High lift coefficient and biplane kite

Its odd to see so many Northern EU university-incubated ventures competing with similar but unproven kiteplane platforms for a market that has not yet developed. The technical claims seem like wildly speculative marketing, rather than the caution academia normally shows.

Note that high Lift Coefficient is a lower velocity flight mode where power kites excel. It won’t make much difference whether a kiteplane is a biplane or not, with a tail or not, and so on, if careful comparative testing is destined to favor the power kite.

It all may boil down which wing can crash, not kill anyone, pop right back up, and does not have an RF com link that can be jammed, plus the highest power-to-weight to-boot.

Good luck to all players who find themselves with the wrong architectural down-select, that they may somehow migrate to the winning architecture. This would be natural if everyone was cooperating more rather than competing for a quick return on a shakey investment.

Biplane kites are old hat in classic kite design, but monoplane kites dominate all high-performance kiting, for well known reasons. A bare biplane advantage over a monoplane is a slower landing velocity and stronger airframe, to not crack up quite as soon as faster kiteplanes.

Pray for third-party testing to settle the fog of AWE product claims.