Read your email too late...
At the very end ...
These observations are consistent with the notion thatmodel

Had I read and understood that earlier today, I wouldn't have stood so far forward in the swells...
Result: An internal influence (cockyness) pushed the board, sail and sailor system out of the range of passive control ... into catapult range.
bust the foot of the sail and harness lines, plus I got slammed into the Basin of Attraction.

Sometimes even when it's your own future at stake, there are better models of control than humans can provide

MACHINE TRANSLATION FROM ITALIAN TO ENGLISH, so some fuzzy phrases may result: 

Mario Marchitti

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1301.1064.pdf                                          [[Reply, please, while scrubbing tail message.]]

Title typo repair: 

Mothra kixel steering demo
by Rod Read on June 25, 2013

SwissKitePower

Tail detail: 

The concept I was thinking of can be seen in this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lvH3f-0QTho

I think that if there is some wind on ground it will be difficult to rotate the stem-kite.

Several proposal for the kite taking off have been discussed during these years, and some of them have been also implemented and tested in the KiteGen plant. It is not an easy task.

This was posted in KiteForum and seems to rub close to this topic: 

CONSIDER? 
Explore ciliated fuzz bottom-surface texture for single-skin wings. What will the air entrainment do to performance, handling, depowering, re-powering, etc.? Strategic ciliation? Specialized patterns of ciliation? Length and design of the hairs? Reports are invited. 

Mentioned before, but Wayne thought this neat to pass on,

http://youtu.be/AYVrJ3nBFlU

Might be wooly for uber tech folk.
If you want all the numbers.  don't watch it.

If you want to ask, Could this concept evolve into to an optimal use of material ?
give it a look

I think not.  The challenge of wind is to concentrate a diffuse energy source.  A tension structure is an excellent choice for that, but running windmills in the reduced velocity wake of other windmills is not.  Perhaps a much flatter cone would help.  Using kites to keep a torque tube from collapsing is interesting, but probably too much drag for long proportions.  Maybe there is a sweet spot in the middle of all that, if you can manage to get it launched.  It looks pretty enough to attract funding.

Hi everybody! For the moment I'am involved in one wind energy station project (a commone one). For the same project was made a very expansive research (3 years, 3 70-meters stations http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%95%D0%B9%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%92%D0%AD%D0%A1). Do you know anybody uses kite systems for such kind of researches? It may be a good idea an bring money.

Lets model it as a line-laundry of a main lifter train whilst driving a
torque cable to run a pump or generator.

Getting potential windpower-site wind-profile histories by use of kite systems? Or kite-balloon systems? Who is doing what in this sector? If anyone?

ok, balloons with small turbines for wind speed measuring. it also some kined of airborne wind generator. Some energy, produced by board-turbines, can be used for the equipment requirements. It's good chance to say that AWE is not just a theory.

A RAT (ram-air turbine) onboard  could have its output as a measure of the winds. Kytoon :: kite balloon. 

Editors and critiques are invited concerning the coverage and detail in the article that anyone may edit: 

New front page of 

Hey, a news article that did not mention SWP, Mag'n, JoEgy, or  Goo'L-Mak: 

For the sake of methods' view for a cousin to this topic, we  post here a review note about the use of wind-layer differentials by the different soaring method of  wings at both ends of a tether set where the wings may operate to crosswind mode to effect soaring, tacking, travel, energy production, practical-payload carrying.  Both types of potential ever-up soaring belong in the  FFAWE Club 

Tether two extant heavenly bodies; couple a small body to the larger one; let the small one's drag and effect alter the larger body's trajectory.  The system forms a kite system flying in the plasma stream.

That is such a device http://www.arl.noaa.gov/Texas_balloon_launch.php

Dave S.
Nothing new here.
All "Professor Crackpots" (and others) feel obligated to state that their proposed method would lower costs for wind energy. Otherwise, they have only so many rationalizations for anyone to listen to them.
(birds, noise, "urban" performace...)

An almost limitless number of energy-harvesting schemes are possible, but only ones that offer lower costs are economically viable. The good professor is cornered: he MUST look at competing costs from wind turbines and gas turbines, and beat the current 4 cents/kWh PPA price point. We've watched wind energy fall from around 20 cents to 4 cents in the last couple decades (or something close to that).

To get funding from grants or investors, the finding decision-makers need to see a projection of lower costs, or why fund a project?

As I've pointed out, almost every new wind energy concept starts out with a package of lies, whether the purveyor even is aware of that fact. Lower levelized COE is just one of the big lies.

What else is the good professor going to say? He's normally going to offer a 100% solidity solution that misses every pertinent aspect of wind energy, and instead targets phantom problems that exist only in the professor's imagination.

Therefore you see giant metal savonius turbines proposed, using maglev bearings. Why the maglev bearings? Well the good professor, as it turns out, is so completely ignorant that:
1) He doesn't realize the Savonius design is the least efficient beginner design known;
2) He thinks bearing drag is a problem with wind turbines.
3) He can't understand that a solid structure 450-feet tall could never come close to competing with a 450-foot-tall structure offering 2% solidity, with regard to cost. His 100% solidity structure might cost hundreds of millions, giving little power, which is why such a contraption has never been built. Yet the promoters are obligated to cite an orders-of-magnitude lower-than-realistic levelized COE.

It just goes to show, few fields offer as many idiotic notions, combined with endless distractions, as wind energy. Add the airborne aspect, and before long you're talking about deflecting comets and everything under the sun, since as long as there is no obvious path to lower cost energy, the instinct is to talk about every other possible problem under the sun. Diversions and distractions abound and dominate. The biggest problem under the sun for wind energy today is the falling cost of solar and NatGas.

Anyway, yes all new wind energy schemes must rationalize their existence by stating a lower levelized COE. If you understand anything about the art, you clearly see most schemes offered to radically change the art of wind energy as complete nonsense, with the absurdly-low promised COE just the easiest lie to instantly flag.

Understanding the reasons involves being able to dissect all the lies that the professor is telling himself, or all the issues he either doesn't understand or is not addressing, including his erronous assumptions, that lead to the erroneous predictions of such cost savings.

One good test is usually to tell the Professor to develop a small version and show how it outperforms existing small turbines. He hates that. That puts the ball in his court. He wants the ball to stay in your court. He'd rather talk about how economies of scale are essential for him to reach that lower COE, how the market share for small wind is too trivial to bother developing, especially since his invention is so overwhelmingly important.

How could he ever waste the time to prove it at a small scale, when global warming is such an emergency? Just don't ask him how he is going to afford to replace that 2% solidity rotor with his 100% solidity rotor, at a lower cost. He HATES that...

In truth, you can't really even have a logical discussion of any type with most of these people - they are impossible designs, promoted by impossible people!

Sound impossible? Nope, that's the way it is.
:)
Doug S.