A Flying KiteOn The End Of A String...Is a wonderful thing! Is watching a flying kite one of your hobbies? Seeing your own creation up there definitely adds a new dimension to the experience. This page is devoted to a whole bunch of flight reports with my own collection of home-made kites.Follow the links to experience some real-life flights. The weather's never the same 2 days a in row, so there's plenty of variety in there! Also, you just never know what random incident might happen while your kite is up. Nothing earth-shattering generally, but often enough to make you (or a number of the by-standers) crack a smile! Nearly every flight report features 10 seconds of video, plus an in-flight photo of the flying kite.
Each section below is devoted to one of the MBK Series:
BIG Is Beautiful!'Big' has recently been re-defined here at MBK! So far, the only kite in the Multi-Dowel Series is the Sled (not counting the ill-fated KAP Diamond). It's 2.4 meters (nearly 8 feet) tall. A Learning Experience With My First Truly BIG Kite. A Flying Kite Made Of Dowel And Plastic... is likely to do pretty well in light winds, as long as the dowel isn't too thick and heavy. The designs in the Dowel Series were made with adults in mind, who want something of a decent size to fly. The first thing you might notice about a flying kite of the Dowel variety is that it doesn't have a tail. Of course, there's nothing stopping you from adding a tail just for looks! These kites will fly a little higher and steeper without tails though. Enjoy browsing through these accounts of outings with a Dowel Kite... Sled: Fewer Collapses, Much Higher And Longer Flights Just Hanging As The Sun Goes Down Diamond: Long Climbs In Light Warm Breezes Flies Like A Dream - If Thermals Not Too Extreme! Barn Door: Lolling About In Large Areas Of Lift And Sink Awesome Performer In Smooth Moderate Winds Straight To 80 Degrees In Gentle Winter Thermals Rokkaku: Straight And True Over The Whole Wind Range Had To Fly Higher To Find Slower Air! Flying High In Smooth Breezes - After Some Drama! First Test Flight In A Light Gusty Breeze Sode: Frolicking In Moderate Winds And Thermals Smooth Stable and Predictable! Delta: Amazing Flight In Almost Zero Wind Smooth Stiff Breeze Keeps Line Straight And Spars Bent! Roller: Light-wind Workout But Still A Height Record! Successful Test Flight In A Cold Fresh Breeze, With Gusts Dopero: Eventful Outing - Pelicans, Failed Tape And More Simply Superb Thermal Floater! Promising Test Flight In A Sharp Winter Wind Gradient Box (moderate wind version): Winds A Bit Light, But Still Flew HIGH Box (fresh wind version): An Exhilarating Fresh Wind Single-liner! A Flying Kite May Be Modest In Size But EfficientI've had some fantastic flights with kites from the 2-Skewer Series on light-wind days. What I love about them personally is that despite being fairly small, they hit a performance sweet spot. Here's what I mean... Two bamboo BBQ skewers end to end turns out to be a very ideal combination of strength, rigidity and light weight. Add extremely light single-ply plastic, and you have one super light-weight flying kite! Saving weight is what it's all about, as any kite-maker will tell you. See what some of these kites get up to, on a long 20 pound Dacron line... Diamond On A Taut 70 Meters Under A Leaden Sky Barn Door Gentle Flying Near Its Wind Range Lower Limit Rokkaku Rok Rockets Up, Aided By Thermals And Light Wind Pushing The Envelope In Moderate To Fresh Winds Sode Gusty Moderate Winds And One Heck Of A Thermal Roller Long High Flight In Perfect Weather Dopero Gusty Fresh Winds Spring Up From Nowhere Box: Sitting Pretty Above The Wind Gradient Some of this series are due to be re-made, with design improvements. When that happens, more flight reports will be added above. In a class of its own, somewhere between the 2-skewer and 1-skewer designs, is this... Tetrahedral: Floated Way Up In Almost Perfect Winds A Flying Kite May Be Tiny But InterestingParticularly if it is an MBK 1-Skewer kite! These 1-Skewer Series kites have wing-spans the length of a single BBQ skewer. The Delta is actually a little wider than that, but both leading edge spars are a single BBQ skewer. Most of the designs in this series are rarely seen in such small sizes. But I thought it would be fun to re-create them anyway! How about a ... 29cm (1 foot) wide Dopero? Just for moderate wind fun. It's simply too tiny to lift a camera of any kind, unlike its much larger cousins. Sled: First Time Out, And Loving The Moderate Breeze! Diamond: 2 Orange Diamonds Flash In A Blue-Gray Setting Barn Door: Short But Successful Flights In Meagre Breezes Rokkaku: Winds A Bit Light, But Thermals Helped Out! Sode: High And Stable In A Moderate Breeze Delta: Almost Zero-Wind, But Still Some Interesting Flying! Testing Conditions, But A Great Little Flier! Roller: Dopero: Moderate Winds, And Not Too Gusty - Perfect! Box: Floating And Darting In Gusty Fresh Winds The Smallest And The SimplestEventually there might be a small collection of stories here, documenting how some very simple and/or quick to make kites perform. Just 2 for now, the spar-less Paper Sled and the Tiny Tots Diamond... Paper Sled: Floating Aloft On Light Thermal-Induced Gusts Tiny Tots Diamond: High Up In A Gusty Fresh Breeze Have you browsed a few flight reports yet? OK, then have a guess which type of kite is featured in the video below... Return to Home Page from A Flying Kite New! CommentsHave your say about all this fun kite info and the videos! Comment on your impressions of this site, in the box below... |
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