Brilliant, Can't wait to see more detail Dave S. Guying, anchoring, flip wings, wingmills the lot of course. ... even whatever a cymatic Tyvek is.

I'm trying to make a parametric fit model for rope meshes suspended by catenary lines onto defined anchor points... Whether valley (super tight) or kite rigged, it could be really useful for design, testing and control.

The two phases tugging at the anchors... is that from having the flip wings mounted to two pairs of guying lines? The phase being the timing difference between front and back turning to the next direction... or is it flipwings on two sets of guylines?

To provide for optimal top line tension, Arch kites will probably evolve ... flattening and thinning at the top, more bulging and layered out at the 10 and 2 clock positions.

Exciting

Dear Dave,

Thank you very much for your detailed answer to my post.

This is exactly the point I was trying to make: It took a quarter of a century to develop a centuries old, existing and proven technology from where it was when Growian was build to the point where its initiators wanted it to be.

I am totally convinced that AWE is feasible and I hope it will provide GWs at one point in the future - possibly with plants that have a few MWs each. But I am equally convinced that you do not get there by "megascale" visions but by starting small and improving at growing over time.

May I add "false imputations" (see "false memories") to the list of reasons not to post to this forum? The "how easy it was for you" part is already covered by the "personal attacks" reason :)

Anyway - back to the point:

Growian has been used by lobby groups and politicians for years to "prove" that large scale wind energy is not feasible and will never be able to provide significant input to the energy supply and thereby definitely harmed the progress and many investors willingness to bet on this horse. My point is that anybody trying to go MW before having KWs installed will live a similar disaster as Growian was and has the potential to cause similar damage to the AWE industry.

Which brings me back to the original point ("what it will take for XYZ to post in AirborneWindEnergy?)

Ever thought why _all_ of them stopped to do so? Your reply to Joes question actually contains more and better answers than mine. Here are a few hints: "engineering limbo", "Plucky little Daidalos Capital", "shady pay-to-play AWE world".

While your analysis of some of the weaknesses might be accurate and could trigger an interesting discussion - do you honestly think you will get an answer to your post if you just keep treading on their toes long enough? What might work with Doug - will not work with everybody else ;)

First of all - just in case you had a different impression: I am not related in _any_ way to anything at Ampyx. Why they do or do not do certain things is not up to me to explain.

All I am is somebody with a strong interest in AWE longing for a forum where everybody involved in the topic feels encouraged to post to. When I found this place a long time ago I was excited. Over the time however I got more and more alienated and frustrated with what I see. I was hoping to trigger and maybe be part of a process that transforms AirborneWindEnergy into what I hoped it would be.

If what I said came across as lecturing anybody I do apologize as this was not my intention.

I have looked at _all_ of these experiments and found some of them very promising and inspiring. Thank you for sharing.

That wish to urgently get to terrawatts is what reminded me of Growian.

Btw. what I would love to see is some analysis on "lift/m2" or "lift/USD" or a comparison on how this concept is better than let´s say the Kody kites that have been used to provide lift for many purposes in the past. Did your experiments show the better stability over single kites?

I honestly admire you for your contributions to AWE - hopefully in one point in time I will be able to pay something back. The question however was "what it will take for XYZ to post in AirborneWindEnergy"?

After all I guess all it would take is for you (by far the strongest contributor to this place) to exercise some benignancy on those that can not live up to your high ethical standards but might still contribute valuable input if not being pole axed any time they try to.

no hard feelings
/cb

My Yahoo account is from the 90ies when YIM was still used. Real names were not really popular on instant messengers and the "snapscan" was in front of me when I needed to come up with a nick.

In the good old times of Usenet I was a strong proponent of real names. Today I teach my kids to never leave more personal information than needed anywhere and that "nothing to hide" is a broken concept in the age of Facebook, Google and data mining.

Anyway, I have PMed you my real name to show I am not trying to troll but really just wanted to answer Joes question.

None - all my bets are on you!

I am afraid you will have to fine-tune your guessing skills:

Bright? Just smart enough to be able to tell a genius from a fool.

Fourteen? Much closer to forty. English is my third language so I guess some clumsy wording might have put you off.

Bear judgment? So far I am bearing you judging me with your wild guesses pretty well. You can safely assume that I am emotionally mature and stable - no need to go easy on me.

Educationally well prepared? I hold an engineering degree of RWTH (German minor-league wannabe copy of the MIT ;) with a focus on "Energy" - on paper I could design you anything from a wind turbines to a nuclear power plant - I very much prefer the former. I have been earning my lunch in the IT industry however most of the time so please do not make me solve flow equations to prove my claims.

/cb

--- In AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com, "Joe Faust" wrote: * Vertical lift by kite systems * AirborneWindEnergy/message/8077 * Lift items and then drop them * Lift platforms, living quarters, aircraft * Lift water to let out for fire fighting or wetting plants or people. * Lift seeds for dropping into welcoming soil. * Lift large bulky items from one place and let the item down in another place. * Lift water to cool the water; bring the water back down for use. * Lift hang gliders as a launch method. * Lift AWES wing sets into higher wind levels * Lift cameras for aerial photography. * Lift a mass for dropping to crush itself or to crush other items. * Lift pole ends and tower ends. * Lift lumber for moving the lumber from one place to another. * Lift animals out of ravines. * Lift harvested crops from one place and let the load ride the main tether back to a processing center. * Lift batteries to be charge aloft by wind or solar or both; then let the batteries back down for use. * Lift people for view pleasure. * Lift observers. * Lift food to keep the food cool in cooler upper airs. * Lift the top end of a recreational climbing rope. * Lift large catch nets * ? Please send your kite-system-lifting notes to Editor@...

Deviation from the subject and the resulting sumptuous selection of the suitable ideas are just two that come to my mind.

/cb

I'm a few days behind on reading this list in detail - some other alligators exited my swamp - but when I do think of getting back to contributing, it is with a sinking feeling that anything Dave does not agree with, and can't refute, he will thoroughly bury with volume.  Thus, I turn to Homer Simpson for inspiration.  "When you don't like your job, you don't quit, you just do it really half-assed."

Thanks Dave S,
Is your key point here...
An ideal overall kite system oscillation may take the form of a resonant kite lattice with entrained bulk flow as the spring-mass medium.

To me that suggests, ideal design balances our means of elevating and holding transducer driving surfaces
with the dynamic needs of each explicit generation scheme...

e.g. lift a driving kite how it wants to be lifted, so that it can pull how it pulls best...

In the case of trying to gain the most efficiency from a drogue and a flipwing
The problem I see with a drogue and flipwing combo is this,
A drogue is held with ONE upwind, slightly up pointing connector in tension, so that = force vector direction

(please correct if I am wrong here...)
A flipwing works going across wind (left to right or even up and down) with tethers at it's long ends. The loading force on flipwing tethers is cyclical ...
e.g. Looking at the top tethers on a left to right flipping wing,  the force acts down and left, then down and right, then down and left, then...

The drogue block needs supporting architecture, a drogue faces apparent wind.

Consider rigging an arch as 1/2 a drogue? or even two halves of a drogue, jointed at the top with splayed ground tethering.

Basically I reckon a mothra could take a muckle big shock loading down and right at the 1/2past 10 and  down and left at the ½ past 1 positions.

Flipping inside of drogue / arch edges , the whole shape can adjust to apparent wind implied by the collected mass on the flipwings.

Trying to influence the steering from Inside the arch / drogue is much harder than from the single upwind tether.

But there is still force imbalance if everything acts in 1 direction along 1 catenary / gangline.

Previously I had suggested a single tensioned top catenary between ½ 10 and ½ 1

Now I see splitting a mothra arch / drogue into an inflating deflating bivalve mollusc form might give a more balanced, complementary and symbiotic dynamic.

Collected flipwing muscles pull the driving ligament at spread (umbo) feet. An exoskeletal shell  of compound arch structures. Two or more arches on top of the flipwing gangling inside the main arch help to stabilise lateral movement the muscle induce at the top of the arch.

Generation can be achieved on the inhale and exhale. To inflate our system a gang of RHS flipwings drive to RHS, LHS to LHS. At the top our single gangline is stretched to it’s tightest, the arch sides at their most swollen.

If the flipwings are ganged vertically... synchronous timing can be done like this...

At the bottom the collected  flipwings are bound to the front of a near horizontal figure of eight driving rope run around near horizontal bullwheels. When the flipwings have gone too far they tighten too much to hold form, flip and drive back toward the centre area. (innermost flipwings are necessarily shorter than outermost to maintain timing and catenary line tension uniformity)

If the flipwings are ganged sloped out from the top centre down to the feet... You may not need LHS and RHS synchronicity ... just letting  the wings flutter in the currents like a coral creature may yeild a more productive generation.

Our actuators / power transducers are ideally on the ground, near the feet / umbo. They can be happily tugged or spun all day however efficiently they match the muscle flipwing driver dynamic.

--- In AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com, dave santos wrote: Opening shock of a high speed parachute is a spectacular instance of rapid mechanical power transductance. A shocked drogue for an instant carries high tension comparable to a far larger static drogue.�We noted this shock-effect before, but without spotting an AWES principle.� Reversing the inertial point-of-view, one sees that a�high-speed jerk load on an inflated low-stretch drogue creates a shock effect, with the drogue's tensile resistance jumping exponentially with load velocity. A ball of pressurized hot air and pocket of thin cold air is momentarily created during this "pop" event, compounding the membrane tension spike.�In the instant of high-tension, the jerk force�at the drogue leader�can be revectored by a corner block�to another node�at high efficiency. Many other useful tricks seem possible, like passing along sharply pulsed energy better, over longer distances, than a flabby pulsing can. Many simple kite and parachute rigging details exist to spread or concentrate shock loads. We can mostly dispense with common complications used to buffer shock-loads (like opening shock mitigation in skydiving) unless the shocks are just to violent, then these methods can serve to tailor the shock pulse. This explosive popping is somewhat like the firing of an IC engine.�A snappy noise is a byproduct of a shock-based AWES. Big soggy versions will sound like booming surf Flipwings provide natural antinode shock jerks for drogues to act as shock nodes, for a wind-driven harmonic.�The shock pulse cycle can act as a sort of mechanical "charge pump". An ideal overall kite system oscillation may take the form of a resonant kite lattice with entrained bulk flow as the spring-mass medium.� Thermodynamic efficiency of the early prototypes (since 2008) is not that impressive (the waste is hard to measure), but getting better, and the unit energy seems dirt cheap. Thanks for waiting on the next round of pictures and videos coming soon. CC BY-NC-SA

To be fair,
I sometime think you're a team of robots Dave S.

It also gives a sweet way of being able to scale up,,,
Just like the mollusc grows a new layer year on year

Add another skin on top of the first shell time and again.

...sounds more like an approach that I have heard about in Biology - works well for mother nature since she has more time and resources than we have.

In Engineering you have to take design decisions all the time and only get to test one or two. Especially the for profit players have to do that since their investors will not be willing to sponsor a "test everything" approach.

/cb

Cover the lines, kites, joins, blocks, bits and pieces in RFID tags
http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/Supply-Chain/Radar-reader-spots-RFID-tag-location-at-a-distance 
Map them with radar.

or

like the boot idea but further range
encode tethers and control lines with individual reflection patterns (a line identifier and length number)
what can be seen by ladar can be read and a best guess system state generated...
This way overall curve can be determined by the relative positions of two or more points on the line.

A structure a bit like this video  may result...

Good idea. Make an unobservable system observable or at least improve it. Simplifies control problem immensely. It would be interesting to see what is being done these days in the space community on large solar arrays in orbit. When I was involved many years ago our major concern was how to steer large very flexible arrays in orbit with out inducing instabilities. Having a large number of distributed feedbacks would help in both cases.

I wouldn't let that video guide you too much Dave S...
The parameter being adjusted looks like gravitational effect,
which even ancient Mayan technology couldn't control...
I may be wrong, we'll find out tomorrow.

Static feet require the airborne element to be able to conform to the wind field. Morphing a tensile stiff wide arch ... probably unobtanium.
Repositioning upper layer lofted component azimuth with belaying from the ground ... possible but friction heavy and may need unwinding. Also makes whole system recovery very tricky.

A circle of ground based possible feet sites seems a much more convenient solution (Not necessarily a full track but belaying between enough anchors on the circle line)

--- In AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com, christopher carlin wrote:

Yeah, we could get some folk who know more about it to look at it...

http://www.saiip-vision.org/tyang/papers/TaoYang_CVPR05.pdf

http://cvrc.ece.utexas.edu/Publications/Object_tracking_in_an_outdoor_enviroment.pdf

http://robotics.caltech.edu/~jerma/research_papers/fast_robust_tracking.pdf

RFID is maybe still slow looking from these studies ... or prone to signal deterioration.
Anyone here handy with Ladar vision, as used by autonomous vehicles?

Ok, This picture  has got me excited 

Here's the terrible url if the link fails.
(http://api.ning.com/files/VItOCMUEpGOgb4DGkOfqKHUPUd7coWukTn5ASrIg*-cNbpiVZ8mMXOwe-PNbwRm-lcgkQ7SD2Q0gxvTdu*uwS-9QL8venHyt/hs.png)

It suggests a method to reliably develop a ground array of winders able to control arch forms reliably.

We know that winders placed up on an arch structure can control a branch line from being mounted on the main trunk loadpath... twigs can be controlled from branches... leaves from twigs...

but with a circlip and hoop (think fishing rod eyes (or hoops, multiple eyes on one crimp)) device, crimped onto the main loadpath to guide the branch, allowing it to split off a pre-determined points... a branch line length and relative tensions can be set on the ground (branch lines run the whole length up and over the arch path)

You can set arch Lift / Drag  in real time

Attachments :

more detail from uk advisors

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCVkQGf0AKA&feature=youtu.be

Note from Doug Selsam: 

Note the symptomatic reflexive retreat to denial of facts (citing a "fallacy", then citing "The Wright Brothers") (in the first sentence) when confronted with ANY actual fact from the world of wind energy.

The real point of note here? That today's "pioneers" are clueless that their major ideas have not only already been tried, funded with millions of dollars, but resulted in "the biggest ripoff in the histoy of wind energy." Today's pioneers are mroe comfortable knowing nothing of the history iof wind energy so they can pretend their old ideas are new ideas. The blind leading the blind.

Note: nobody said a laddermill can't work. All that was presented was the FACT that it has been tried twice on a fairly large scale, with ample financing, and subsequently described as the biggest ripoff in the history of wind energy by veterans who operate windfarms. After all that work, actual windfarm operators ask if it ever made any power whatsoever. Facts. Ignore them. They are too "factual". Stay in the world of fantasy.

One could just say "I hate facts" and "The Wright Brothers".
That is what ALL newbies say, over and over and over and over and over again.

The appropriate response would be this:
When Ockels first announced the "breakthrough" of the Laddermill:
As a point of fact, that has been tried twice in well-capitalized efforts in actual windfarm settings. The results have been disappointing. While these results do not guarantee failure of an airborne laddermill AWE concept, it would be silly to move forward without a thorough study of these previous attempts. Obviously, one is best knowing what did not work so as to be able to overcome the previous difficulties. There would obviously be no point in ignoring valuable information and data, so one might avoid redundant work.

But there can be no appropriate response if there is no recognition of the facts that something has been tried at all. Why in all the discussion of "Laddermill" have we never heard that it was tried twice before in highly-capitalized windfarm projects? That it was deemed to have been the biggest ripoff in the history if wind energy?

Simple answer: ignorance. Nobody in the supposed field of airborne wind energy has even a clue about most any simple fact from the world of wind energy. Every conversation is based on complete ignorance. There are no players. Nobody knows anything. NASA rides in like the cavalry, and yet is as confused as the rest of the field. If they are not the cavalry then they might just be the ultimate punchline.

Someone talks about using kites to pull threaded tethers through ball bearings to turn a generator - what the heck do you think a propeller is? You don't need ball bearings, it uses air molecules. Ouch, another fact!

People take DaVinci's vertical airscrew sketch, with its well-known problem of 100% solidity, well-known to never work, for 500 years now, and patent it as a wind energy solution. Why? Can't they read? Do they think after 500 years of not working, the idea will suddenly work? That they are the first person who has ever thought of such an obvious yet also obviously unworkable concept?

Wayne German issues a Challenge to Makani (at least whomever is left alive - heck we don't need another Solyndra, right?) that "experts" should judge his concept superior. The same experts that said the Honeywell turbine was good? That Kleiner-Perkins losing FloDesign concept was worth federal funding?

Note: Wayne and his friends don't just BUILD one and SHOW everyone, despite the statements of mastering kite technology by so many here, it is one more "impossible to actually build, but no problem bragging about it" idea - what happened to the microwave power transmission from non-ground-tethered multiple kites? Too hard to build?

NASA scolds me for even saying they won't listen - they say "write a paper". Isn't that the problem? People writing endless papers, yet unable to think their way out of a paper bag?

I don't have time for an endless battle of wits with unarmed people, and cannot take the time to post here every day. I'm out building wind energy solutions.

While NASA gets an honorable mention in Popular Science for trying to survey the AWE space, or for imitating the other unimaginative kite-reelers, I won a 2008 Invention of the Year for BUILDING and FLYING a steady-state airborne wind turbine. That was 4 years ago. I didn't have to survey anything, just pick one of 10 easy ways to do AWE and build it in a few days, for a few hundred bucks, in my garage.

Want another way to do AWE? Give me another weekend to build it. Want 10 ways? Let's go! I have them. Is anyone really interested in solutions? Why ignore the place where the answers can be found?

To me it is pitiful that highly-funded teams are mentally stuck at the stage of burning their fingers by friction of a kite string, trying to calculate how mush power they COULD produce, if only they WOULD produce any.

I still have not seen a study even showing that it could be economical to produce electricity from winches and reels even if one has a completely free source of 100% available, unlimited pulling force at ground level. In other words, forget the kites - can it even be economical to generate electricity by pulling strings in the first place? I have not seen any evidence of it. It is merely assumed. Why? Let's keep the money flowing.

"Experts" from outside the world of actual wind energy approved everything from the Honeywell turbine to Magenn. Does anyone here consider Magenn a player in airborne wind energy? Then why is their image used over and over to promote AWE? So everyone can see that the field of AWE is mentally stunted? Unimaginative? Noncomprhending of even any basic facts of wind energy? Magenn- a player or a liar? A Player or a troublesome spectator masquerading as a player? How 'bout NASA? REALLY a player, or just going through the motions? Flying kites like the rest?

How many ACTUAL players ARE there in AWE? I think we could count them on one hand or less. Mostly this is a field of dreams. And most dreams make no sense whatsoever when you wake up.

I have 10 easy ways to do AWE

I can build working steady-state AWE systems in my sleep and at the drop of a hat. They work the first time with no questions.

I can identify the major questions that need to be researched, that nobody is asking.

Getting the right answers starts with asking the right questions. Nobody is. Remember, I was already thinking through most of the problems today's "players" are only now stumbling through as a teeneger decades ago. I've thought most of today's missteps decades ago. I'm actually appalled and disturbed at the lack of acumen. It makes me feel like having even the slightest talent or inclination to be able to build a working wind energy system of any kind is some sort of huge gift - weird. Wind energy is so simple it makes me wanna puke to see so many people endlessly making it seem so complicated, endlessly ignoring all that is known, endlessly repeating the mistakes of the past while never even knowing these mistakes were already made. Endlessly pulling out the spectre of "The Wright brothers" in response to any and every fact that is ever discussed, as though invoking that name comprises some sort of magical shield against facts.

If any actual player would like to make actual progress, fast, please contact me. We'd have to sign some NDA type documents to get started.
Anyone can make quick progress in this field. I say: "Let's DO IT".
:)
Doug Selsam
714-749-3909
PS now I gotta quit this group again as (and I hate to say this but...) it takes up way too much otherwise valuable time, unfortunately.

Excellent analogy,

For full systole of a kite bi-valve pump the initial triggering is when the outer wall reaches a maxima detected as a line a tension / angle / windspeed relationship...
Trigger each flipwing muscle serially along it's driving loadpath, timed to avoid tangles(microprocessor and actuator in series at the tip of each flipwing )

Reflect the signal back along the line for diastole action.

Does the heart beat faster in strong winds? as more mass moves through all that sail.
Does it have to be tuned tighter?

Hearts have amazing longevity, but the reversal of operation, pushing fluid through to get electricity out is not going to work well on a heart model.


It may have longevity but
Is a collected flipwing set generating as much power per sqm sail as a fast rotating wing? doubt it.
A flipwing has a short phased acceleration, rotation is near constant.
A ganged collection of flipwings will have some going one way and some going the other at suck / blow change time.

How do you make the wind move loads of magnet close past loads of the same wire.?
Loads of small generation transducers?

I think I still like lifting simple spinny things even at fairly large scale.

Terms: 

Yeah, sorry for taking it so far the biological way...
 Just stating,
 Triggered control signal processing of kite walls , as an overall  large collected array inflator/ tugger / pump device
Can be automated by simple small algorithmic device actuators on the kixel level.
Preferably physically and not electronically actuated as we discussed before...

The systolic naming metaphor was no accident,
This multicast signal processing for a coordinated multi actuator large fluid energy device exists in nature.. in you.

Unless you are a robot Dave S??? hmmm

As a kid, I thought biology gruesome an ungainly, before I learnt how advanced on our understanding it is...

I had a bout of Paroxysmal Atrial Fibrillation a few years back... Totally missmanaged by my wife (not allowed it my brother was visiting) Anyway I  fixed with some yoga in hospital.. I learnt some stuff about heart electrophysiology then

Have a look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrial_fibrillation#Causes

The most interesting bit will be half way down the page

Von Neuman cellular automata are surely relevant,
A coordinated serial control line gives a collected mass output.

Yes winds fluctuate and are gusty, hence asynchrony seems key to efficiency
However to have a fully asynchronous multi level kixel mesh device...
Surely you need as many small generators as you have kites... don't you?
Is asynchrony capable of collective phased tugging, sending large power signals to the ground?

Yeah, sorry for taking it so far the biological way...
 Just stating,
 Triggered control signal processing of kite walls , as an overall  large collected array inflator/ tugger / pump device
Can be automated by simple small algorithmic device actuators on the kixel level.
Preferably physically and not electronically actuated as we discussed before...

The systolic naming metaphor was no accident,
This multicast signal processing for a coordinated multi actuator large fluid energy device exists in nature.. in you.

Unless you are a robot Dave S??? hmmm


As a kid, I thought biology gruesome an ungainly, before I learnt how advanced it is...

I had a bout of Paroxysmal Atrial Fibrillation a few years back... Totally miss-managed by my wife (not allowed it, my brother was visiting) Anyway I  fixed with some yoga in hospital.. I learnt some stuff about heart electrophysiology then

Have a look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrial_fibrillation#Causes

The most interesting bit will be half way down the page,
A huge coordinated pump ,,, which we just have to totally reverse engineer with a mothra and flipwings