For many years stunt-kite fliers have preformed an amusing trick of flying a kite via an upwind anchor equipped with a pulley or ring. This doubles back the lines to put the flier under the kite to allow a sort of close dance. In AWE, we have discovered this rig enables the flier to self-launch and land long-lined, with various advantages. At the kitefarm two days ago, we successfully flew a 7m2 NASA Power Wing back and forth along our crosswind cableway in dog-stake mode, with both launch and flight happening from the same point.

This was also our first flight of a large single-skin kite from the cableway. While the sweep was slower, load velocity was still high due to stick-and-overshoot with bowstring-effect. The power was just amazing, a sort of train-like trundling along the taut steel cable. The tangible indication is that large cheap kites seem to be be very effective wings for crosswind AWE.

• CC BY NC SA         ~Dave Santos         1Aug2013             AirborneWindEnergy/message/9803

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:
  • NPW    NASA parawing
  • crosswind shuttling
  • crosswind trolley
  • crosswind carts
  • cyclic travel left-right in wind window
  • reversing wing direction
  •  
• Commentary is welcome:
  • http://www.dcss.org/speedsl/KI289.html