Recent content by Roderick Read

Thanks mfb, I'm prone to being very optimistic with kites. Can you provide / do you still have the calculations you used for completeness please?

What an awful film. It's more than a hobby now. I'm making kites with intent. Not sure there is a direction, but there is some purpose. Latest Test

I'm sure riding a rope wave vertically (despite being inefficient...) is possible. Have you ever played with a rip stick? replace the wheels with ratcheting pulleys over the rope and it should ride a wave on a taught line. That aside... (It's kinda fun but a bit nonsense) What I was asking...

Here's a really good factsheet on dyneema. You really wouldn't want a 10km acceleration distance of dyneema. The forces really would be massive. The lashback when that stuff snaps is scary. I've seen it throw anchors past my head to twice the length of the rope. Free breaking length 378 km...

Thanks for taking time to play numbers mfb. YOU STAR! An ever increasing factor e of material thickness per height sounds right. (My maths has gone shakey and rusty now. Must revise) You start with 1kg/380km and end up with 1kg/38m. Have I understood that right... It sounds very lightweight for...

Thanks Jedishrfu, I like building models before deriving maths ... But maths saves time and injuries... I must get back to developing proofs before playing. I can probably simulate this with kangaroo physics in grasshopper where I developed my model. The great thing in grasshopper is the...

According to http://www.langmanropes.com/langman-en/products/rope-by-industry/industry/shockcord-langman-ropeshttp://www.langmanropes.com/langman-en/products/rope-by-industry/industry/shockcord-langman-ropes 12mm dia bungee has a breaking load of 500kg and weighs 12.8kg/100m So a 5000m weighs...

Thanks for the reply, My ~reasoning for a multiple bungee central catapult structure is networked load sharing will keep the kites relatively stable. Just to re clarify the idea is .. A ring of kites supports a cone of bungee which is stretched to ground. As the ground connection is cut ... the...

I've been experimenting with aggregate stability of kite networks. ... Kite like to fly in networks. And I've written this about it.. https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0qQxFlXu7t-RGpqRk1ZYXNISkU For the upcoming Airborne Wind Energy book. Today though... I want to know what thickness of bungee...

Just build a flying wind turbine for a fun experiment... That's what I thought. Fun all-right. but it gets a bit more serious the longer you stare at it.

Oh, did I mention the ... it would work underwater in tidal flows when the bladder is filled with water... now you're torquing

It's an highly adictive project. That's why I can't wait to kick it out on a ship. Nowhere near market stage yet, although I have offered the sale of my first prototype on pleasefund.us Some pretty grand experiments need to take place first. However anyone could make the catenary line towers...

Thanks Again Robin, yes that's a bit more like it. For this first single ring set prototype, since I am releasing it as open source hardware, I am trying to use off the shelf only components. yes there have been modifications, welds, cuts, knots, stitching etc. but it's all really accessible. I...

Oh the way I had designed the floating system was an outer buoyant ring with an inner generation race track.

Robin, Thank you very much for your suggestions. On further study I'm less sure about Inductrack/maglev technology being apropriate for wide diameter ring generation. An axial flux design such as NGenTec propose may be more suited. As for Gyroscopic forces, There will be a futher...