I like the backline. Consider a “teabag” anchor consisting of a drogue or streamer with enough mass to mostly stay down, so the whole rig can rotate passively.
TUDelft’s AWE classification schemes are very incomplete, no place for Kiwee, crosswind cableways, and many other AWES teams and architectures. SomeAWE and EnergyKiteSystems do far better at classification.
The back line is perhaps used to stall the turbine and lower it at an edge of the wind window.
Yes, of course, side-pull is the dousing method. A teabag-drogue allows side-pull without disengaging an anchor-point.
There are 2 chief advantages to anchoring the backline (or holding to a ground circle)
The backline can be set tight, this holds the top of the turbine a set height so that the turbine is at a set elevation angle. Sweet. Until the wind changes. I used to use a running line back anchor to cope better with swings of direction… No need.
Next advantage… A huge safety one. The back anchor is strong enough to hold the lift kite for launch and recovery plus more. So assume stuff breaks, like 7 tethers once did, or say if you f up main anchoring at the ground station, stuff shouldn’t fly far past the back anchor.
Double sweet.
A few more advantages can be sewn onto a back line and anchor set
Please take a new portrait photo without blitz 
The teabag method can add mass (sand, water) to duplicate the functions of a fixed anchor, including killing the rig in the event of a main-axis failure. Its also possible to rig wheels or runners for variable teabag mobility, or work a back anchor along a traveler.
Its engineering trade-offs between fixed wind directions, like Trade Winds; and wildly fluctuating wind directions, like Horse Latitudes; and supervisory availability.
After so long arguing against systems which could have a dragging anchor. It will be surprising for some readers to see that argument in favour of a drag-able anchor.
KiteLab Group has long found draggable anchors a useful rigging method. In fact, most kite sports are draggable-anchor based. A suitably designed anchor-drag force absorbs gust surge, for both dragging human anchors, or to keep an AWES within working load limits.
Be careful to distinguish from unplanned catastrophic anchor dragging. That’s why water or sand ballast is recommended above for teabag use, that will not survive extended dragging. kPower makes anchor force arguments both ways, on specific engineering merits.
That’s not right.
You’re picking and choosing.
It’s somehow ok for @kitefreak to drag a high energy line wildly out of control but not ok for an engineering team to do it.
Anyone else other than @kitefreak see it as fine as @kitefreak does?
Untrue, its always wrong to create a hazard, including if kPower was ever “to drag a high energy line out of control”, not just Kitepower, which did drag such a line out of control.
If Kitepower had used either a teabag or fixed-anchor based kite-killer backline, they could have prevented runaway deep into Valkenburg.
Teabag
Well, … Let’s not get into semantics here… Needless to say… if urbandictionary.com has a translation of the word… It aint going to be nice. Did you know actual teabags are made using plastic… So so annoyed when I discovered that.
I presume you mean a sand anchor type arrangement… A gather-able bag with strapping sewn on…?
I use 1 ton gravel delivery bags for this when I fly big lifters on the beach.
I’ve considered the sinking of the same bags in a circle array on my croft. Seems good in principle.
A semi permeable sack with very strong straps, dug into the ground and back filled with the earth removed from the hole. However… I was helping a neighbour fill in pot holes on Tuesday. His 1 ton gravel bag had been sat outside for a year and been degraded by weeds & water.
I do still hold out hope for a tensile bag anchor circle system like this… But it needs to be deep in the ground and not able to flap about in the breeze on the end of a safety back-line.
Sorry for going off topic here, but in the interest of reducing worldwide plastic waste: Clipper has very nice organic tea and the teabags are just a paper bag without the string and label.
No one should be against traction-kiting’s inherent anchor-dragging dynamic. “Teabagging” is an established kitesurfing term, like this sample quote-
“In kitesurfing, they call this teabagging. A slip of the board means getting dragged in and out of the water, like a tea bag.” https://www.facebook.com/nochairlifts/videos/425092861432572/
KiteLab extended this “teabag” usage to apply to bag anchors that generally stay in place, but may move during gust surge or weathervaning. As long as the Daisy relies on a fixed-anchor backline, it can’t weathervane without manual intervention.
A bag anchor-kill trick is a slip-knot at the bag whose tail is secured by a stake. If the bag drags, the knot releases. All power tech has safe and dangerous cases, as a two-edged sword.
It seems my wife has been correct all along on the topic of network kites and daisy kite rotors…
She insists on loose tea leaves in a lenticular mesh strainer… Like Gaudi, she must have realised, the 3d drooping wire net catenary form, is the best fit analogue to the inverted lifting kite net form, and still torsionally rigid enough to keep the tea leaves in the water when we swirl the pot, thus mimicking the functionality of the Daisy Kite model at the same time. She’s genius
Phew at last, the forecast was below 10m/s and not too gusty
I got out and did a test of the new polygonal transmission.
6 lowest parts in the pic.
Worked ace!
Great looking rig, Rod.
Its about time Lewis came together to become a major AWES Testing Location, under your leadership. The economy needs a new foundation.
The sketched design is derived from the rotating reel system, here being only an angle gear with rope but without gear for reduction. Unfortunately this system works as a direct transmission, in such a way that the angular speed is the same for both rings. And the rings cannot be too small when a fast rope-drive action is wanted.
A bevel gear with reduction (like on the page below) would be required in such a way that the larger ring (taking the rotational speed from the rotating kite) transmits its motion to the smaller ring at the same linear velocity, so at different angular velocity. But such a system should be light enough. A system with only ropes would be nice if it is feasible.
Indeed keeping the two rings in the air does not facilitate the transmission of the torque despite the tension. And in addition that would require a heavy material due to the diameter of both rings.
I wonder if the 10 KW could be divided into a complete network of 6 or 7 units reproducing what already exists individually. What do you think about @Rodread?
The intention of the project is to test various modular kite turbine techno-economic propositions and
yes that includes their modular deployment
Pretty certain at this point the standard 10kW reference model will be a 3 rotor x 5 blade configuration
so We’ll start testing a single rotor 5 blade 3kW set and add more similar on top.
That’ll allow us to assess various aspects of performance, interaction reliability…
An illuminating description of the stability of networked lifter kites, compared to instability without a network:
