A description of something I’ve been working toward.
A while ago Windswept came to a point where we realised we needed a rotary lift system.
Our lift line tension was too low for scaling, we needed much more active kites, moving fast in order to build line tension to support lower rotors that drive torque.
I’m lazy, I wanted something simple and mechanical. I didn’t want to fly a bunch of electronics in the air.
Another terrible trait I have is wanting to do several experiments at once. So I’d like to try a rotor that can pack away and fold into a really small volume.
Two line delta kites fit the bill. They’re semi-rigid, they pack away very small, they’re very fast and they can perform tight looping maneuvers. I’ve nearly finished building a little rig, to test how they work on a rotor, and to see if I can bank them cyclically in a simple mechanical way.
The premise this time is really simple (Probably too simple)
Rotors are heavy, so they will sit lower in elevation than the line of a lift kite. Yes, I’m still using a lift kite.
The low elevation means that
There is a misalignment between the plane of the rotor and the lifting line.
This misalignment allows us to add a new kind of bridle, a topside bridle, Which I suspect can be used to power the actuation of cyclic banking
Quite the extent of efficacy or the wind range applicable or the balance of forces…
Well
I’m just going to stick the £^*%£ thing in the air eventually to find out what I can
There’s a video of the model to help your understanding
here
and some pics of the parts
This second picture shows the top bridle, the two lines in yellow.
The idea is … the rotor is heavy, So the blade on the bottom side of the rotor will be pulled more by the outside - making the bridle tighter. This hopefully makes the kite bank to be more flat when it’s on the bottom side. Thus promoting a more lift shape than a vertical oriented blade. Similarly on the top (Though probably to a lesser extent) the force shifts to the inside of the rotor.
Typically my rotor blades are already banked in (Outer tip down) a bit to help with expansion. As such the topmost blades are usually already more horizontal than the rotor.
Potentially an obvious problem with this is the lift line tension is going to be lower than the tension developed on the rotor blades. Therefore the effect will not be very strong.
It’s something I’m willing to test.
I’ll explain more in a write-up and video.