The Eddy Kite

Some History And Personal Experience

Firstly, what exactly is an Eddy kite? The original design was a large diamond-shaped kite from the 1800s which flew without a tail. This little list just about sums it up...

• Invented by William A. Eddy in the 1890s, and inspired by ancient Javanese bowed kites. More commonly known as the 'Malay'.
• Diamond shaped, as already mentioned, using spruce spars.
• Sail edges attached to wire perimeter lines.
• Bowed horizontal spar, attached to the vertical spar 19% of the way down from the nose.
• Loose-fitting cotton sail which billowed at the tail end, forming a small keel.
• No tail! Very handy for kite trains.
• 2-point bridle, one point being where the spars cross, the other at the extreme tail end.

At this point, you might be wondering how hard it would be to make your own Eddy... It's dead simple actually! Take a look at my eBook for the Dowel Diamond.

In case you are curious about Eddy himself, here's a few interesting details...

• His full name was William A. Eddy.
• He was from New Jersey, U.S.A., and worked as a journalist
• Eddy developed his efficient, stable, diamond-shaped kite in the 1890's.
• He began his kite flying with the classic American Barn-Door design. Hexagonal kites that sometimes had a coffin-like shape.
• Eddy was inspired by the tail-less bowed Malay design, since his kite-trains kept getting into trouble with tangled tails!
• Eddy was famous for his kite-powered aerial photography and also meteorological experiments. These were carried out at Blue Hill Observatory, near Boston, U.S.A.

In some circles, the term Eddy is used more loosely to mean just about any kind of Diamond kite. I first became aware of this when a European blogger featured my 1-Skewer Diamond design in a post. A 'little Eddy' he called it!

Why Make An Eddy Kite?

For a start, you won't find many truly Eddy-like designs in the shops. Tailed Diamonds are the closest thing offered both on and off-line. However, a good reason to make one is that the design is quite easy to build, and results in a stable, efficient kite. For some additional fun, you can stack these kites together along one long flying line. An Eddy is a great light-to-moderate wind flier.

The Eddy kite is the inspiration for my Dowel Diamond design, which you can see in the photo. From a distance, the Dowel Diamond and the Eddy look very similar, but there are in fact a few differences. The Dowel kite has a slightly different bridle, a plastic sail, and tape edging. It's shape is quite close to Eddy's original, although the overall size is somewhat smaller. Some of the originals were almost 3 meters (9 feet) in height!

The Dowel Diamond is similar enough to the Eddy kite that I have featured a picture of it at the top of this page. It's relaxing just seeing it hang up there in a light breeze, wing tips waggling slightly as Diamonds do. With a sliding knot on the bridle, it can be adjusted toward the nose a little if the breeze is stronger and threatening to over-power the kite. The 1.2 meter span sail generates a decent pull, and can keep the line fairly straight even with over 100 meters let out.

Modern Versions Of The Eddy Kite

It seems Eddys are everywhere. Some bowed, some made with dihedral. People like to make them very colorful too, unlike yours truly who has stuck with pale orange for 3 series of 8 kites each! Going overboard with decoration can turn even an Eddy into a lumbering fresh-wind kite though... Sizes vary a lot too, with quite small versions being made for children and other enthusiasts tackling full 9-foot replicas of the original meteorological kites!

An interesting but simple variation of the Eddy kite is the single-point bridle Diamond. The flying line simply attaches to where the spars cross. The crossing-point is 25% from the nose rather than the original 19% for these. With sufficient bow and slightly slack sail these kites can still fly tail-less, and therefore are perfect for flying in a stack or train.

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Last updated: 30 Jan 2010