September 2011 - So close, oh so close.

This year we stayed in the wool shed on Cable Downs as it would save the time and effort of setting up and packing up camp. It made little difference to the daily flight setup as we were only a few hundred meters from the air strip. For the third year in a row Michael Richards, Roger Martin, Michael Jenkins and me, Bob Moore, came together to attempt the world altitude record for a single kite. We are a cohesive team and we know our roles well with Mike Richards being an organiser, assembling the kites, doing everything, Mike Jenkins driving the winch and the kitchen, Roger Martin manning the Cameras and the GPS telemetry observation and me?? I guess I just put it all together and do the worrying. The last 2 years we endured heavy rain and thunderstorms which obliterated our camp site in 2009 and scared us a bit in 2010. We were glad we did go to the woolshed as gale force winds and storms played havoc with our record attempts. Despite these conditions we flew very high on day one, in fact, we nearly broke the record. On day 4 we flew very high and were heading for the record when the line broke. Our shift to September paid off with flights to 14,121 ft. and 12,700 ft. These images and graphs are an account of our efforts.

94711 Cobar Mo Observations at 12Z 28 Sep 2011

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
   PRES   HGHT   TEMP   DWPT   RELH   MIXR   DRCT   SKNT   THTA   THTE   THTV
    hPa     m      C      C      %    g/kg    deg   knot     K      K      K
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1000.0     24
972.0    264   16.8   14.0     84 10.44     30     14 292.3 322.2 294.1
970.0    282   17.2   13.9     81 10.39     28     15 292.9 322.7 294.7
925.0    690   16.6    9.6     63   8.17    350     35 296.3 320.2 297.7
912.0    810   16.3    8.5     60   7.70    335     36 297.2 319.9 298.5
860.0   1309   15.0    4.0     48   5.96    310     54 300.8 318.9 301.9
850.0   1408   14.6    3.6     48   5.86    305    57 301.4 319.2 302.5
849.0   1418   14.5    3.6     48   5.86    305    57 301.4 319.2 302.5
811.0   1800   11.3    2.3     54   5.61    295     58 302.0 319.1 303.0
774.0   2189    8.1    1.0     61   5.36    295     57 302.6 319.0 303.5
756.0   2385    6.4    0.4     65   5.24    295     58 302.8 318.9 303.8
732.0   2650    5.8   -4.2     49   3.85    295    59 305.0 317.1 305.7
700.0   3014    2.8   -6.2     52   3.45    295     61 305.6 316.5 306.2
666.0   3414   -0.7   -9.7     51   2.76    291    64 306.0 314.9 306.5
626.0   3899   -5.0 -10.4     66   2.79    285     68 306.5 315.4 307.0
581.0   4484 -10.3 -11.2     93   2.81    294     87 307.0 316.0 307.5
578.0   4524 -10.0 -11.0     92   2.87    295     88 307.8 317.1 308.4
562.0   4741   -8.1 -10.0     86   3.20    305    68 312.5 322.9 313.1
509.0   5503 -12.2 -14.2     85   2.53    325     47 316.5 325.0 317.0
500.0   5640 -12.9 -14.9     85   2.42    330    47 317.2 325.4 317.7

Left: The Wind profile on September 27th 2011 reflected the difficulties we experienced in the 5,000 - 6,000 ft range and 7,000 - 9,500 ft range. With more time we could have gone much higher as indicated by the sharp rise in wind speed pver 14,500 ft.

Below:The Garmin verticle profile (left) and horizontal (right)track. The distance is not the horizontal distance from winch to kite but rather the total horizontal distance the kite has traversed including sideways movement. The GPS unit lost satellite acquisition hence the split track logs and truncated altitude profile.

Below: The full altitude profile from GPS telemetry. It shows the soft layers around 5,000 ft and 9,000 ft. These consumed 4 1/2 hours whereas they should have only taken 2 hours to negotiate. At 14,000 ft I believe the additional 500 ft to better wind could have been negotiated given another 30 minutes but we were constrained by the need to have the kite down before last light. A very satisfying result but frustrating as well. The different shape of the graphs (above and below) is due to scale and aspect ratio differences between Garmin and GPSFlight software.

Right & Above: Wind speed off the scale at 3,500 ft and rose to 88 knots (172 kph) at 14,000 ft, impossible to fly any kite (well, none that I know of!) in these high winds. Chart from Australian Atmospheric Soundings and data table from Upper Air Project, University of Wyoming.

Image; Cobar Age newspaper.

In 2012, we will return to Cable Downs in late September to try our luck again and hopefully encounter good winds to high altitude. So far, apart from October 2005, all of our series have been in April. There are a number of changes planned that we think will increase our chances of reaching over 15,000 feet above ground level. We will have new Dyneema line from Cousin-Trestec in France courtesy of sponsorship from DSM Dyneema in Holland. I will make up different combinations of line strengths to better match conditions. I hope to have a hydraulic running line Tensiometer made by Doug La Rock from the Kite builder’s forum in the USA. This will enable reel to reel testing of line. A disk brake will be fitted to enable the winch motor to be bypassed to reduce kite wing loads under high winds. The reel will have a drag brake fitted to prevent line overrun under freewheeling or sudden braking. The computer screen will have a light absorbing enclosure to aid clearer viewing of the screen in daylight. DSM want high resolution images of the kites for their product brochure and promotional literature.. An effort will be made to capture video footage from the kite for YouTube.

Could the kite have broken the world record with a double spreader? Probably as the winds were similar in 2014 when we used a double spreader. A double spreader gives over 10% more lift with a smal weight penalty and 15,200 ft above ground level was highly likely.

The above windprfile and the GPSFlight data (above graph) are the same day, although the flight is 11 hrs after the wind sonde data. wind speed probably increased a little in the mid range in that period, especially around 5,000 ft.

the following day you can see the big difference is the wind speed is significantly hier between 2,000 and 14,000 ft. What a difference a day makes. This may have been too strong with a drop in kite performance because of spar deformation.

This kite was damaged beyong repair in high winds that we estimate were 50 knots or 95 kph. the kite did several giant loops befor crashing 1.5 km away and from 1,000 ft. The spars were reused for the torquoise kite that broke the world record 2 years later. This kite flew to over 10,000 ft on several occasions.

Kite Altitude World Record