I don't understand how this car works.

@ThinAirDesigns,

ThinAirDesigns wrote:

Until you get past this hitch in understanding, there is simply no way you are going to understand the vehicle. Sailing craft are doing what you claim is impossible regularly.

JB

Yes. And that's exactly why I posted the information on sailing vectors several pages back. Unfortunately, nobody seemed to read them.

If a person can't understand how an Ice Boat can attain a velocity greater than the wind, then they aren't going to understand how your vehicle works. The Ice Boat example is a much simpler example of the same set of forces which are at work in your wheel/propeller coupling.

1 Reply

@ThinAirDesigns,

Speed is a scaler number and velocity is a vector number and playing games between the two can confused the hell out of anyone who had not had a course in vector mathematic.

If you head an iceboat directly down wind and keep it directly down wind it is not going to beat a free floating balloon.

A feat that your group once more are claiming to be able to do.

2 Replies

@BillRM,

BillRM wrote:

If you head an iceboat directly down wind and keep it directly down wind it is not going to beat a free floating balloon.

A feat that your group once more are claiming to be able to do.

Bill, that is an inaccurate representation of what they are claiming, because you are ignoring the prop/wheel coupling which the wind is pushing against.

If they were simply claiming to put a sheet on the thing and let it blow downwind, then you would be correct, but they are NOT claiming that.

The angle of the prop blades when coupled to the wheels produce an enduring keel effect which allows the vehicle to exploit the same forces that the ice boat uses to move faster than the wind.

If you're going to argue against something, at least argue against the right thing.

1 Reply

@ThinAirDesigns,

From your second link:

Quote:

The slowest point of sail for a landyacht is dead down wind when it sails a little slower than the wind speed. By sailing at 45 degrees off directly down wind the yacht can sail much faster than the wind. The 'velocity made good' down wind is often over twice as fast as sailing directly down wind.

Nowhere do they state that they are actually going downwind faster than the wind. The two statements, taken together, can lead one to that conclusion, but they don't state it explicitly.

I can't watch the video right now, unfortunately.

Reading up on "VMG" or "Velocity Made Good", I'm unable to find a reference that states explicitly that VMG downwind can be greater than wind speed, unless another form of energy is tapped (such as wave action).

1 Reply

@BillRM,

BillRM wrote:

If you head an iceboat directly down wind and keep it directly down wind it is not going to beat a free floating balloon.

A feat that your group once more are claiming to be able to do.

I'm not sure who "our group" is in your mind, but please produce the posts where we've made such claims and then we can determine what "group" they are in.

I can say with 100% confidence that no one involved in the design/build of this project (it's a small group) has EVER made such a claim as the above.

We would never have dedicated the last few years of our spare time to designing, developing and building these devices if we believe a simple ice-boat could do it.

JB

0 Replies

@rosborne979,

Sorry they are claiming that they can head directly down wind and for whatever reason can go many times the speed of the wind.

The wheel and blades/prop coupling is just their claims means of being able to do this remarkable deal.

Then for some reason the gentleman once more brought the old ice boat into the thread even those an ice boat can not do any such thing.

When someone try to throw sand into my eyes I must assume that there is something that person does not wish me to see. In this case the sand is the ice boat.

0 Replies

The assertion at the start of this thread is a scam. The self-accelerating vehicle that can accelerate to speeds faster than the wind propelling it would, if it existed, be a perpetual motion machine of the first kind - something that has been proven beyond doubt not to exist. Drewdad noted this truth on the first page of this thread.

3 Replies

@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

The assertion at the start of this thread is a scam. The self-accelerating vehicle that can accelerate to speeds faster than the wind propelling it would, if it existed, be a perpetual motion machine of the first kind - something that has been proven beyond doubt not to exist. Drewdad noted this truth on the first page of this thread.

I believe that they take advantage of the same trick of forces which allows tacking ships to accelerate to speeds faster than the winds which are pushing them. And I feel that I have a partial understanding of how this works, but I don't have enough actual sailing experience to get the terms right.

Cycloptichorn

0 Replies

@georgeob1,

Quote:

The assertion at the start of this thread is a scam. The self-accelerating vehicle that can accelerate to speeds faster than the wind propelling it would, if it existed, be a perpetual motion machine of the first kind - something that has been proven beyond doubt not to exist. Drewdad noted this truth on the first page of this thread.

This is very simply not true. There is a ready source of energy that is being used-- that is the speed of the wind relative to the ground. The energy is being taken from the wind. In a perpetual motion machine, there is no external energy source. Here there is a very clear external energy source.

This is a wind-powered car. No laws of physics are being broken.

1 Reply

@DrewDad,

Quote:

The slowest point of sail for a landyacht is dead down wind when it sails a little slower than the wind speed. By sailing at 45 degrees off directly down wind the yacht can sail much faster than the wind. The 'velocity made good' down wind is often over twice as fast as sailing directly down wind.

DrewDad wrote:

Nowhere do they state that they are actually going downwind faster than the wind. The two statements, taken together, can lead one to that conclusion, but they don't state it explicitly.

I'm sure you would agree that one does not have to say all things *explicitly* for them to be true to a statement. For instance, if say "Sara walks almost as fast as Lisa while Donna walks twice as fast as Sara" It's not hard to figure quite accurately that Donna is definitely walking faster than Lisa. But, I don't even have a need to belabor that point -- truth is it's such a common practice in sailing, land-yachting and ice-boating that they don't even imagine it would be questioned.

Here's what I'll do -- that FAQ to which you refer is from the NALSA.ORG site. To further illuminate their position (and because people have had the same doubts as you) I joined their news group (linked on front page of their site) and asked them the question outright --- I'll post that exchange in my follow post just ahead.

JB

0 Replies

@georgeob1,

A sub-group here is more then aware of that fact from day one and post one.

You know it is something similar to the old Dean Drive it would be wonderful if it exist and that feeling allow some of us to buy into things we should all know better.

1 Reply

@BillRM,

BillRM wrote:

A sub-group here is more then aware of that fact from day one and post one.

You know it is something similar to the old Dean Drive it would be wonderful if it exist and that feeling allow some of us to buy into things we should all know better.

It's not similar to the Dean drive at all.

It's also so highly impractical (in terms of the things that we use vehicles for), that I doubt anyone would consider it to be 'wonderful' if it did exist - other then to prove a theory.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@ebrown p,

ebrown p wrote:

Quote:
The assertion at the start of this thread is a scam. The self-accelerating vehicle that can accelerate to speeds faster than the wind propelling it would, if it existed, be a perpetual motion machine of the first kind - something that has been proven beyond doubt not to exist. Drewdad noted this truth on the first page of this thread.

This is very simply not true. There is a ready source of energy that is being used-- that is the speed of the wind relative to the ground. The energy is being taken from the wind. In a perpetual motion machine, there is no external energy source. Here there is a very clear external energy source.

This is a wind-powered car. No laws of physics are being broken.

Well if the energy source is, as you say, the speed of the wind relative to the ground, then, when the vehicle reaches a speed relative to the ground equal to that of the wind, what is the mechanism by which the wind transfers additional energy to the vehicle to accelerate it further?

4 Replies

@georgeob1,

Quote:

Well if the energy source is, as you say, the speed of the wind relative to the ground, then, when the vehicle reaches a speed relative to the ground equal to that of the wind, what is the mechanism by which the wind transfers additional energy to the vehicle to accelerate it further?

What is the mechanism that allows an ice-sailing boat to accomplish this? We know for a fact that they do so, with the highest clocked speeds being up to 10 times the windspeed.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

Ok, above I posted the link to the NALSA.ORG site where their FAQ clearly (though not explicity) state that while on a broad reach, their craft can achieve downwind vmg's of greater than the wind.

I would invite everyone with doubts to explore the following exchange on the NALSA.ORG forum (or even go and ask the question yourselves and get your own answer).

Here was my question I asked, and the link to the post:

******************************************

http://sports.groups.yahoo.com/group/2nalsa/message/161

My name is John Borton and I'm hopeful that someone on this group can
either answer a quick question, or refer me to someone who can.

I am a hang glider pilot and I frequent a forum
called "HangGliding.org". As pilots tend to do, we chat about
aerodynamic and physics issues and of course often get sidetracked
into sports not our own " and that's how land sailing came up.

The question on our forum is this … "Can a ice boat (or other sailing
craft) travel downwind faster than the wind itself?". All of us will
concede that the `land speed' of these craft can greatly exceed that
of the wind, but there is much debate as to the "downwind component"
of the path or the velocity made good.(not sure exactly what terms
y'all use for this)

The scenario and question posed on our forum is this:

On a frozen lake, with a steady 15mph wind from north to south a
start point is defined. Directly south, one mile away a finish point
is defined. The ice boat takes a ~45degree track (say SW) and comes
across the start point at full speed. At the moment the ice boat
passes the start point, a neutral buoyancy balloon is released,
floating to the south in the wind. At the ~halfway point, the ice
boat tacks to the SW and takes aim at the finish point.

Can the ice boat win the race to the finish point, or will physics
dictate that the balloon always wins?

I have read through the NALSA site, and is appears to me that both
posted data and answers in the FAQ would support the assertion that
the craft can handily win the race.

Thanks for your time and know that a fellow bunch of unpowered (air)
craft fans are leaning in to their screens awaiting your wisdom on
this matter.

JB
******************************************

Following are a sample of reponses, but please, rather than rely on my copy and paste, read the thread for yourselves:

Quote:

"That would be pretty easy to do in even the most basic low performance
dirt or ice boat."

Quote:

"I think really efficient landsailers have been clocked at around 4 times the wind speed not the 1.4 times faster required to win the race with the balloon."

Quote:

"we can sail deeper (slower) than best L/D speed and
beat the balloon to the leeward mark with ease."

0 Replies

@georgeob1,

That's apparently when the wheels and the propeller take over.

I'm not closer to understanding why this works than I was 10 pages ago.

If there were no wind, and I pushed the car up to 13 miles per hour, would it continue moving?

2 Replies

@georgeob1,

gerogeob1 wrote:

Well if the energy source is, as you say, the speed of the wind relative to the ground, then, when the vehicle reaches a speed relative to the ground equal to that of the wind, what is the mechanism by which the wind transfers additional energy to the vehicle to accelerate it further?

If you are literally asking what is the *mechanism* used ... it's explained here.

http://able2know.org/topic/145626-9#post-4009467

JB

0 Replies

@maporsche,

maporsche wrote:

If there were no wind, and I pushed the car up to 13 miles per hour, would it continue moving?

Absolutely not for long -- it would rapidly slow down to a stop. No wind, no go.

JB

0 Replies

@maporsche,

maporsche wrote:

That's apparently when the wheels and the propeller take over.

I'm not closer to understanding why this works than I was 10 pages ago.

If there were no wind, and I pushed the car up to 13 miles per hour, would it continue moving?

It wouldn't. Friction would stop it.

Cycloptichorn

0 Replies

I'll add one qualification. Assuming the propeller has a controllable, reversible pitch, it might be possible, after a long enough vehicle acceleration to a speed nearly equal to that of the wind (during which the propeller too is extracting energy from the wind - and adding drag in the process), to reverse the pitch of the propellers and to use the stored rotational energy in the propeller to accelerate the vehicle further through the clutch & gearing to the wheels. However, that is not a sustainable thing, in that the rotational energy will soon be dissapated and the vehicle will quickly slow down to speeds well below the wind speed due to friction.

2 Replies

I don't understand how this car works.

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