Lightweight, safe, high speed, high flying windmill idea

The biggest problem I see with wind power is that A) the wind is way up there in the air and gets (much) slower as you approach the ground B) anything that you lift way up into that good wind can fall / fly a long way and C) if it is heavy, it's going to do a lot of damage when it hits the ground.

So I'm more interested in windmills that use light-weight cloth type materials. See my low and slow sail based mill

I've been turning over in my mind a sort of dirigible with sail "wings" that would be turned about its axis by the sails and use a mooring line looped over a pulley at the nose. It would pull up on one side of the line and let out the other. On the ground, the pull up side of the line would turn a pulley on a generator. The "let out" side of the mooring line would run over a pulley some distance from the generator side which would be spring loaded to maintain tension on the loop.

The killer on that design is how you keep the thing from turning in the air and tangling the lines, while at the same time allowing it to turn into the wind.

See also:

• http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Low_20Mass_20Mil

PICList 2008 contributors: o List host: MIT, Site host massmind.org, Top posters @20081201 Apptech, Jinx, Xiaofan Chen, olin piclist, Vitaliy, William \Chops\ Westfield, Tamas Rudnai, JonnyMac, Alan B. Pearce, Gerhard Fiedler, * Page Editors: James Newton, David Cary, and YOU! * Roman Black of Black Robotics donates from sales of Linistep stepper controller kits. * Ashley Roll of Digital Nemesis donates from sales of RCL-1 RS232 to TTL converters. * Monthly Subscribers: Shultz Electronics, Timothy Weber, on-going support is MOST appreciated! * Contributors: Richard Seriani, Sr.

  .