A new public guide to alternative energy is available from LAGI

How about we send little swarms of micro rotator kites up into the high skies along a high front and lower back tether

http://www.crazyplanes.de/microrotator1.wmv

They charge up at altitude and during the drop flight back down.

Release their charge to a collector and go back up the tether lines.

Bonkers, maybe, but it'd be fun to look at.

Dave S.:
Thanks for looking out for all of us. Good that citizens watch what our public servants are doing. Here's a slightly different take:

1) Let's stipulate that a simple AWE solution awaits our implementation.
2) Recognize next that such simple configuration should, logically, be scalable in the sense that small working models could be constructed and flown, just as we fly scale models of other full-scale production aircraft.

Given these facts, it would seem that the old advice "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's" might apply.

If
1) the implementation will be simple, as you have predicted, and;
2) You have a superior understanding of the technology and principles involved

then

Why not develop the superior technology at whatever small scale you can afford now, and quit talking about it?

If Makani has it wrong, will not their wasting of millions of dollars ultimately make your shoestring-budget success all that more impressive?
:)
Doug Selsam

DaveS,

Fabric AWES are expected using much fabric since in full use the time of
kite life should be about one year,probably less.With single wings
fabric costs should be decreased in half after development.Dr Fort
Felker's expression (500 $/pound) remains correct.

PierreB

--- In AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com, dave santos <santos137@... wrote:
seem like a major source of R&D investment. Believe it or not, Google,
with a five-year start in AWE, and a billion dollars for renewable R&D
still sitting on the table, is a far better prospect for general AWE
investment. Once there are a few more of us "rattling the cage", watch
Google (or some other giant) wake up to fund a new round of "balanced"
AWE R&D. Meanwhile we are still progressing rather well even without
much investment, even if its personally hard on most of us. Even
without major venture funding, at some point soon we should be able to
"boot-strap" growth upon sheer mastery of correct principles.
as they are not truly simple, nor do they perform quite as well as a
full parafoil*. They have a greater tendency to luff, so they require
better piloting (and may even be unsafe for human flight). The advantage
of slightly less weight and complexity is not really the revolution.
an ideal inertial mass for looping power strokes, especially at larger
scales.

DaveS,

"Where there is disagreement is whether aircraft can cost as little as
$5 a pound, as Fort has openly challenged us to create."$5 a pound is
(yet now) for conventional wind tower.Lifetime of wind towers is
expected to be 20 years.Seeing what elements are replaced among the said
duration then making comparisons:

-between wind tower and fabric AWES;

-between single and full parafoils;

-between fabric and rigid wings (in this case it is not obvious except
if the risk of crash is taken into account).

PierreB

Of course it is false that " converts wind energy into grid-quality, utility scale electricity,"

Method of utilization a flow energy and power installation for it 

DaveS,

"..its unfair to Fort to insist he was talking about a full life-cycle analysis..".Where??I am talking about an element of full life-cycle analysis for fabrics,with a general reference from Fort;it is not exactly the same thing.

The difference of lifetime between fabric and rigid is so important that it is necessary to refer for an equal duration (at least the lifetime of a plane,roughly 7 year).

Note:investors probably will prefer making a comparison between AWE and wind towers for ROI.

PierreB

New video on kitegen stem flying test from kiteblog
http://kitegen.com/video/2012_Feb_prove_rev01.qt

(requires Apple quicktime http://www.apple.com/it/quicktime/download/ )

Regards
Eugenio

Dave S.:
I guess my point is that you keep talking as though you HAVE a superior technology (which seems to change as your fancy takes you on any day). You imply that your understanding of this nascent art is far and above the rest. Yet with all that talk, all that superior understanding, and with you agreeing that a small scale makes the most sense for quick R & D, somehow you're not producing any solid AWE machines. I mean not even a real demo making any power. Yet you go on and on, as though it is you who have all the understanding, and the rest are not only completely misquided, but also corrupt.

When pressed, you publish a 3-second demo of something wiggling in the wind and "announce" another "new product" that nobody will buy because it really doesn't do anything, and they are not in any way ready for prime time, or for any time really.

I just think the talk and the stated superiority have gone on long enough without anything to back them up except your continued statements of superior technology, superior paradigms, vague predictions that your half-defined latest fantasy is somehow, each week, the "new final answer"...

In regular wind energy, after 10 years on another Yahoo group, we've had crackpots who announce a new pet theory every few months, with a few "toy-like" demos on head-height towers that prove nothing except that the builder is confused.

Hey great that you are brainstorming but I just want to throw a little cold water on the notion that your on-paper raw ideas are somehow, necessarily, superior to stuff that people are actually building and running. As I've pointed out many times, most everything you posit on this list falls solidly into the waste-basket of previously dis-proven wind energy ideas, except you don't know the history of the art to even see that you are repeating all the typical newbie (to wind energy) ideas and statements.

Not too much cold water, to the point of squelching creativity, but talk is CHEAP, especially with the internet, you don't even have to pay for paper and ink!

I remember the first time I read anyone on this list refer to the Betz coefficient. "Wow" I thought, "after all this time, I'm actually, for the first time, reading a single vocabulary word from the actual world of wind energy". Of course the context quickly devolved to what the heck the term even means, but hey, at least we used a real buzzword from the real world of working wind turbines!

This is like taking an advanced course in literature, and people spend the whole time in class, arguing about what the first letter of the alphabet is. God forbid we get to complex subjects like LMNOP!

:)
Good luck!

Opposite AWES

Does anyone know where I can get a small amount of Thermoplastic Polyurethane (TPU) film to build my own bladder? I'm looking for maybe 50 square feet. I live in the United States, so I wasn't sure if having it shipped from out of state would cost a lot more. I haven't had any luck finding any film that ships from the U.S.

Thanks.

Perhaps:

Thanks Joe,
I'm tempted to buy some too.
My pvc trampoline repairs abilities are poor.
Making a torus ring shape could be tricky but maybe possible for a home hobbyist type.

Ingenious idea.

NatGas is under $2.50 in the U.S., being in a huge glut of production, whereas it costs 6 times as much in Europe and Asia. Guess what's missing? A way to get all that cheap gas to paying customers halfway around the world who will pay 6 times as much for the same gas! All that oil and gas, all that fracking. The U.S. is now slated to become the largest energy exporter within a decade or so.
Hopefully that will include world-leading AWE technology.
:)
Doug S.

Eugenio:
I clicked on your link but nothing happened. Do you have it on YouTube?
:)
Doug S.

Set of folders are open for group to embellish with adds!

Highline free solo accident in Les Gorges du Verdon     video. 

Oh, boy.  If we bank all the proceeds, maybe we can buy some potable water and stay alive another year after the fracking is over.

When using a spinning generation system, taking torque to the ground, the joint on the ground has to be able to resist the torque of the kite set and yet still trace the wind and hence the tail of a spinning kite set around.

Apologies for continually posting a stream of consciousness... 

Doug,
here's youtube version
http://youtu.be/oJp9WM_hzyg

bye
Eugenio

youtube video link : http://youtu.be/oJp9WM_hzyg

,ciao

Henry,      

Cool they should make a small model and prove the concept at an affordable scale.
The good professor thprays:
"It can only work at a scale too big to build!"

J.E. Gordon notes that tension structures benefit from being subdivided into many units, because of the square-cube law affecting the weight of the end fittings.  I think that we should be testing arrays, and comparing performance and economy at various scales and frequencies. Mass production seems much easier for the small stuff.

Roderick:
I don't understand every word I read (of what you write), and you do have quite a newbie perspective with regard to airfoils and wind energy, but to me, in some ways, you are the only person who "gets it". I think your type of thinking exemplifies approximately what is needed to make AWE work, and I agree with a lot of the directions you point toward.

Too bad it takes so long to build and operate any of this stuff. If only the energy of the thousands of people now interested in AWE could be focused toward exploring sensible solutions...

Most of the workable ideas I've heard are not being built and most of what is being built is misguided, in my opinion.
:)
Doug Selsam

Thanks Doug,

Sort of like this...

And a lifter control pod...

Cousin for collaboration?