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Anchors and Arches Notes
Pierre,
Notes about your kite arch questions-
An anchor circle is very cheap compared to a full circle track of the same
size and strength. Its quite simple and practical to operate powerful kite
arches from just a few anchors in a circle.
Mothra1 arch-ends are a single metal ring on each side. Shackles clip
nylon belt or rope leads from anchors to arch ends. Its basic rigging,
nothing fancy.
Moving an arch end from one anchor to another is by attaching a new arch
lead and transferring the load from the old lead to the new. This is
common manual roustabout work very similar to many industrial operations,
but is not an automated process.
As manual methods are overpowered by scale, direct control of special
megascale belay machinery would be developed. Mega-vehicles might be the
arch rotation basis. Full software-based automation would be last to
develop. Keep in mind that large power plants always need human workers,
who are still the best operators of many large processes.
Pulleys and a crossline can transfer arch tension from the upwind side, to
haul the downwind side "to weather" (sailing term), so that rotation
between anchors can be done with the arch's own power. Much less powerful
winches serve for this method.
All True: A single-line AWES is easier to rotate, but elaborate flight
controls are required to avoid crashing due to yaw instability and
actuation failure (including saturation). If the single line parts, a
dangerous runaway kite results. An kite arch has yaw stability, and does
not crash by the single-line yaw failure-mode. It does not runaway if one
tether parts, but self-kills reliably and remains tethered at the field.
Comment and development of this topic will be occurring here.
All, send notes, links, drawings, papers, videos, plans, safety-critical
findings, and photographs!
- Terms and aspects:
- Related links and concepts:
- Commentary is welcome:
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