[lochieferrier]

NASA Helios was quite expensive and tricky to build, with not a lot of margin left for useful payload.

There's a weight runaway that occurs with solar powered aircraft, look at Fig 12 in this report: http://hoburg.mit.edu/publications/gassolar.pdf

Disclaimer: I worked on this project, so am super biased.

[pdelbarba]

I'm aware, I agree that solar aircraft is not an easy technology. I'm mostly pointing out how inane this gasoline drone project is when there are real problems to solve. To put it in perspective, the Helios project was 18 years ago and the Solar Impulse project improved upon the tech significantly.

Edit: just got a chance to look at the report. Thanks for the link, there are some really interesting findings in there.

[throwawaycrank2]

Please read the next four paragraphs.

Could you kindly reply with your email, as I would like to email you. I am a crank inventor (no but keep reading, just three and a half more paragraphs!) who has invented something similar to a free-energy machine, except in the field of aviation and specifically renewable energy flight, where free power is in the skies for anyone so it's not totally cranky. After all you just wrote a 27-page draft about it. (By the way your paper is very solid and prominently describes in detail several trade-offs that I address specifically through a different mechanism; you are the real deal.)

I would like to work with a collaborator (such as yourself) and then patent and license the technology. Specialist patent offices I contacted said that they would have a conflict with their existing large clients Boeing etc, and for this reason cannot work with me.

On the other hand if they do not have this experience it is kind of a catch-22. Your personal resources and if appropriate (if it works) your resources at MIT would alleviate this issue.

We can discuss the rest by email. I look forward to your reply. It will not take much of your time to make a determination. I promise it will be interesting and well-specified (usually crank inventors misuse common terminology, don't correctly understand the principles they use, and are vague and underspecified, committing logical errors and non-sequiturs to arrive at their mechanism - this isn't like that.) Thank you!

[toss1]

OK, two obvious questions.

What is the general range of weight vs power levels are you producing with your device (that wouldn't reveal anything about the tech, only what sort of craft it might suit)?

What is the range of scales at which this device will work (what is the smallest, largest, optimum range for the device)?

[andygates]

...novel crank pitch, but just throwing it into a random discussion thread is fatal. It's already almost downvoted into oblivion.

Show a prototype working, or people will (usually correctly) assume you're a scam or a kook.