Solar Powered Hang-Glider (idea)

[Guest mobius1]

Ages ago, I was fooling around with one of my 3d programs and I came up with this rather bizzare idea of making a hang-glider that would have the ability to produce its own power to keep airborn with a pilot.

 

This attempt is alot different than a normal hang-glider though. The wing would consist of a flexible solar panalled core and would also consist of inflated cells, I figured helium would be the best bet, since its so light. The power from the solar panels would be directed into maybe an electric engine mounted to the pilots rear.

 

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mplayer/sglider.jpg

 

It was just an idea, and I havent a foggiest idea wether it would be possible, but I would love to hear the views of those whom know what they are talking about - mainly you guys!

 

Im not a scientist, im just a creative chap thats all.

 

Noel

[5614]

normally solar powers are not flexible although that could probably be worked on.

 

what does the solar power generators generate electricity for??? is there some motor on the back which is not shown in the images?

 

if there is a motor this will weigh down the aircraft.

 

what is the point in this invention?

not trying to be rude, but the whole point of hang-gliders is that they glide, planes with motors in already exist!

the only advantage in this is that you could "glide" for further, but then hang-gliders can travel for miles anyway.

if you just wanna go faster the solar power cells will just not generate enough power to make this into a high speed 'roller-coaster' because it would just be too heavy.

 

nice idea though!

[Skye]

There was an unmanned glider made a few years ago that basically cruised at high altitude.

 

Found a link:

 

http://www.siliconchip.com.au/cms/A_30556/article.html

[boris_73]

i think he is refering to the ones with a twin stroke engine on the back, but again that is not hanggliding, and i think it would be pretty useless it would not have enough power unless people are willing to spend hundreds of thosands of pounds on one, to get decent solar panels when instead they could just spend a few thousand and get one which is relaible by that i mean one which may not cut out if there are cloudes

[Guest mobius1]

I was under the impression that hang-gliders could only go for miles if the wind was in their favour on that particular day of flight? Hang gliders cant fly straight forever either, not to the best of my knowledge. They instead need to constantly dive to gain speed then pull up again to gain height, I could be wrong there though!

 

Anyhoo.

 

I figured if a small electric engine powering propellers - was mounted at the back of the wing, right behind the pilot. Then this may produce just enough thrust to keep it airborn with or without the winds favour. It might also take away the constant requirement to dive for speed and pull up for height.

 

well thats what I was thinking anyways

[boris_73]

sorry to sound rude but it really wouldnt work

[5614]

sorry to sound rude but it really wouldnt work

 

you should explain why, thats what i did in post #2

(and if its for the same reason as what i said, then say that, its no use just saying it wont work, you have to explain why.

[boris_73]

normally solar powers are not flexible although that could probably be worked on.

 

what does the solar power generators generate electricity for??? is there some motor on the back which is not shown in the images?

 

if there is a motor this will weigh down the aircraft.

 

what is the point in this invention?

not trying to be rude' date=' but the whole point of hang-gliders is that they glide, planes with motors in already exist!

the only advantage in this is that you could "glide" for further, but then hang-gliders can travel for miles anyway.

if you just wanna go faster the solar power cells will just not generate enough power to make this into a high speed 'roller-coaster' because it would just be too heavy.

 

nice idea though![/quote']

it would'nt work for the exact reason 5614 said, it would'nt work for the cost, which for decent solar panel's are going to cost thousands-hundreds of thousands and people would just not buy it at those prices, it would'nt work because you would make no money on it, unless you sold it in a art auction it would'nt work because if you were to buy cheap solar panals there would not be enough power and the only way it might work if you had millions of tiny expensive solar panals to creat the flexability needed and then it would be made to see if it could be made because again no one would buy it because of the cost and reliability, these are just a few reasons why it would'nt work

[Sayonara]

normally solar powers are not flexible although that could probably be worked on.

Well, apart from the flexible ones.

[5614]

Well, apart from the flexible ones.

LOL...... oh yeah,:

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993380

they do exist, sorry, just had never some across them before, looking at the article [from Feb 2003] they are quite old.

my mistake soz bout that

[drz]

ya, I got a flexible panel at home, about 12" long by 6" wide, cost about $30.

 

As to the hang glider, well, solar power sucks. You'd need a huge wingspan covered with solar panel, (do they have the solar paint on the market yet?), and I would think a some batterys.

 

The worlds fastest electric car goes some 250+mph. It was using hundreds of AA batterys. You could use those, perhaps mounted to the frames.

 

Now, I assume the purpose in having a powered glider is so that you don't need wind, or have to jump off a big cliff. I noticed you mentioned something about helium, is this to make the thing float on its own?

 

Anyhow, huge wingspan covered in solar panels, tanks filled with helium, lots of AA battery packs, a high rpm motor with some kinda prop and steering system, can't see why it wouldn't work.

 

I don't know alot about flying, personally detest it, because the one thing I do know about it always holds true. What goes up must come down.

 

Also, this is probably do-able, but would cost lots of money, and by the time you finished would have a basic airplane.

 

But on the note of airplane, would an electric plane be ideal? I mean, electric motors have alot less moving parts, the only real wear item is the brushes, and so long as everything is installed properly, reliability is through the roof. As compared to engines, which stall out, have part failures, etc.

 

Is there any electric manned planes?

[5614]

if there are electric manned planes, then they certainly wouldnt look like this!

 

i suppose this is do-able after all... you'd need a lot of space and such, the motor/propeller weight should be counteracted by the helium, however, with helium wings, you need to think about how to get back down!

[drz]

purge the tanks

 

slowly that is

[5614]

..... or build in an ejector seat!

 

i like the idea of purging all the tanks in one go though!

 

or you could just put a spark plug in one of them, this may cause safety hazards though!

[LucidDreamer]

There are already solar planes in existence today. If you use an electric powered propeller then you no longer have a glider--you have a plane. Solar powered planes have huge wingspans to take advantage of the enormous lift and so that they have large surface areas for the solar cells. They have multiple propellers with multiple batteries/fuel cells. Their wings are designed to have great lift and to travel at high altitudes at a slow speed. I guess it goes without saying that they use very lightweight but strong material in their construction.

Helios, built by NASA:

http://www.herelectricvehicle.com/helios.html

[5614]

yes, but that was an un-manned aircraft.

 

to man it you need either a fuselage of some sort of thing to hold onto.

 

fuselage: adds too much weight.

 

hangy-on-to thing: makes this like an externally seated plane - a cross between a plane and a hang-powered-glider.

[LucidDreamer]

There are manned solar planes as well. http://www.kitplanes.com/features/content/FuelCells1.htm

[Guest NewMotorBoy]

undefinedhttp://www.japan.com/technology/index.php

 

This is a link to a guy that has developed a way to make an electric motor that gets energy back from it's magnets. This way a 15-20hp electric motor could be developed that would need minimal power imput(probably from high density capacitors and solar material- also minimal amount) to run for hours.

 

Here's the basic idea -

 

Use 2 counter-rotating motor/engine of 10 hp each(mounted side-by-side) to power 2 counter-rotating fans in the same duct.

 

The houseing would probably have to be thin carbonfibre, and the fans light/high-density plastic.

 

that might be a bit overkill on the power , but it wouldn't add that much weight, 10hp electric motors arn't that big, and you might be better off with a single 15-20hp electric motor. One motor could still power 2 counter-rotating fans in a duct.....

 

This would create alot of thrust, for a long time. Hell, if you did have some solar cell material that could recharge the capacitors, you might be able to fly non-stop.... literally.. Just get high enough for the cells to do their job, and off you go again!!!!!!

 

Think about it. With the right glider, you could hold 45-65mph indefinatly. From Denver to Vegas in a day, no gas, you'd have enough extra power to stay heated, carry food, and you could land in your casino's back yard or heli-pad and make quite an entrance.

 

No plane ticket ever, if you're patient enough to fly yourself there.

 

Personally I'd just scale this idea up a little bit, use the basic idea from http://www.iwatoyco.com. Build it out of fabric/resin on an aluminum-graphite frame, and you have a ZeroEmissionVehicle, cruising at 150MPH, and never need to refuel!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[indignity]

it might work... you can purchase what's called a "trike" (essentially a hang glider strapped onto a go-cart with a huge gas powered fan on the back) for a few thousand dollars ($5000 for a cheap one... $50,000 for a nice one)...

 

 

... the question, really, is how much power can you draw from the sun?

 

the trikes that I've read about cruise at about 50 MPH and consume between between 1 and 3 gallons of gas per hour...

 

at speeds slower than 50 MPH, turbulence becomes a much bigger problem... at speeds greater than 50 MPH, the wind resistance is exponentially harder to fight against (you want to keep it as light as possible... so unless you're spending big bucks on a carbon fiber frame, this thing is about as aerodynamic as you and your go-kart are... and if you've ridden a bike above 20 MPH, you know that that isn't very aerodynamic)

 

charging batteries throughout the course of a day to ride the thing for an hour is an option... BUT... it significantly decreases the practicality of it, especially considering the (relatively) low cost and consumption of fuel by gas powered trikes

 

so... if it's going to be useful... it's either going to have to be very expensive (which essentially makes it useless), or it's going to have to run at around 50 MPH using either very little stored power, relying completely on what the sun is currently supplying it

 

... the question is, can solar panels provide that much power?

 

 

*edit*

 

some of the trikes have hard tops... so the solar panels don't necessarily have to be flexible

[Guest NewMotorBoy]

I should have made more of a point with the new electric motors....

 

 

The Japan Electric Fan company( http://www.japan.com/technology/index.php )

 

Has developed a technique of making electric motors act as a generator while producing force. The solar cells would just be an extra back-up of power, probably not even needed.

 

So here's the thing.......... if you had an electric motor instead of a gas one that lots of the current powered hang-gliders use, but your motor acutally created more electrical power that it used(or had a mW power draw)... the amount of power you would need to carry with you would be negligable for the same 3 hours of flight. Some of these motors probably would run on the slightest impulse from a SMALL array of solar cell material BECAUSE the motor would actually generate it's own electricity.........

[indignity]

the link that you supplied is broke... but I'll go ahead and assume that it's a prototype, if not just a theory

 

a motor that generates its own power would affect every part of our lives in a big way... and once technology of the sort is readily available, the world will change drastically

 

something of the sort would make (much) bigger news than "japan.com"... and I'm into the whole "watching the news" thing, and have heard nothing of it... so there you have my reason for thinking that you're not into the whole "logic" thing

[LucidDreamer]

I read the article and I am a little skeptical of it. The motor claims to create more energy than it uses. This seems like a violation of the laws of physics but remember permanent magnets have a form of stored energy so it doesn't really create more energy than it makes when you factor that in.

What seems strange is that the motor tripled the amount of wattage that was put in.

 

The meters showed an input to the stator electromagnets of approximately 1.8 volts and 150mA input, and from the generator, 9.144 volts and 192mA output. 1.8 x 0.15 x 2 = 540mW input and 9.144 x 0.192 = 1.755W out.

 

How is this possible?

 

All Minato's power calculations appear to be wrong (apparently it's a common mistake many scientists make); you can't measure input power using a multimeter when the current drain isn't constant. You can see his workshop in his videos - all his calculations are done using common multimeters and a desktop calculator.

 

Minato motors use an optical sensor to "switch on" the "stator" (electromagnet) for a fraction of each RPM, so he'd need an oscilloscope and some funky math to figure out how much current the motors are really sucking up (or a stopwatch; and wait for the driving battery to go dead, then estimate based on the battery capacity).

 

It's still a super neat idea though - which seems to boil down to "drive motors from the outside using aligned permanent magnets and momentary pulses from the stator" instead of the traditional "sick the stator in the middle" idea

.

 

http://www.gizmodo.com/archives/magic-motor-makes-me-a-mook-015104.php

 

Minato Update - I spoke with two different individuals today who had engineers travel to Japan to look at Minato's motor. Both, after careful investigation, concluded that it is not an over unity device, and is not even that efficient as motors go. -- Sterling D. Allan; July 8, 2004

http://freeenergynews.com/Directory/MagneticMotors/

 

If he has really created an efficient motor than it would only run much more efficiently on less power and create less heat at best. Its not going to produce more energy than it takes in.

[pi_of_9]

I can see this technology being used in the computer industry...clean, cool, and quiet. Overclockers would love it!

[teatrea]

Hi I like the idea , i think small electric motors are all ready used for powering trikes , i think they produce 10KW though. How many KW of thrust would you need to get a hang glider in the air. with the help of the pilot running of course. Maybe a 3kw motor? , with current PV 3kw would require around 15 sqm of panel , so you would need at least this in wing surface area. Maybe a wing could be constructed of light weight carbon fibre or such that incoorparates the cells? Would be cool to fly one long distances , gliding and then switching to power when needed. The gas ones i have seen dont look to be to cumbersome or large or heavy. Any way would like to see it , never say never!

[CaptainPanic]

!

Moderator Note

A little reminder to all posting here: the thread is written in the year 2004. None of the people involved in the discussion are active anymore. Only the post by teatree (post #24) is new.

 

teatree,
Maybe it would be wise to start a new thread (right here in Engineering) on the same topic. That way, people do not get confused by
fossilized posts. We (mods) will then close this thread.

 

The same goes for everybody else. If you feel the need to reply, please do so in a fresh thread. This thread is a bit dusty and moldy.