Wayne German Awards
for
Kite Energy

~ Contributions to Kite Energy ~

Wayne German

Nominations for 2013-2020 are being reviewed.     Nominations are open.                        
Your notes are welcome: Editor@UpperWindpower.com        Most recent edit: April 20, 2020

NOMINATIONS, so far:

• Christof Beaupoil, Team Tuddle, and Rod Read, Windswept &Interesting. Nominated for related exploration of rotary transmissions.
• Olivier Normand, Kitewinder, Nominated for Kiwee development and commercialization.
• Gonzalo Sanchez-Arriaga, UC3M, Nominated for fresh academic exploration on broad foundations.
• Jittrenda Goela and David Olinger, WPI, Nominated for pioneering and longstanding AWE curriculum and R&D.
• Massimo Ippolito. Nominated for robust focus on KiteGen.
  
• Dan Tracy.  Nominated for multi-AWE product presentations.  Pacific Sky Power.
  
• Roland Schmehl.  Nominated for extensive assistance to AWE-university students and Europe's AWE nooks n' crannies.
  
• Андрей Казанцев   (Andrew Kazantsev)  for his perseverence and profundity on AWE-aerial-water harvesting.
• Joe Hadzicki      https://about.me/joe.hadzicki
• William "Billy" Roeseler and Cory Roeseler          kiteboarding,  kiteski,
  
• Corwin Hardham                       Makani Power
  
• Wubbo Ockels       Laddermill, academic AWE, AWE public awareness,
  
• Dale C. Kramer        wind-powered flight
• ?
• Honorable mention, former awardee:    David Lang             Tether dynamics, SkyMill Energy partnership, deep service to kiting community   http://energykitesystems.net/DaveLang/index.html
• Stig Anton Nielsen   nominated for excellent testing:    KiteBorne Nano System test 17/11 2018           |     Kiteborne Energy   
  

The 2012 Wayne German Award for Kite Energy

and
Kay Buesing
for providing long service to the foundations of kite energy in a singularly important venue: the World Kite Museum.                                              Click photo to enlarge =>

Wayne German has recorded a stellar list of honorable-mentions for the year 2012:  (he is still working on this section)
=>  Wubbo Ockels for multiplexing academia.  "And Wubbo.brought his fame and talents in space exploration to exploring ways that the winds aloft might be harnessed to generate electricity. While the methods he proposed--and appears still to propose might make us want to turn him over our knees and spank the living day lights out of him, no one can deny that he was a great pioneer in this area and threw many unsuspecting warm student bodies at these projects and found and secured financing that causes many of the rest of us to be so jealous that we say these things about him. No doubt he was probably the most vocal and renowned person to have ever attempted to promote high altitude wind power that the public has seen so far. But bear in mind, the public never sees that far. Bears-in-mind often obstruct the public’s visual and cognitive abilities. One can only hope that some day soon, one of the warm bodies thrown might be of a dyed-in-the-wool aeronautical engineer who promotes wind power generated by lift more than drag and from much of a wind field rather than just part. Tisk tisk. Tisk tisk tisk!"
=>  Moritz Diehl for team spirit in academia. "Moritz team should be canonized as representing in spirit--if not in practicality--the effort to bring together people to work together from different disciplines while all contribute their talents to the mix."
=>  Drachen Foundation "for even going out of their way to popularize kites in general in the younger crowd and at grade schools and such.."
 

The 2011 Wayne German Award for Kite Energy

• The Three Musketeers* (all French) (four actually!)

  • Luc Armant
    Self-Flying Hapa (Aile d'Eau -video).      See core document.      
    He is strongly accenting OZONE.
     

  • Stéphane Rousson
    Human Hapa ( used modified Chien de Mer in Seaglider; Chien de Mer was created by Didier Costes).     First flight Seaglider.
    What he does with a kite and a hydrofoil may be a first, but it can greatly be improved in many ways. 
     

  • Pierre Benhaïem
     Parafoil Charger System and Large-Scale Visions.  FlygenKite.
     

• for best future direction in kite design, development, and testing goes to Patrick Hanley at Hanley Innovations, because none of us should be focused on just making one sickle with which to sickle our wheat by   ourselves.  We should be focused on making the machines that will enable us to manufacture combines as well as possible.
   

• for most enduring statesmanship in our Tethered Flight Technology Fraternity -- (tf)^2 -- goes to John Oyebanji.

                                               ~~ Wayne German

*["Three Musketeers" was in reality four with "D'Artagnan". D'Artagnan could be Didier Costes, inventor of "Chien de Mer." The combined experience of Stéphane as a pilot and a navigator enables him to have the machine fly. He uses the technology of the “Chien de Mer” conceived/invented by Didier Costes, a polytechnician engineer." Initially "chien de mer worked with an airship, and then became "Seaglider" working with a parafoil kite.]

• 2010:  Joe Faust

• 2009:  Dave Culp,  Dave Santos,  and Dave Lang              Nominee: Dale C. Kramer

=====December 31, 2009 for 2010==
For the coming year I suggest that we consider the following objectives:

1) Breaking away from the conference on high altitude wind power generators. Their objectives are a lot different than our own. While they should first prove competence in deploying their products in Low Level Jets, so they can learn to walk before they run, they invariably want to deploy directly into the Jet Stream directly despite all common sense to the contrary.

2) Their objectives are to come together to sell themselves and their wares rather than pooling their talents to help each other meet their common objectives. Note how often when there was silence that I alone continually pushed strenuously to increase the body of knowledge in our small fraternity. Even among those of you who graciously still consider my unsolicited input, I know that I must be a very mixed blessing.  On one hand I tenaciously strive to see the knowledge in our small fraternity increased as fast as possible for our mutual benefit.  On the other hand I persist in consistently and conscientiously breaking all rules regarding proper decorum by insisting on saying more than the half dozen things that people in such social circles are apt to say. Worse yet, the more that I would say, the less that others felt compelled to say -- I expect because they felt that sooner or later I would make sure we would cover all the important and relevant bases. Another way to say this is that since I took the bow wave everyone else was happy to slide along behind and reap the benefit and yet become more than a little livid that I would be so assertive.

My real hope--the whole time--was that any number of other people whose accumulated knowledge far exceeded my own in many cases would rise to the occasion and do much to increase our collective wisdom. Even so, that did not deter me. Here I was after 35 years in the pursuit and having spent well over a thousand dollars to be present for which I went into debt, I was not going to leave our conference without making the greatest positive impact whether it was appreciated by all or not.

But the fact is that there were people there,  and there are people who subscribe to this small forum who know intellectually or experientially a vast amount of information that is destined never to be revealed and to die with them unless we make big, important, significant changes that motivate all of us to step out of the shadows into the light of day and bless all with their knowledge and insights.

3) I'm not sure how useful or desirable it is to reward any particular insight or contribution. How do you compare the value of good conceptual ideas against ideas that are reduced to prototypes, or later refined into products that are sold. All aspects and phases are essential.

Our problem now--that I see--is that we do not commit to link up appropriately. Us conceptual dudes should fling our ideas on those who know better such as Dale Kramer who should be our master teacher and greatest technical guide.

4) We need Dale Kramer   [Dale C. Kramer]  about as much as the air we breathe. Unfortunately, I understand that there are reasons why our small fraternity needs to go out of our way to encourage him to come out of his shell to join us. But if that does not work we need to go in and drag him out. Such monumental talent cannot be allowed to slink off into the sunset. I know. If we are going to offer an Award this year, let's let it be: Dale Kramer for the "Whatchamacallit" he will be most instrumental in helping our group develop this year. Why not be proactive and award people ahead of time for the things they will do--even if we have to spend the next entire year forcing and coercing them to do it?

5) What we really need most is a forum where daily or weekly we can be progressing from concepts to ever greater concepts to suggestions on how we could do such things most cheaply and or effectively.

6) Lastly, let's all welcome Stuart Semon to our Group. Stuart has just recently been "liberated" from Intel. As we all know, Intel is a great place to be from (far from). Stuart is at the top of his game in most any software one might be willing to admit using. Stuart has just "whipped" together software to allow us to communicate like GoToMeeting, but free. Who knows? Maybe we can appeal to his good nature to "whip together" a forum for us all to use. This would allow all of us to add our ideas on a continuous basis and provide a means for us to connect our different "puzzle pieces" together to consistently and conscientiously see our little fraternity morph into a really constructive and continually progressing review of everything from conceptual ideas to potential implementation aspects and beyond. Then all we would need to do is add money; then presto: we would have any number of fabulous tethered flight products.

                                                          ~~ Wayne German

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