/1844074382/
List Price: $120.00
Price: $84.89 & FREE Shipping. Details
You Save: $35.11 (29%)

Kite drill set  by Rod Read, May 16, 2013

Hoisting a wind wall by Rod Read, May 17, 2013

• wind walls for soaring model gliders and for manned hang gliders
• wind walls for lifting AWES
• wind walls for shadowing
• wind walls for channeling flows
• wind dams
• global movement of wind wall for driving works
• Hoisting a wind wall by Rod Read, May 17, 2013

"To enjoy a good reputation, give publicly, and take privately."

Chance to post an opinion in one of the Google[x]  noticing articles: 

Ha ha ha Dsve S. - "Allergic to facts" Yes Dan'l, please stay away from facts.(?) Books on wind turbine aerodynamics are on the forbidden reading list, in the noble fight for ignorance.
I just heard a funny one:
An optimist, falling from a 10-story building, has the same statement at each floor: "Everything OK so far"...
:o.....

I remember when Jeffrey Greenblatt from Google.org contacted me after my PopSci Airborne Wind Energy Invention of the Year 2008 (June issue, centerfold), saying all they had to decide was whether to fund me or give me a grant. I never believed it. Have you noticed how worthless Google searches have become these days? I think Google ought to figure out how to do a WAY BETTER job at searches.

I tried looking up a phone number or e-mail for a county official using Google the other day. After 15 minutes, nothing. Completely worthless. 10 years ago I could easily find people using Google or any search engine - now all you get are 1000 links of companies offering to sell you the information.

Trying to find a local store that carries something you need? Worthless. You might as well dig out the old paper yellow pages, or waste half-an-hour trying to find it on Google.

The other day I told a friend, frantically and futily trying to find where to locally purchase the simplest item, using Google, "It's worthless - you will have a million times better luck just asking a real person - go down the street to a related business and ask a HUMAN BEING where to find what you are looking for".

If I hadn't discovered this a few years back I would still be paralyzed at my desk, having built nothing, with no sources for anything, thinking endless Googling was the answer. I had quickly discovered that real people have the information you need, while Google has 1000 robotic hits that are completely worthless and will waste your entire day for nothing.

After a couple hours(!), my friend was tearing his hair out from frustration. I thought he was going to go completely insane! He finally took my advice and went down the street and asked a real person at a business related to his object of quest. Well lo and behold they not only had the answer, they had what he was looking for at 20 cents each.

So after 2 hours of completely wasted time trying to find something that is probably available at 100 places within 10 miles, he found his source in 3 minutes by "stepping away from the computer" and asking a real person.

I'm actually completely appalled at how worthless many (not all) searches on Google have become. If I want to find a local store that carries something, why can't I specify that, rather that getting returns from a blogger in Timbuktu?

Great that Google is getting into other fields, but I would advise them to figure out what people really need in searches, becuase they may be making money now, but at some point, someone is going to come along with a search engine where you can actually find what you're looking for and give them a run for their money.

What say you?
:)
Doug Selsam
http://www.selsam.com

Hi Dan'l
You mean like Telling Dave S. he should start reading books on how to become a cop? Ha ha ha - that was a very funny instance of "taunting folk with nasti personal attack upon character" - welcome to the world of internet sarcasm! Seems like you are pretty good at it yourself.

You are probably right though, as P.J. Shepard once pointed out to me, "If you roll around in the mud with pigs, people will mistake you for one of them." Oink, oink.

I gotta say, I know she's probably right.
Meanwhile, I've tried to explain it.
First of all we have to be able to have a little fun with this, or what's the point, right? Do you think I haven't taken my share of good-natured ribbing over the years? Sarcastic jabs waiting for a witty retort? This is what makes the internet fun! Hey, it's all good! We smile and shake hands when we meet in real life, don't we?

I did explain how, after 10 years of debunking Professor Crackpot turbines, the crackpots all sound the same right? And I've tried perhaps hundreds of times to steer people in the right direction in a friendly way, but guess what we wind-energy-debunkers have found over and over again? The "Professor Crackpots" are the ones who can be counted upon to immediately steer ANY discussion of known factors in wind energy into a personal attack.

The Crackpots can always be counted on to find some nasty names to call the truth-tellers, then invoke the name "Wright Brothers", implying that their goofy non-performing monstrosity is somehow, with no facts to back it up, a breakthrough equivalent to the dawn of powered flight, which "proves" they "must be right" since the Wright Brothers also faced skepticism.

Now a moment's reflection will tell you that not every whacky idea is equivalent to the Dawn of Flight, that the Wrights were a once-a-century kind of unique phenomenon, but that doesn't stop the Crackpots from insisting that their non-workable, previously disproven nonsense is the next "Dawn of Flight".

Why? Well, they don't want to know about any information in the hundreds of books on wind turbine design, as a start. Knowing, or discussing, factual information on what's been learned in wind energy over the past 3000 years almost always immediately shoots holes in whatever "new" idea the good professor may be promoting at any given moment, and usually their latest "pet theory" has been disproven hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago, if they would just look it up.

Therefore, to bring facts related to wind energy, to a crackpot discussion of wind energy, is not welcome. The result is typical: the discussion turns to name-calling. The people with facts and experience are usually called "intolerant", "without vision", "stuck in the mud with old ideas", you know what I mean. By now you've heard it for years too.

But what you haven't seen after all these years now, is a single Watt produced by these name-calling Wright Brothers wannabes. They produce a lot of nasty names, just no power.

Now when you claimed to "like books with facts", you may have noticed that you were immediately castigated by our resident Crackpot-in-Chief, for bringing up two unwanted factors in the same sentence:
1) books
2) facts
To combine the two: saying you LIKE books WITH facts, was just too much for the head crackpot to tolerate, for even a moment.

Since you have been promoting a high-solidity rotor design for a few years now, then finally mentioned "books with facts", I tried to supply you with the name of a book that has the exact facts you need to understand that the original idea of a rotor indeed had 100% solidity, but that the spiral had been improved since then, by the addition of airfoils (whose name you cite without actually using them) so that much better performance may be obtained, using far less material, by reducing the rotor solidity to around 2%.

People act like this is just MY opinion. Nope, I didn't make it up. As a matter of fact, I started out just like anyone else, assuming the more surface area I could put out there, the easier things would be, and the better they would work. But of course, having access to "books with facts" I quickly overcame that naive beginner state. I think it took about 10 minutes, back in the 1970's, the moment I received my first "book with facts" called "Wind machines" in the mail.

Even someone as dumb as me is smart enough to realize that a multi-billion-dollar industry now powering a good fraction of our world, just might have a few things already learned, and that I might be better off at least checking what had already been determined, before going off half-cocked, thinking I had invented something new, only to find out later that I could have saved a lot of time by looking it up first. In a BOOK, with FACTS, like you say. Good call Dan'l. :)

So, you said you like books with facts, Dave S. says you are bad for saying you like books with facts, and you say I'm bad for responding to your statement that you like such books, with a book recommendation that is full of the exact facts you would need to debunk your own previously-disproven hypothesis, and grow to the next step, perhaps heading up a branch of the SuperTurbine(R) effort at some point when you realize it is really what you mean by SpiralAirfoil, but you just aren't quite there yet. But hats off to you for getting that close. You are almost there! IWILL be grateful for your help. You da man.
:)
Doug S.

Saeed Boyerahmadi, Nima Amjady, Abbas Rezaey

Part of the authors' conclusion:

Heck, no.  If it describes intermittent flying across the wind and upwind at all, it classifies it as high-drag, along with parachutes.  It only considers using mechanical energy from the kite to turn an electrical generator, not a water pump. More seriously, it completely misses the option of a long-stroke pump, hauling a tank up a hill to a reservoir.  That would fit into another useful class: Integrated generation and storage systems.  I don't see any of the railway carousel or zip line variations getting a graceful link, either.  

I'm not an organization, and I'm not looking for funding.
I have an expansive, wind-powered facility, multiple test sites in California, 100% reliable (Which is almost unheard-of) turbine models now developed and tested for years, and I can build flying wind turbines in my sleep for a few pennies. Well OK, a couple bucks. (There, did I brag enough?) Now if I could only find some time to work on them...

Wayne, you've told me to watch for your future work. As I've pointed out here on-list, I wasn't too impressed with what I heard from you at the first AWE conference, but I keep an open mind. I don't know whether you'd feel comfortable sharing what direction you are pursuing, or considering pursuing lately, would you? But if so, I'm sure everyone would like to hear more.
:)
Doug S.

He proposes

When I'm looking for something local I'll add the zip code to the search,
like "high temperature bearings 48335".
Not perfect but much better, you can get a map and select the results
closest to you.

If you're looking for something technical try Thomas Register.
Used to be a huge set of paper catalogs, now it's a web site.
<www.thomasnet.com You can specify which state to search in.

Andrew King
King Technical Services

Skybow rotary arch kite testing  by Rod Read