So what do I win when 2030 rolls around, and you still can’t get out of your own way? Nothing. You’ll have some new excuse. Probably involving more lies. Discussions with you are pointless.
JAL: AWE discussion with you is never “pointless”, Doug!
You play the determined-critic of the AWE Kite Pros. You stand for the idea that power kite networks, SpiderMills, as being developed by a historical kite lineage, no matter how fantastic, cannot possibly power the World in crisis, that Kite Pros who think so are all “liars, idiots, professor-crackpots”, and so forth, and should we “just give up”. You insist, “All roads lead to the SuperTurbine”.
That’s high dramatic frisson. That’s the perfect set-up pitch for Kite Pros to present their views and demos. Folks become curious what all the fuss is about. A few fret that no good can come from “The Great AWE Debate”, but what do they know?
2030 really is not too soon nor too late for the Kite Pros to step up, after so many have crashed and burned with hundreds of millions in funds vanished. It may not be JAL in the 2030 winner’s circle, but we are in the AWE Race to best make Kite Energy, by whatever ideas prevail.
We lament the “shattered dreams” of worthy wind developers who deserved batter, but let no one cry for the happy Kite-Pros, always eager to show anyone how to get wind-stoke, show how all kinds of kites work, show how together we continue to make them better.
Best of Luck to You Doug! If JAL Kite Pros gain AWE’s 2030 winner’s circle, you are welcome to stand with us. Tallak even promises to eat his hat, in the event, but we won’t hold him to it-
Your endless bragging about your supposed future accomplishments never ceases. The details (whatever unworkable concept you are promoting) always change, but the theme remains the same.
999.9 out of 1000 people attempting it will not even cause a hairline crack in the egg, let alone serve omelettes…
Parafoils Rising
Dom Jalbert founded Jalbert Aerology Lab (JAL) in 1950s to develop tethered aviation. Within a few years Dom had invented the Parafoil Kite, beginning as single-line pilot-lifter kite with many applications. By the 1970s, the parafoil had become the standard “square” Parachute of skydiving that then evolved into advanced Paragliders and Power Kites.
Peter Payne conceived of crosswind AWE based on Parafoils in the mid-70s (USP 3987987). Today, JAL Kite Pros (with SkySails), are striving to make AWE a plant-scale AE reality by 2030. Dom Jalbert’s parafoil invention has only just begun to transform the world. JAL is proud to carry on the Revolution he started. Power Kite progress is rapid, relentless, and astounding.
A key source of AWE progress is the Kite Sport Explosion. The centerpiece of this is a new Formula Kite Racing Olympic Class based on advanced Parafoils and Hydrofoils. The 2024 Olympics are a major milestone for AWE. Behold how much grace and power from a couple of kilos of Parafoil wing-
2020 Formula Kite Mixed Relay European Championship - Documentary - YouTube
Brag, brag, brag. I recently debunked a techno effort with similar “Professor Crackpot Syndrome” symptoms: Citing the previous success of others as though it automatically applies to the new techno effort. Never any success to show, just 20 years of empty promises and not a single use case demonstrated.
You are not Jalbert. You did not invent the paraglider. Anyone can, and does, use paragliders by now. If Jalbert hadn’t made the first one, someone else would have.
The only question I have is how many years you will go on bragging about producing TeraWatts (in the future of course) without ever producing any meaningful results whatsoever. Seems like even a person without any sense whatsoever might, at some point, realize their bragging talk is empty, and they never show any decent results. At that point, you’d think they might just shut up, but, I guess it goes back to whether they have any sense whatsoever… 
Doug has never been able to present a single referenced quote, as addressed and date-stamped, to validate his accusations of “lies” and “censorship” on the Old AWES Forum. All Old Forum content is preserved online, including all of Doug’s posts, and everyone else’s, searchable and auditable. JoeF will be found blameless by anyone who investigates the public record.
@dougselsam “Brag, brag, brag…”
There are idle claims and boasts made in AWE, especially by VCs who raise hundreds of millions and fail. Kite Pros have a lot of cool things to boast about, and their optimistic claims are as worthy of toleration as any.
Doug’s well-worn favorite boast-about-the-future is “All Roads lead to the SuperTurbine ™”.
Best Luck to Doug in the future making his claim hold true.
Speaking of lies, I remember when multiple people were pointing out the fact that you kept lying, and Joe censored - deleted any such post, making a rule that nobody could say you were lying because even though they could show what you said was not true, they couldn’t prove you intentionally set out to deceive anyone - that was just more typical amazing nonsense. And I participated on the Yahoo website, not by email, so I do not have any copies but if Joe deleted them you probably don’t either. Doesn’t matter anyway - this is all just the same old ongoing"theater of the absurd" where the topic changes from AWE to your constant misbehavior and lying, and even now you keep saying Joe never deleted messages when he did it all the time - it was so routine and our complaining about it was so routine that it may have been almost the main topic of the old forum. You are still out-to-lunch.
OK so you are finally admitting to BSing everyone on here. Well just as you held Makani’s feet to the fire, people will respond to your claims with a healthy skepticism. You’ve had plenty of time to do something by now.
We’re ALL guilty of our own biases.
Even with the authority of leading academic publication… we still get titles proclaiming prior knowledge on the likes of
Dominant Designs for Wings of Airborne Wind Energy Systems
Wow - keen.
Amazingly the article mentions and references Network Externality effects of technological adoption several times - yet when it comes to the core issue - mischaracterises the capabilities of rigid wing designs and completely ignores network design
YAWN
1 Like
Biases are one thing. Claiming you “will” produce TeraWatts, or that your country “will” lead the world in AWE because you have updrafts, from people who have consistently either maybe never even flown a kite or run a wind turbine or wind energy system at all, let alone designed any sort of working wind energy system, even when claiming they are for 14 years straight, is ridiculous and obnoxious.
I remember when I was a kid, having a sleep-out in a backyard tent, and we kids were talking about what we were going to be when we grew up. One kid who was known to be just a little less restrained declared he was “going to be the Emperor of the World”, and he was serious when he said it. I often think of that kid on that night when I read what John and Dave write here, They are both going to take over the wind energy of the whole world, but neither can show us ANY significant output after 14 years of claiming to even be involved in “airborne wind energy”, which they have not been, due to the lack of producing any E, which is the entire point of AWE. It;s like saying you will lead the world in agriculture, when you can;t even get a single petunia growing in your backyard garden for 14 years straight.
OK there are 3 people left in the circular firing squad (where they cite fake credentials about each other to build an artificial edifice of mutual admiration, which is actually a house-of-cards when looked at closely) and that is Joe, Dave, and John. John would be the one who I would guess may have never even flown a kite at all, and whom I’ve never seen any evidence of any AWE activity, except for being labeled “President Pro Tem” of whatever Dave and Joe call their “organization” (AWEIA?) for 1/7 of a century. Just as a start, “Pro Tem” means “just for now”, or “temporary”. Given that their organization doesn’t actually DO anything, I guess for them, time runs slowly, so “temporary” could be longer than a human lifespan, which it now has become, if you consider Wayne. I would just point out that submitting a few 2-second videos of momentary actuation of a bicycle pump, or something wiggling, etc., from Dave, are not refined to any level that would impress anyone. You don’t open a magazine and see an article about Dave Santos’ incredibly powerful and promising devices, because they are not developed past the point of a junior high school science fair project. Joe was instrumental in organizing an original effort to get hang-gliding off the ground and accepted as a legitimate sport decades ago, and I got started flying partly after being impressed that there was a hang-gliding magazine called “Low and Slow” which pertained to Hang Gliding - and Joe published that “magazine”, And Joe applied the same skill-set to AWE early on in this hype-cycle, but he has not demonstrated any expertise in the actual art of wind energy itself. The most recent claim I remember from Joe was he claimed to have taken a nap under a “kite” which was actually a discarded banner he had found on the side of the road hung up in his backyard, not flying like a kite, but just supported against gravity by being tied to stationary object(s), and Joe claimed it as his contribution to Airborne Wind Energy, because he had previously declared that “providing shade” counted as AWE, and his discarded sheet of material supported by ropes (not tethered by ropes, but hung by ropes) “was” “a kite” because technically, as usual “it wiggled” due to some ambient air currents. That was when I just had to slap myself in the forehead and realize, there is no limit to the LIES these guys will tell, to rationalize their PRETENSE of being involved with AWE at all - they are NOT actually involved in AWE at all - they are just fans - idle bystanders trying to somehow take credit for nonproductive, or even nonexistent in the case of Joe,“projects” of their own fantasy world, which never generate any significant power. And since generating significant amounts of power is the whole point of wind energy, including airborne, if you can’t show a useful amount of power being generated, you are not a player in AWE at all. So really, that is the first lie, that they are even DOING AWE. I say they are not - they are just talking about AWE, and making false promises of an imaginary future. “Emperor of the World” is the term that comes to mind.
Marc Hauser (skydiver) - Wikipedia: “Marc Hauser’s goal: to raise awareness for cleantech-pioneering enterprises using airborne wind energy systems”
I remember hearing the same rationalization for an installation of vertical-axis turbines that are probably long-gone (removed) by now: “raising awareness!” As some of us protested that the turbines would not be effective, someone more prone to the ambient mind-control replied something about “raising awareness!” I was like, what do you mean, raising a false “awareness” to pretend something that is ineffective is being done anyway? OK my awareness was raised.
Meanwhile this skydiver is more AW, without the E. He WAS “airborne” in the plane. Next, he’s “falling” with some directional influence possible, but He’s using A LOT of energy, not producing any. He’s got the A and the W, just no E. Like the circular firing squad.
Countless small tests create new expertise.
$20 COTS TRL9 awning pulling very hard-
THE JALBERT TRIANGLE
Ultimate Challenge: source “blue” as cheap as “beige”
Be ready for a far bigger Spidermill made of such kixels; then someday at km-scale and beyond-
1 Like
Hello John,
It looks like a progress: a powered triangle. The next step would be the set of 12 triangles in operation.
1 Like
The first picture shows A & W, since a kite is A(irborne) using W(ind)
The second picture of the 12 triangles shows no A, no W, and no E.
A video of 30-60 seconds, showing details and overviews of the triangles (how they pivot during trajectories) and the whole, would help.
1 Like
AWE researchers have long struggled to match power kites to machinery directly in all conditions, only skilled touchy flying or hit-and-miss synching worked. Now we have a clear theoretic basis for resonantly tuned kite pumping: Kite Eigen Frequency.
The general design problem was not centering the driven load-motion in a symmetric two-way spring-return pumping-stroke cycle. A one-way return-spring helped, but ideal spring-mass action needs to be smooth sinusoidal two-way, cycling potential-to-kinetic energy both ways.
A power kite wants to see a soft load, to not be perturbed in flight, and then will easily do work swinging between two limits, just like a child’s swing (or pendulum) is easy to start and then gradually gets going higher and higher and faster and faster, at its Eigen Frequency at high efficiency.
An AWES working-load pumping mechanism needs to be spring-mass tunable to the Resonant Frequency, which is the maximal driven Eigen Frequency (Natural Frequency) of the Kite-qua-oscillator (loop or 8). Just so, this is how to properly push a child on a swing. Do it wrong, no “magic”
A hidden prediction is that looping kite does for a time continue to passively loop on its own momentum, even after it’s Gibbs Free Energy (energy above that needed for bare flight) is removed.
Some still struggle to relate classical thermodynamics to “room temperature” kite work, others struggle to understand how kites are passively automated (under active supervisory control), but these are separate topics.
In practice, the design challenge is to consistently match wind, load, and kite in resonant pumping. At constant load, as wind increases, a smaller kite is chosen from a quiver to match, and Eigen Frequency increases. At constant wind, as load increases, a larger kite is chosen to match, and Eigen Frequency drops. Power-depower further refines the tuning. The AWES ground machinery must compensate by varying its Eigen Frequency accordingly. This variable-transmission role can somewhat be done electronically, but its better mostly done mechanically, and refined electronically.
It is theoretically sub-optimal to create an artificially low Eigen Frequency by a downwind reeling cycle containing higher-frequency looping or figure-eight cycles, with parasitically asymmetric return cycles. It is worth the trouble to only work a power kite crosswind, both ways, at its Natural Frequency, with minimal cycle-turning-loss.
1 Like