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Oh Yeah the kites

A project log for Portable Kite Turbines

Kite Power for your adventures

roddy-rags-readRoddy "Rags" Read 07/11/2018 at 14:410 Comments

With practice I've neatened my old kite turbine designs. 

Make neatly cuffed compressed rod rings as follows

A length of loop inside the end of a compression cuff

A length of hook over the top past the other end

This length extra cuff longer than your rod (2 rods or 3 rods) length is great 

The singles, a double and triple rod (1.7m x 4mm carbon epoxy, both ends with heatshrink, one end with a 10cm cuff @ 5cm epoxied in place) into a ring, compressed and closed in a cuff. The single rings have been sewn shut at ~26" ~62cm, Now our minimum packing box dimension.

These rings now need a 6 point harness to a ring in the centre. I made the small white food grade plastic ones, (seen in the boring video) with 3 rim holes for harnessing and a central hole for the central lift line.

Then you need to add tabs with 6 tethers to rundown the stack from ring to ring.split rings 

The screwdriver blade was sharpened to help opening the strong split rings. The tether at the top comes from the kite, down to the split ring tabs, web supported past the inside of the cuffed ring and on down to the next ring.

This is the tether from the kite ring. You see a double tab and split ring connection on the ring in front of the kite. That allows the ring kite to fly configured as a single, double, tripple anywhere on a stack of ring kites. Only 3 tethers (black dyneema 2mm 230DaN) come down from this ring. The kite is attached, front and back, to the ring, with webbing strengthening the joins at about 3/4 span. The tether progressively bridles to the kites original bridles. The outermost bridle pair have a longer lead form the main tether. The inside leading edge of the kite has a 3mm epoxy rod to set the leading edge tight.

You're pretty much good to go at this point. 

Some young scouts managed to power kettles with it so can you...

Connect everything, throw it in the sky and get power.... well... that'll take a bit of practice yet. 

I'll come back soon with more details of how the packing case system progresses. 

I may yet change down to a 20" wheel for portability. I also want to make straps so that we can use a wheel which comes off, gets used, then goes back on an e-bike. The battery I use here is from an old motor which has now been incorporated into a powered drift trike. We have used the kite power to run it. But I don't recommend that design..Deadly. 

I still have to attach (rivet) the No-Wind cranking handle to the wheel rim ( I want to call it a winding handle since there is no wind) I'd only do this for the scouts camping model as who needs a handle flying round on an actual bike wheel?

I'll let you know how the scouts do on Jamboree.

rod

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