Syroco Concept Preview

Spoiler: I dont buy it…

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The concept looks good to me. It looks cheaper to construct, smaller, lighter, and have less drag above and below the water than a catamaran. They also have some funding, a number of employees, and past innovations: Syroco

But now maybe the kite wants to pull the thing out of the water and is a big source of drag? Maybe a fundamental question is, how quickly can a soft kite go through the air?

According to the French website below, a paraglider (soft kite) can fly up to a maximum of 15 m/s; 28 m/s for a hang glider; 42 m/s (150 km/h, as for the targeted speed record on the video) for a rigid wing.
http://vollibre.chez.com/general/question.htm#debut
I think the values ​​can be much higher for soft or semi-rigid kites, but a rigid kite will be needed to reach alone more than the targeted value of 150 km/h (42 m/s) for the foil boat.

Good concept for reducing drag and parasitic forces.

For an AWE use perhaps a flexible wing will have a reasonable speed if we want to avoid the cavitation of a hydro turbine placed at the bottom of the foil, and even the cavitation of the foil itself. From the foil boat only the foil is required, its mast and the tether being aligned.

My issues with the design as shown is that pull of the kite is not always constant. Perhaps you can have semi constant for a few seconds, but other times that hull is going to be oscillating like hell. Its going to be a super bumpy ride. And the size of that tail control surface is not enough to stabilize the hull.

Id have more faith in the idea if the hull had its own wings like an aeroplane.

Perhaps with a few more revisions of the design? But why start so difficult, instead of first making, say, a sailboat with an existing hull and a kite, or even a sailboat on three foils and with a kite.

Im not saying it will never set a speed record. I am saying I thing it will not be usable for anything other…

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Maybe if the single foil is pitch controlled
But by my guesswork…
They won’t start with a single foil in the water like that.
They’ll want the pitch authority of a 2nd trailing foil to keep the main foil in the water.

I was envisioning this way back in the 1980’s when I was taking my first Autocad course. My first primitive drawing was a boat pulled by a parafoil kite. The question in my mind, for this version of the general kite-sailing concept, was how high should the fuselage be suspended? In other words, would this be more of a watercraft, or an aircraft?

Like an airplane, with a tail featuring an elevator (horizontal stabilizer). “Flying wings” do work, but with swept wings and the pitch-control located near the wingtips, which are to the rear due to the sweep of the wings. I tend to agree that a proper tail is a more reliable method for pitch control. Hang-gliders these days incorporate a reflex bridle that raises the trailing edge to prevent getting stuck in a dive, after too many pilots were lost to unrecoverable dives.

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Latest news seems they pivoted to something useful, does that mean that their world record attempt is dead?

https://syro.co/en/news/spotlight-on-syroco-efficientships-digital-twins/

With the concept they are able to get funding to do research and development on a new type of efficient craft, that likely also informed or enabled this new product. I’d call that useful. Here is a video of a test:

And here is an update from June: upgraded-prototype-leaving-workshop

Hi, I am now working at Syroco. The world record attempt is not dead but it takes time to develop a new technology, and as you stated, we also work on other projects not relying on somewhat limited sponsorship Here is the first public picture of the prototype flying with a kite above. We plan to release soon a video.

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I like this video as well, where you can see the paravane (“aile d’eau”)

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I think it is very interesting that someone actually got this concept working.
Just as my first CAD drawing in the 1980’s was a kite towing a boat, I also dreamed of an airborne yacht flying under a kite, pulling against a hydrofoil in the water. The difference in my vision at the time was the yacht could be thousands of feet in the air if desired. Kind of a Jules Vern-esque fantasy.

This could be a continuation or/and a related concept of the Seaglider which comprises the Didier Costes’ “Chien de mer” (which is a floating dagger-board with foils), then the blimp and the user in the air.

Though your project is really cool and intrieguing, I have previously voiced concerns about the viability of the concept. In particular I am concerned about stability in flight of the kite - paravane - fuselage structure. Also the complexity is quite high. And getting from slow cruising to full speed is in itself a mammoth challenge. Though this part you are likely to skip if you can find a way to do it supported by a second vessel (my guess).

I am following your project with curiosity and hope. It may be clear though to see where I would place a monetary bet :).

Also you may consider that in this forum we are looking at «wacky» ideas on a regular basis, and few of them seem to succeed. This probably make us a tougher crowd than a person who has not been following kite based ideas for a while already.

Thanks for reporting back on the forum.

Yes taking off and stability in flight were not easy to achieve, we had to iterate several times.

So far we had to automate some parts on the foil control to get better overall control (it is difficult to control because you can’t really see it underwater, and it is small and fast so your response time needs to be good).

We added one more servo to control the pitch of pod when sailing in archimedian mode (floating) and help take off (so called Low Speed Stabilisation System)
Syroco.
Once the speed is high enough the tail is enough to act as a wind vane (you don’t have disturbances on wings so you don’t need a huge tail). We could even get rid of the horizontal plane, but I think it might come back.

We still have an important part of manual control and stability is not yet perfect and requires hours of training, but once you will have let’s say 90% automation, it should be stable without the need for skilled pilot. I would agree to say that stability is a main issue to go faster on average, and might be the limiting factor for speed record, but I think you can get practical use without going so fast.

So yes, it is complex but no more than our surrounding world (nowadays, it is easier to use satellites and communication networks to measure boat speed and accurate flight altitude!).

As far as I am concerned, having this proof of concept is already a success in itself (and for us, many small successes sometimes hiding failures to all the steps the team went through).

I also dream of a yacht flying quietly under a kite, or a plane getting energy from a paravane or from wind gradient (or alternatively). I expect to have less disturbances from turbulences up in air than waves in water.

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Except those were developed by many teams over a long time in small increments and with huge public budgets.

Though to be fair the Syroco should be a lot simpler than implementing GPS :slight_smile:

Did you release details on which parts of the complete system already proven?

We did not take time to write scientific papers if this is the question, all public information is on our website or social networks.

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I meant that our system is complex because for now we rely on complex systems (like GPS) but it might be made much simpler.

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Last update On the Road to the Sailing World Speed Record | Syroco - Footage from the Journey! - YouTube

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