Phoenix Turbine Builders Club

Third Quarter 2006

New Energy Workshop - renewable power strategy using sun, wind & fire; Tesla turbines, automotive turbines, new X-plane build

July - September 2006

Welcome to the third quarter '06 edition of the Phoenix Turbine Builder's Club. 

With most people off on vacation or busy with summer chores, club activities via the internet slowed -- No so around here. We worked steadily from the time the snow slacked in April until the last day of July, preparing displays for our Open House in August. The key areas we touched on were: solar, wind, and fire. The main applications we displayed were:

Although the visitor count was relatively low, the quality of interest was excellent! Everyone attending our little energy workshop was both interested and interesting for us to discuss alternative energy with. We conducted workshops with groups of kids to begin impressing their minds with real solutions for this century's energy problems. Adults immediately connected solar steam generation with real solutions for the world's present-day energy woes.

To give you an idea of what our visitors saw at the show, I'm going to group the photographs into three key areas of Sun, Wind, and Fire, plus two additional groups of transportation - automotives and aircraft.

Sun

Home-brew Solar Steam

In our first series of three photos, you can see our backyard satellite dish converted to a solar reflector using common aluminum foil bonded to plywood pie-shaped panels. 

Photo A shows our tour guide demonstrating to a group of kids the ease of solar targeting to focus the sun's rays on the steam generator coil. In photo B we see a close-up view of the steam coil lit up by the sun's concentrated heat, and in photo C you can just see hot water and steam jetting from the coil.

Wind

Testing wind spinners in the wind tunnel

The next series of three shows our wind turbine experiment. Photo D is a view as you enter the workshop; the wind tunnel is obvious with its green parabolic shaped inlet. Photo E shows the wind turbine model as seen from the throat of the tunnel. Photo F shows the same model cross-wise from one of the two opening side panels.

Fire

Combustion & New Fuels Research

In the third category - Fire - Photo G shows one of our lab benches set up for fuels and combustion research. The devices on the bench (from left to right) include our fuel vaporizer, ultra-clean burner, and pulse detonation combustor. Photo H shows the opposite side of the shop with engine and hydrostatic drive train components laid out for display and ongoing development.

Automotive

Replacing Piston Engines in Cars

The automotive series is a 5-photo group of our Phoenix Kinetic Energy Drive mockup, and how we see it being applied to the automotive world. Photos I, J, K show three views of the combined turbine and hydrostatic transmission in a compact, easy to install package for existing automobiles. 

Photo L shows the drive in back of a typical small car (in this case a 1984 Fiero). When marketed as a drop-in replacement for aged piston engine designs, this will represent the first phase in moving the world toward a real space-age transportation infrastructure, free of car-generated pollution.

The last in this series - Photo M - shows the all-terrain vehicle hull system we have worked with since the early 1960's. This is the ultimate direction for today's automobiles, with the engine, transmission and suspension all placed under the floor in a waterproof, windproof hull. Only recently have the auto companies begun to catch up to this concept.

Aircraft

Traffic Gridlock is History... Fast Forward to the Future!

In our final series we show the ultimate direction of man's transportation future on the planet.

As the world's growing automobile population chokes out more of our overburdened highway system and gridlock takes control of most people's live, the only option is to go up. Let's face it - governments do not have the resources to maintain, much less build, new highways, stacking them 3 - 4 high. 

It's up to each of us to manage our own future and create a better quality of life - outside the cities. To do that, a large percentage of highway-pounders must become air commuters. But with old, poorly conceived & poorly designed aircraft platforms carrying exorbitant price tags, it just won't happen.

Our company has pulled together a number of technologies that we have worked on for a couple of decades into a totally new approach to low-cost, ultra-safe air transportation for the masses. Goodbye cattle car in the sky, hello freedom! The real space age is here, and you have seen it firsthand here.

One of our club members recently spooled up his Tesla turbine (built by us) and had an oil mess everywhere. Next time we'll show you how to control the oiling delivery system to meter just enough oil to cool the bearings, but not so much that you flood the case. - Until then, keep your turbine experiments going.