Has Daisy gained weight? Find out now on page 1!


Our local scouts took a very basic AWES to jamboree in Austria… Tied up to a tree so technically not an AWES at that point…

2 Likes

On what I see Daisy had a good Christmas Eve, ate well, gained weight and radius.

We don’t discuss a ladys weight Pierre.
We had the Christmas grammar argument about where an apostrophe goes.
We don’t discuss a lady’s weight Pierre.

No weight gain to report. Same Daisy ring format, but a lot more powerful.

Expect changes and growth in the New Year.

OK Rod, however on the picture Daisy diameter seemed to be bigger (5 m?), but maybe it was just a visual.

Definitely not Pierre.
6 x 170cm rods used for the ring. Same size as before.
70cm of wing span to the outside of the fuselage socket.
30cm on the inside. Same.
There is deflection / deformation of the ring evident at speed… This does move the blades outward.
Would be less noticeable with more blades.

I have a question to @Rodread. Did the rotor produce significant self lift as it is tilted thanks to the lifter kite?
Indeed with a relatively small lifter kite (3 m²?) even three stacked rotors (25 m² and more projected swept area for a so small lifter) have a correct elevation angle (about 35°).

Hi Pierre,
Without any active controls on the blades… Not yet. The rotor still needs a little lift. Hardly any though. Very scientific measure that.
It seems likely possible with actively controlled wings/blades.
The the blades were set banked a little (outer tip down) to aid expansion.
Interesting to consider if fairing on rotary torque lines could be set to expand the lines away from the axis. Not too far out from the axis like a skipping rope…

However with your relatively small 3 m² lifter, the stacked rotors are tilted. Once the rotors are tilted, they produce their own lift, right? A little (but with another mean) like a gyro kite of which the tilted rotor generates lift without any active control.

1 Like

I wonder if a Daisy rotor could scale more by using only flexible material, and by using something like a bowl kite as a ring holding the power kites.

That’s a mighty Bol kite. Love it. Inspiring.
But I think the answer to scaling Daisy is a bit more complex
RR238732wee
I tried as soft a ring form as I could manage (I’m sure others could do better.)
So yes a stack of 3 rotors can inflate and spin on very soft rings…
But you can already see the problem in that picture…
The wings/blades are doing a better job of inflating the rotor than the cone material.
The cone material has deformed and is just drag.
So the better answer seems to be that just blade elements and a bit of rigidity can be launched
And then maybe a much larger configuration can be inflated once it’s flying.

1 Like

Daisy is essentially like one of those bol kites in the video. Has Daisy gained weight? Find out now on page 1! - #9 by PierreB
Just made with a lot less solidity (more open) so that it spins faster.
A good test mix might be a cone like the bol kite in the video with only 1 in every 5 panels in place.

Maybe a bol kite like the one in the video with only 1 in 8 panels and each is a more rigid aerofoil.

With flexible material, perhaps the configuration below would allow to make a continuous ring without undergoing too much deformation by a suitable bridle, allowing scaling more. The solidity coefficient would be about 1/3, so a little high but not too for flexible (half) power kites, although too much for rigid blades.

Rotor with only half power kites forming the internal empty ring

Nice @PierreB
I had a 2 ring configuration in mind so the blades are supported circumferentially twice…
Once near their root and once about 70%
That way you can have more space between the blades and increase the speed.

Something to notice about the large soft bol rotor kite in the video
is how susceptible the form is to slight gusts and wind direction changes.
With a fast set of blades the flight becomes much more stable as centripetal effects expand the ring and apparent wind doesn’t change so much with a gust passing the blades

Rigid (left) or soft (right )… which do you prefer?

I still prefer the rigid and soft versions that you have already made, because they look simpler and likely easier to manage.