Optimal AWE education is the meta-topic here. This should not be a question of a suboptimal educational architecture. No student should fail at their own developmental level. Its up to the curriculum developer to make sure every student can succeed, from kinder and special-needs, to post-grad. Optimal methods tend to help.
The pumping Messenger offers a simple stable reliable reeling basis. The choice of crashing new airplanes is “very expensive” for most students. Access to shared optimal low-complexity AWES methods may be best for both students and energy markets. A beginning student should not be made to copy overly-complex design, Let them succeed at a KIS experience of finding creative solutions in a fertile engineering exploration space.
Fortunately Dude can pick whatever best fits his needs. Lets think ahead for future AWE students of every kind. What are the best lessons? NASA really pushes simple self-flying kites in its K-12 curriculum, and adding an AWE WECS component would be simple.
It seems for this plane and a person mass 70 kg, we get ~5 on the Y-axis (3 cm radius of the plane node) and ~13 on the X axis (assuming 30 m/s attained speed). You end up in the “mixed results” section of the chart.
Be careful and keep a good distance to yourselves, other people, buildings etc. A speeding model plane like this is no joke. Also keep out of the really high wind speeds at first. 6-8 m/s wind should be plenty as a start.
Safety issues compound as advice is applied to many students. Losing an eye, or harming a small child, is possible with fairly small masses at terminal velocity, like a battery pack that falls loose (dropped-object risk). Ordinary gliders are not designed to snub-up violently against tethers, which can cause mid-air break-up. Tethers pose various special risks. AKA Member Flyers are insured for non-commercial risk.
