Ultrakite course project


An old failed course project.



From a time when I just got interested in and knew nothing about awes. The task was basically to design any flying machine.
It was supposed to be a drone, which can fly on its own and work as a kite towing any ship.
I was going for a flying wing / blended body type of thing not unline the hortens. It was also supposed to be able to use the propeller (inside the body) as a generator to store energy for when it is flying on its own. It was not supposed to withstand high seas and should barely ever land. Looking back at it the most stupid thing is the different angle of attack between body and wings.

1 Like

Wil you describe it more? looks nice

1 Like

Yes. I edited the original post to have the pictures and description in one place.

The AoA between body and wings is not necessarily bad, if this is the production optimal AoA for the wing and you want to minimize drag of the body.

I guess as an initial concept it looks fine, there is maybe some (a lot of) work needed for the details…

My most worrying aspect would be the quite large wing sweep wrt dihedral effect and the construction strength (how to fit a weight holding beam inside) and also the lack of elevator that limits the options for wing profile to «pitch stable» ones, I guess these are mostly not in the «high C_l» category…

1 Like

The strength concern is made worse by actual dihedral, I did not see this at first. You’d have to simulate this to see if the amount of dihedral effect in this design is feasible (I expect not)

The dihedral was meant to stabilize the plite and enable it to have only one tether.

Thank you for your comments but I have completely abandoned this design.

It think the whole idea - having a plane which flies independently over long stretches with electric propulsion, carries all the tether and basically never lands is bad.

Instead I am now thinking about a vtol multiplane which can actually land well on water and uses its own propulsion only for takeoff and landing. The whole landing on water bit is so that one can have an enormous rigid kite.