We aim to fly a kite to the highest altitude in the world

Designed by Robert Moore

Kite Altitude World Record

Winch

Line which is as slippery and thin as Dyneema, is almost impossible to handle with bare hands and even with a gloved hand, tensions more than a few kilograms are difficult to manage. Throw in very long line lengths and high tensions and and some machanical means of controlling line in and out are essential. The winch with a capstan and reel is the tool for the job. In it's simplest form the winch or windlass is just a reel with a shaft and winding knob on it'd side. This is represented by the fixed fishing reel and the garden hose reel. Long line lengths, if wound in directly to the storage reel, accumulate tremendous compression on the reel centre. This may result in implosion of the reel or breaking of the reel sides. I discovered that after I trialled my first big reel (see below). I also used many large electrician's reels in my orst 18 months of exploratory flights over 1,000 ft. I soon tired of hand winding over 2,000 ft of line although it developed the bicepts!.

Designing a winch is not too difficult if you know what the requirements are. These are to provide enough torque to counter line pull and enough line speed to keep a kite aloft in calm conditions. These parameters need to be measured. The line tension was measured flying one of our record attempt kites in 15 - 20 knot gusty winds. I measured 79 lbs maximum tension. I also applied some known values to flat surfaces with Cda and surface area. Maximum line tension was calculated as 160 lbs in 40 knot winds.The minimum wind speed required was measured as 5 knots or 2.8 m/s. The belt and pulley drive system gave reduction ration of 36:1. The motor's stock speed was 2850 rpm producing

80 meters per minute, 4.8 kph or near to 2.4 knots line speed. We needed double that but that was to come with the later winch version. This rebuild was forced by the failure of the first electric motor during the October 2005 incident.
The winch system needed to not only produce the required torque and output speed but needed to run reliably every day, all day. For that we also needed a reliable generator as there is no on field mains power supply. The original generator was a Chinese made Yamaha copy and the first one failed, needing to be replaced under warranty. The replacement ran fine for 2 record attempts but unfortunately was damaged in the trailer during a trip to the Eastern suburbs for testing. This generator and electric motor proved marginal in power output anyway so the replacement was a good price and also more than double the power at 5.5 hp. It is able to provided plenty of grunt for the winch as well as laptop, fans, floodlights and electric jugs. It is capable of running a decent welder which I hope to never need.
The control for the original electric motor was just a on/off/reversing switch although this feature needed to be wired by a motor specialist. Without speed control, the motor is limited in it's ability to finely attune kite and wind speed. It also requires excessive motor on-off cycles, stressing the internal motor control and the control switch. After the first motor burned out I upgraded with a more powerful TECO motor and added a FM50 TECO inverter/controller. The motor is 1 hp or 0.74 kw. The orginal TECO motor was 0.5 hp and fixed speed. The inverter has a programmable interface which can vary the torque curve at various speeds and when slowing down amoungst a host of other paarameters. It enable the standard 2,850 rpm to be doubled to 6,000 rpm for up to a minute. Normally I limit the overspeed to 4,350 rpm or 50% over the standard of 2850 rpm. This overspeed capability is important as it gives me the ability to give the kite a quick boost up, analogous to giving the line a tug. The kite can also be sustained if the wind drops to zero. This system is more than cabable of performing all the intended roles except for high speed freewheeling to alleviate the situation that occured on September 30th prior to line break.

Kite Altitude record

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The Teco FM50 inverter is inside a custom control box. The FM50 uses clever robust electronics in conjunction with a processor to provided a wide range of speed and torque characteristics to an AC motor. The motor can spin from a few revolutions per second up to 6000 rpm, over double it's normal speed while maintaining good torque. It has forward, reverse and intelligent thermal protection which vutually eliminates damage from overload. I have also incorporate a forward/reverse control switch for the line layering motor.

The 2005 version with chain drive and 1/2 hp motor without inverter.

The 2010 version reverted to belt drive and also incorporated an uncontrolled backup motor.

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