CoolIP index                                                          Most recent edit: Wednesday October 24, 2012

* See legal note below.

Isotropic Kite in Persistent Flight

The World Kite Museum's Indoor Kite Festival took place last weekend. KiteLab Ilwaco once again performed a public first demonstration of a key proof-of-concept prototype. Last year it was shown that an anisotropic (weathercocking) kite can be maintained aloft in calm wind by phased tugs from three fixed anchor points. This years demo was not quite so fundamental, but still portentous. It was briefly shown (at the end of the event) that an isotropic kite can also maintain flight by phased tugs (a radially symmetric Sedgewick U-FO offered by Joe Hadzicki's Revolution brand). The significance of this proof is that future megascale arrays can accept wind from any quarter without having to spin, but merely tilt from veering wind in real time.
 
The three pilots this year were Scott Davis, the founder of the festival, a small kid-star competitor named Ian, and the I-Quad star founder John Barresi. John was very intensely focused on the optimization of this concept. We concur that the flat kite tends to track horizontal and even dig down, so it needs a bit of reflex in the next iteration to improve the flight dynamics. A simple bridle refinement will do. Full-scale soft arrays will require further design refinements, but we are optimistic of the practicality of the general concept space

CoolIP*                      ~Dave Santos                 17Jan2012                     AWES5405

Comment and development of this topic will be occurring here.       
All, send notes, drawings, and photographs!

Terms and aspects:   

  • anisotropic kite
  • isotropic kite
  • phased tugging from three fixed anchor points
  • Tri-tether
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Related links and concepts:

  • phased tugging from one fixed point (see AWEIA contest)
  • phased tugging form two fixed pints (see Faust)
  • zero-wind kiting with thermal use
  • zero-wind kiting without thermal use
  • See Zen-chair-sitting video
  • Gliding wing with relaxed tether followed by tug and pull of tensed tether
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Commentary is welcome:

  • v

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