How to make a kite that can fly

as a child about 7-8 my model airplane class teacher from the local youth center "jeff" mad a kite from like 1x2 and black plastic tarp. it was probably between 6-8' wide and 8-10' tall with "open house" or something on it. geez we made awesome flying models like a 3 inch oval thin piece of balsa with stabilizers on the outers of the narrows of the ovals and a balsa stick lik 3/8x3/16 for a frame with clay to balance em. remember "battle star galactica"? cylon fighters? also made a helicopter. i was 2nd youngest in class and first to finish. i told jeff it doesnt work. he spent roughly 2 hrs trying to make it work. it was wood framed and covered in cellulose and paper. i said hey maybe it doesnt fly because it doesnt have a rotor. anyway a long story short he said"i know how to fix em" and then he threw my chopper on the floor and stomped it, and told the rest of the class dont bother with them. god was he mad! he got the plans from a model book. greatfull to have had the opp.

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bricoleur

16 years ago

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If you use two sticks of the same length, cross them at between 1/7 and 1/10 of the vertical one, and tie a bow into the horzontal one, you will have a much more stable and easy to fly kite. The bridle line should be made to go through the plastic and the bow should bend away from the bridle. The nice innovation here is the simplicity of lashing the plastic to the sticks. Having made lots of these over the years with tape, I really appreciate the idea of being able to manage without tape. As to the spar (cross stick) breaking, the size of the spar and mast needed depends on the size of the kite. As to the "balance" ribbon, stay away from weights, what you want is something to drag behind in the wind, not to pull down toward the ground. Finally, remember that kites that are unstable on a short string near the ground often can be stable on a longer string far from the ground. The easiest way to achieve that is to have one person launch the kite downwind and the other gently pull string in hand over hand until the kite catches the wind above the trees. Then feed the string out again slowly.

Step 3: Bend the Front Corner of the Top Layer Down to Touch the Crease, Repeat on the Back Layer and Staple

The essential thing with this step is to only bend the corners down. If you fold them the kite will not work. The exact position of the corner is not critical, but will affect how your kite flies.

If you don't have access to a functional stapler and staples, you can pierce through the two corners and the body of the kite with your hole making device and skip to step 5.

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