Try a Dopero Kite

Original 1-Skewer Dopero

Here's the cute little MBK 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 two little keels and a four-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 3 mm skewers were, compared to the 2.5 mm ones in the original kite! As always, the lighter, the better—particularly with tiny kites.

MBK 1-Skewer Dopero

Finally, an orange plastic version was made, which also had a slightly larger sail area than the previous two builds.

A loop tail of black plastic went nicely with the sail color, and kept the little kite stable in moderate breezes.

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

I haven't been able to dig up a decent video of the last 1-Skewer Dopero, but here's a great one of the original:

MBK 2-Skewer Dopero

The MBK 2-Skewer Dopero has a span of two skewer lengths, or about 58 cm (46 in.). 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! This did happen 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 our homemade dopero 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:

MBK Dowel Dopero

The largest of these MBK designs so far is 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 four times the sail area.

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

The video shows our original kite drifting around in light wind. 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 smoother air up around 300 feet: