DRAFT

UpperNet
Kite Trains, Arches, & Nets

Kites follow scaling laws & handling constraints. Large scale kite applications, much like classic tall ships, require multi-element arrays to be workable. Wind energy by area is constant for kite size, so smaller kites are structurally advantaged. Multiple loosely-linked kites dampen system-scale interference that will crash a titanic kite. Real-time local compliance as a disturbance passes thru is a key (delta-kite wings flop this way). Collisions, tangles,& chaotic wind effects are tamed by semi-captive arrrays.

Large kites fail less often but more disastrously. Kite arrays tolerate sub-failure, continuing over-all function. Individual halyards to major elements allow hot swapping while the whole array flys normally.Kite arches are used by kite festival pros to display multiple giant kites in a stable compact fashion. A kite arch is potentially all wing, with hardly any line-drag penalty.

Spreading ("staking out") lines stablizes multiline kites like an arch. Brake lines set apart to pull as needed to correct wandering or tune passive sweep (auto-zenith).

The New Flying Windfarms

Kite farms will generally seek to maximize groundspace & airspace. The Betz Limit is gradually approached by infilling frontal area with kite elements, much as a tall ships adds sail. Kite arches approach the Betz Limit for a kite-field constrained by altititude & borders than do single-based kite systems.

 Photo shows Flying Wind-Farm Arch flying "bare". Five halyards for turbines/etc. are strung along the arch. Center kite is 12 ft. across.

Its a language of arches & trains, of lifter, spreader, & drogue elements, of redundant tethers, halyards, kill-lines & so on, a spatial network. Single spar "skyhook" kites add lift, in light air, to primary lifter-kite lines.

UAV tows may launch kites after calm. Helium station keeping is another option.

Kite crawlers will be diverse kite handling platforms rigged like trawling & trolling boats. Smaller vehicles will perform specialized functions, like a line-comb crawler. Humans can stay clear of giant kite ground-handling hazards by use of ROVs.

The kite-field will be a grid of earth anchors & pole sockets, with cage & foxhole like refuges for personnel when all hell breaks loose. Berms can enhance crawler anchor function, & be a redoubt against dragging off-field. Multiple anchor points are more reliable than single points. Loss of an anchor can be used to trigger depowering & landing of the system on remaining anchors via kill lines. Kite trains and arches minimise tether count.

Crops like hay can maximise ground utilization. Natural ecosystems like pairie may thrive under kite operations. Good covers won't be damaged by normal operations, entail substantial risk, nor impose time-criticallity, like common harvests do.

Kite-killer hardware is an essential safety feature, a big kite must be quickly doused & land within its field with high reliability if line or bridle parts, wind overblows, storm threatens, & so on.

GPS alarmed kite killer can cut a side bridle if kite breaks loose & the kite will come down

Old-School Kite Trains

Jim Patton's classic kite trains tower over the colorful clouds at kitefests, flying far beyond the modern mega-kites. Its a technical feat from the golden age of kiting, a flying tree, diverse coexisting kites branching freely apart, unlike ordinary stacks & arches- identical kites fixed directly along a single line. Its been my priviledge to assist Jim at recent kite festivals & record his methods.

Photo below shows about seven hundred feet of Jim's train being brought down, drogue-kite-drougue-kite, one by one. It takes 1-3 hours to launch or land, depending on help. The larger kites are around nine feet across.

Jim's dad was an avid kiter who challenged him, from the earliest age, to solve the problem of flying multiple odd kites off one line. Many techniques & kites available to the father-son team came directly from the "Golden Age" of kiting at the turn of the last century where Eddy had experimented with tree-trains, but key secrets only came from endless tinkering.

Once a train cut loose. Jim recovered it miles away, intact & flying from a lone tree. The Kite Gods smiled that day, a kite-eating tree as kite-saver. (a Patton trian also broke free at One Sky, Long Beach, '08, Proposed- a kite killer looped line from apex, a sort of semi arch.)

Decades passed, the father is long gone, but Jim has mastered flying large trains of diverse kites & every kind of line laundry. His trains fly themselves all day long without a hitch, verily his father's spirit looming above.

Jim flys wisely & reasonably, mostly at kitefests or remote places, in good visibility, away from air traffic corridors, with due regard for special hazards. A small plane once headed right for his train. Jim's heart seemed to stop. Turned out the pilot was only admiring a flying wonder & circled repeatedly. A brightly colored train is quite visible to general aviation, it delineates its full structure, unlike single kites on effectively invisble line. While these trains represent freedom of the skies, no one should undertake what Jim does unless they take it just as seriously, carefully building skills.

Jim's Essentials-

-Top Kite- a large, roughly 5 x 8 ft, tailed Barn Door Kite usually tops Jim's train, a favorite of his father, this "ugly' old-school kite flys high & lifts hard.

-Lifters- 9 ft. Delta Coynes are key primary kites, stable high-flying strong lifters that station above & ahead of the main line

-Misc. Kites- various Eddys branch off the mainline, when heavily tailed fly behind the main line, or due to minor asymmetries, tilt off to one side.

-a collection of laundry placed along the main line drags it lower & behind the high lifters.

-laundry includes a variety of socks, spinners & flags. The flags fly from a dowel dangling from the mainline, held vertical with a shortline from the dowel bottom to the mainline.

-laundry is clipped to overhand loops in the mainline sections, set enough below the kite leader junctions to stay clear.

-the lifter kites are on ~70 ft. leaders shorter than the 80 ft. mainline sections between them, so no two kites can tangle.

-up to 16 80ft. symmetric mainline kite sections, plus 150 ft. of mainline at the ground, make up Jim's trains, the top kite reaching >1000 ft..

-lifter kites branch from the mainline by a three swivels on a ring mechanism allowing the kite to spin on its leader & orbit the mainline (see detail).

-it takes near three hours to launch or retrieve a tall stack, most of the time used in rigging or stowing. He walks the line down with a carabiner & uses a hand winch successively attached to laundry loops. For high wind retrieval an electric winch mounted on the back of his pickup keeps a steady pace.

-the train must be supervised at all times, normal large kite safety guidelines apply; considerations include bathroom relief.

Jim likes flying new kites in the train to see what happens. He doesn't trim or tune them to behave except to add tail in higher wind. Some kites fly about, others park. Sometimes a kite jostles the mainline, lashes its tail on it maybe, these minor collisions recover themselves. Careful inspection & maintenence of all elements is required. The mainline is overspecified, providing benificial drag, allowing knots/loops, & easing handling. Fisherman gloves with a rubbery grip are used to handle mainline in fresh wind.

A rare event Jim loves is when the train stands straight up in a rising vortex, all the kites gyrating magestically about the mainline. Jim's pet ambition is to fly his train thru the grand arch in Saint Louis, if anyone reading this can help....what a fine spectacle!

1/2 Scale Patton Kite Train

Collect a diverse set of children's kites ranging around a meter across. Remaindered kites are often seen at variety stores for as little as a dollar or so. Handmade art kites are espeially deirable. Test each kite in a range of winds in order to stabilize them with tails as needed. Halve all dimensions Jim uses & be sure to stay low, no more than 400 ft in the countryside & 200 ft in cities or near airports. Fly in open places away from obstacles

Patton's Train compared with Festival Pro Laundry & Arches-

David Gomberg & Peter Lynn have devoped a modern large-scale kite-show language comparable to Patton's train. Each system evolved to particular requirements, but share elements such as what Peter Lynn dubbed a sky anchor, a more substantial top kite than Cody's pilot kite. Gomberg's published system is intended as easy entry into big multi-element kite spectacle systems flown low for effect. Gombeg avoids swivels, while Patton puts swivels everyhere a gyration can happen. Gomberg configurations are simpler, less kites but larger ones. Sessions are shorter, kitefest hours in lower wind. so lead winding doesn't overdevelop. A Gomberg Arch is large kites off an arched line, for tight fields.

large multi-kite systems have scaling advantage, parallel elements in fast evolution.

complex multielement kite trains, flying networks filling the kite-window, goal: all modular hot-swappable elements, a flying kite-farm at 1/100 scale Hot swap kitelines with line-messenger. 

excellent thinking bubs, we are the wright bros   giant wind sock as hub of many bladed turbine seems novel to field, "spin-socks" a low effieciency "line-laundry"  decoration but as a hub maybe great, there are spinning Bol kites like parachutes with center cut out, but they can collapse & have to be re-inflated by hand   turbine can counter rotate against each other, but not essential as the line angle allows a single turbine to pull against ground, also generator must stay on ground due to heavy gen & conductor, moving cableway (like ski lift) transmits power down to gen   bubs    

 

Summary of OL thinking to date- 

The OL geometry can be used as flaps, spoilers, elevons, etc., as a useful component of large kites with high-lift & self-stability. The ideal location for power flaps is just aft of the tether axis, just as aircaft flaps are placed centrally along length axis. Such flaps can be linked to oscillating elements to provide a tensioning pulse to enhance kite energy.

-best way to launch a big kite short-handed off a ship is to pack it like a parachute & pop it under a pilot lifter kite (maybe withdrawn with a kill line).   -buddy boat system, a giant OL is "staked out" between two ships like twin-boat trawling. In a mishap like fouled prop, free boat tows fouled. Note kiteboard edge-effect to windward, edging like a ski, a mechanism neglected in classic naval architecture. An OL pulled standard ship edges but its a dull edge, two boats edging against each other can spread a giant kite rig nicely. Future kite boats may be single edge proas with ballast shifting- giant kiteboards.   -OL has huge application semi-captive in arches/trains/nets as basic lifter module   -the OL front-line clews seen as actual stability feature- Holland's snow-plow stability   -large ear-tubes added to OL  top shoulders might be desirable, Morse-sled's tubes bloated over decades, ram-airbeam idea giving away to extra wing while retaining 3D stiffening, ears esp. good with short outboard coat-tails, no long rat-tail needed.   -Power-sheeting function of traction kites best applied at mainline-axis or just aft just as aircraft flaps are located amidship.   -the OL minimal surface control geometry has inspired the skeleton of flying windfarm 1.0, a skeletal OL of semi-captive sub-elements (A,B, C, etc. arches with halyards & kill lines along OL centerline)   -as you already know, adding weight to OL tail clew balances it nicely...

Lines From Stringtown *

Kiteline, Euclid's fine line, magic harmonic, aeroelastic fantastic

Ordinary string attains tangible relativistic physics, working sewing thread at 200 mph amounts to about a horse-power. A hair tied to Archimedes's Lever moves Earth, albeit slowly. The work-limit of thin line is near infinite near the speed of light. In practical terms its a thermal/ionizing limit; ordinary fiers melt or burn at mach 2 or so, but that lots of power transfer capability.

Archeology describes a paleolithic String Revolution. Primeval string rotted away but clues remained; fishhooks, beads, bolas, bull roarers, & so on. Weave was pressed in clay & carved on Venus figures.

The kiter's is stringy tangled fate.

Abhor stringy fuss, seek minimal-line design, but love string. Things are not so bad in a boundless sky, lines sufficiently spaced do not tangle. There are limits to kite cloth as the kite grow, but wind by area remains constant. An Edo runs however many lines needed to spread out the forces & gets a secondary stabilty effect from line drag.

String is only as strong as its worst flaw, so consistency is a key to reliable performance. Knot derating can approach reject derate for line damage, so that simple field knots can replace eladorate super-knots.

Line inspection should be automated, fast, & constant. Stained line can fool surface inspection. Acoustic inspection will serve.

* Stringtown is a town next to Ilwaco, KiteLab's base

Line Tricks

derate allowance of say 30% allows simple knots like figure-8 within allowance.

a multi-line might have a tensioned working line of say 40% that parts caught by a 60% back-up line allowing retieval.

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Kite Energy as a Zero Fatality Industry

While this golden age of innocence won't last, lets try to maintain it.

http://www.gombergkites.com/faq/faq-s.html <== best big-kite safety intro.

Redundant lines are essential for reliability, kill lines will keep out-of-control monster kites from causing high consequence accidents.

comment to: santos137@yahoo.com