Tethered Aviation
TetheredWings
March 6, 2013 update:
Wayne German's resume & TetheredWings primer 

Soaren Consulting
 Soaren.com and KiteEnergy.com (two parked domains being used)

Wayne German,
(emeritus: Richard Miller: Without Visible Means of Support)
 Dave Culp, Dave Santos, David Lang, Joe Faust, Dale C. Kramer

This folder of files will be a platform for the tethered-aviation gifts
of Wayne German on many tethered aviation topics.

The Wayne German Award for Kite Energy

Wayne German's "Vertical Blind Affair" in
Low Level Jets (LLJs) (See: Original Message) 
shear Permalink.  

Wayne German resume is in Files of AWE group and also here:
Wayne German's resume & TetheredWings primer  (March 6, 2013)

Most recent version of essay: Tethered Airfoils by Wayne German

Free-flight systems manned or unmanned:

  • Dec. 25, 2009:    With solar cells or small wind turbines to replenish the hydrogen, leakage should be no concern for the ever-up kytoons     -- Wayne
     

  • Dec. 24, 2009   I feel that I would be pleased to have my ideas patented with others -- except for the means to make buoyancy compensated wings. I think the potential and benefits of buoyancy compensated wings should prove very significant in Tethered Flight products in the future.

    -- Wayne German

  • Coupled two-kite dynamic soaring for recreation (Richard Miller), travel (Dale Kramer), or energy-conversion (Joe Faust,  Dave Santos, Wayne German)
     

  • Regenerative soaring (Gary Osoba, Taras Kiceniuk)
     

  • Aloft-piloted wind-energy conversion kiting (Joe Faust, Dave Santos)

  • Ground-based piloting of airborne tethered wind-energy conversion systems

  • Kite-launched hang gliding

  • Kite-launched paragliding

  • Hang gliding

  • Paragliding

  •  

 

A post on Nov. 19, 2009, in Small Blimps group:

1. Cabled tethered travel using serial small blimps.   The travel cable is kept aloft by small kytooned blimps that recharge aloft via splitting atmospheric water to hydrogen and released oxygen. Cable rider sails along the cable, crawls along the cable, slides down the downside of gravity catenary segments, PV-driven cable crawling.   Wayne German of Tethered Aviation is forwarding a local system.   Yet KiteLab of Ilwaco, WA and I have been discussing even world-around small-blimp use for tethered cable-travel ...from node to node.     A second use of small blimp in this sector could bring maintenance workers to parts of the cable, carry a passenger to the cableway, offload a person or goods from the cableway.  SkyCableWay.       Post in Small Blimps group. http://smallblimps.lefora.com/

2. Small blimp AWECS.   There are many ways small blimps could play in the wind-energy conversion world.  Airborne wind-energy conversion systems (AWECS) may be used as the primary actor or as a lifter for secondary actor where action wings lifted remain primary actors to generate electricity either aloft or at groundstation.  Ever-up small blimps kytoon shaped that could recharge aloft from splitting airwater could be in an AWECS generating electricity night and day all year.  Second uses of the same system: surveillance, real-time vision, antenna, observation deck, vacation hut, launch pad for hang gliders, and more.

Jan. 2, 2010      DS to WG, DC, DL        Two coupled kites in free-flight

Wayne,

You are quite correct that passively stable altitude is maintainable by a free-flight system, which seems to me based on logarithmic feedback by the surface wind gradient on the tow-low foil's apparent wind. Altitude is trimable by varying tether length, as Dale envisions.

I also see a payload gondola ideally located near a lower kite, which is played to tack. Altitude can be trimmed by shuttling the gondola along the tether. A reserve parachute is desirable at the gondola to cover loss of either kite. The low wing can often hide behind ridges & in valleys. A high performance glider might be better served in the high position, if altitude is golden. Horizontal gradients are common & should be tapped.

Dave Culp (Cc:ed) has several big OL kites of several thousand sq. ft. which would easily carry a human in freeflight. He has resisted my standing request to do a historic first human freeflight, on safety grounds. Dale is certainly qualified as a senior test pilot & i am available as crew for playing a kite, with my own power-kite, towed-glider, hang-glider, & general aviation experience.

There is a shallow lagoon here at Ilwaco wind shadowed behind a small ridge that shields the great prevailing ocean winds here, with a Coast Guard station at hand, a high quality wind shear which would make a great bunny-hop test site.

Note that up to nine gliders at once have been towed aloft. A free flight cargo train in the sky is possible by basic kite-train rigging, Hawthorne's Celestial Railroad, eh?

Lets put some of this stuff out to the main list soon,

DaveS


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