Making A Dopero

Fun, Whether A Tiny Curiosity Or A Big Thermal Floater!

Our little 1-Skewer Dopero requires a tail, and is fun to fly in moderate breezes. At this size it is not a true light-wind kite due to the weight of its 4 bamboo spars. Being BBQ skewers, they come in a very limited range of diameters. Like 'thin ones' or 'oh, this lot are a bit thicker!' However, if you are careful not to add any unnecessary weight, and avoid the thickest skewers, this little kite will readily get boosted up to high line angles on 50 meters of light flying line. With plenty of help from a patch of rising air!

Next up in size comes the 2-Skewer Dopero, which has a great wind range for a home-made kite of this size. The 4-leg bridle can require a little adjustment before the kite is perfectly trimmed. As with everything, practice makes perfect!

Finally, we started making larger kites like the Dowel Dopero, which is 1.2 meters (4 feet) from tip to tip. This one has a 4-leg bridle, which keeps the kite very steady and predictable most of the time. Like the Dowel Rokkaku, this kite also likes to go directly overhead when given the slightest help from warm rising air!

Down below is a photo or 2 and a video of all the MBK Doperos. This illustrates the end result, in case you decide to use our instructions to make one of these kites.

Here's the cute little 1-Skewer Dopero. Don't try lifting anything with it! If the wind's too light, it has trouble lifting itself. However, with a few more kph of breeze, the tiny kite does much better. Complete with 2 little keels and a 4-leg bridle.

The original was made from black garbage-bag plastic, which actually looks pretty good in photos, don't you think?

Later, a clear plastic version was made, since all the other 1-Skewer kites had clear sails at that time. However, it never flew very well.

Post mortem? I hadn't noticed how much heavier the skewers were, compared to the ones in the original kite! As always, the lighter, the better.

Finally, an orange-plastic version was made, which also had a slightly larger sail area than the previous 2. A loop-tail of black plastic went nicely with the sail color, and kept the little kite stable in moderate breezes.

We fly this version on 50 meters (150 feet) of 20 pound line. It doesn't need that strength, but we also fly our 2-skewer kites on the same line.

The video shows the currrent 1-Skewer kite flitting around in a gusty moderate breeze, on perhaps 20 meters (70 feet) or so of Dacron line.

The 2-Skewer Dopero has a span of 2 skewer lengths, or about 58 cm (46 inches) On a 20 pound line, this kite loves thermal weather just like the 2-Skewer Rok.

The spars, being made from skewers attached end-to-end, are no thicker than those of the 1-Skewer version. However, the strength is still more than adequate.

Hence this kite can really show off in light wind conditions! As we did at a local kite festival one year, when everything else dropped out of the sky.

That is, before someone put up a hi-tech Cody sporting graphite spars and 1/2 ounce ripstop sails...

The video below shows this kite on a long line. So long in fact, that I had to use full zoom on the camera. Hence there's a few wobbles! The wind was light, with occasional thermals helping to keep the kite high overhead.

The largest of these MBK designs so far, the Dowel Dopero. With plenty of sail area, this one does well in light conditions despite the extra weight of dowel.

Size? It's about twice as tall as the 2-Skewer version, so that's about 4 times the sail area.

Compared to the 1-Skewer version, the Dowel version has about 16 times as much sail area!

The video shows our original kite on its first outing. The kite was low, and you can see how the keels kick the nose into line with the wind direction every now and then. Later, we let line out and allowed the kite to fly in much smoother air up around 300 feet.

That's about it for this page on the Dopero. In 3 convenient sizes! Hope you enjoyed the pics and the info.

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