dennis@home wrote:

"Andy Burns" wrote:

http://www.fasterthanthewind.org/

The only way it can work is if they are storing energy somewhere.

They jokingly refer to one of their fairings as "the engine cover"

I expect its a flywheel, maybe even hidden in the design .

Obviously the wheels and the propeller will act as flywheels, you can't
avoid that, but they travelled an average of 2.8x the tail wind speed,
accelerating over the measured run.

To travel faster than the wind (down wind) for any length of time
requires you the extract energy from somewhere and it can't be the wind.
maybe its cold fusion? ;-)

I don't know who NALSA are, other than what is says on their website,
but I'd expect their observer to be able to spot a heavy flywheel, a set
of pedals or batteries and motors hidden within the polysytrene ...

http://www.nalsa.org/DownWind.html