With all this talk about how hard it is to get economically viable awes, I thought I’d share another niche idea: One can use Kites as flying advertisement. Moving or stationary.
There are two ways this intersects with awes:
One can light the kite up with flygen
It has to be automatically launched, landed and flown.
Multicopters are probably better suited to the video thing. (If you mean the olympics drone skyshow thing)
Really fast flying kites could work as a persistance of vision display. Like this, but at total darkness and two meters or so should be visible to the naked eye:
Not really awes, but as has been extensively discussed it’s hard to market small awes. I’d see it the other way around. This could be a stepping stone for a company to learn before making a larger scale awes.
Besides graphics printed on a kite, the simplest advertising architecture is as kite “line-laundry”, from novel light effects to various daytime displays. This is a baseline case-
Light pattern could also just be used as a visual guide to kite status information which in lieu of radio data may be useful for a field operator or public space user.
Rotary POV is easily done @Tom
Coming back to the original sytem requirements:
Is there any kite stable enough, one could simple leave to its own devices?
No control, just staying downwind. Being reeled in onto a docking point when wind isn’t enough.
If wind = enough:
reel out
else:
reel in
That’s what I’ve always thought.
The lack of anyone even having a kite that can launch and land automatically, while talking of world kite-energy domination, is why I always say: “idiots, idiots, idiots”…
I don’t see how anyone could get much stupider than that.
Only expert kite flyers can currently reliably fly kites. Equivalent automation will take a long time to perfect. Doug simply lacks realistic patience for kite automation to develop within the wonderful R&D community. None of them are “idiots”.
There are also several classic kites and new designs that do in fact self-relaunch reliably. Show-kite pros these days often simply wait for their kites to self-relaunch in fickle conditions. Substituting digital automation does not add much at first, except novel compounded failure modes.
Veering back on-topic, the most versatile night-flying advertising is digital projection on a suitable kite. Projection mapping on 3D figure kites will be a fantastic spectacle. kPower is developing kite concepts along these lines for AWEfest effort. AWEfest was Wubbo’s concept for AWE’s own Flying Advertising.
Lets not forget that Eddy himself advertised with kites in the Golden Age. Meaningfully decorated kites are very ancient. As seen fit, AWES have been and will be covered with ads.
I think projection mapping is a good way, but a potentially big problem for aircraft. From what I gather you dont send high intensity light into the night sky for these reasons.
After thinking about this overnight, I think the following setup could work:
one or more lifter kites in a network
a large inflatable ring (like a kitesurf LEI leading edge)
wings bridled inside the ring (the wings make the ring rotate
Adressable led strips. Depending on how fast you rotate, you need every point inside the ring to be serviced by a LED strip >10 Hz. The strips are placed in a star bridle inside the ring. The number of arms of the star given by above requirement
computer control of the LED strips dependent on current roll angle of the ring
In theory you could with little effort show live video inside the area of the ring.
I asked around, and eg concerts would buy this as a service.
I am not sure if this could be made profitable though. Your customers would often be let down by lack of wind (usually we have very little wind nighttime) or too much wind, or rain, or lack of launching space, or QHSE considerations etc
MVP with a persistance of vision display:
Build something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CB3UVmEcB0
Stick it on a large enough kite you control manually. Remote control it to start the animation at the right point it the flight pattern.
Mainly for beach events or orther events where there is enough space.
Should be really easy to do.
Probably not.^^
One could make a similar product with a large, light enough to be safe to fly overhead, tethered and wired “helicopter” drone, flying straight up.
There’s talk about different concepts in this thread.
Rotating and non-rotating persistance of vision displays, just lifting a banner, automatically launching and landing banner etc.
Precise projection-mapping is in principle capable of avoiding wasted projection into the night sky. If leakage is not coherent laser light, the air-traffic conflict issue is less of a concern, not subject to specific laser ban.