Our Kite Flying Log
Short Summaries Of Our OutingsJust a simple kite flying log. Logs get more interesting as the years go by. The early entries jog memories!Date: Sun 7 Oct 2007 Comments: The 3 of us had been out and about, but detoured to the reserve on our way home. The plan was to put the Windjam kite up first. Then, we would get some good pics of our toddler son Aren flying the recently made MBK Kids Diamond. On stepping out of the car it was clear we that this was not going to be a long session, due to the cold wind. Walking south across the field, we stopped briefly to setup the Windjam delta kite, then continued on with the kite in the air. In the brisk breeze, it went straight up almost as fast as I could let out line. Looking around for an anchor point, I decided on using the corner post of the cricket-practice nets. Feeding the reel through the wire netting, it was easy to jam it in a position that would hold the kite. The colorful delta was flying high with 30 or 40 meters of line let out. Now onto the main business! Out came the MBK Kids Diamond, already attached to our 15 meter cotton test line. My wife May got busy checking out the camera angles. A bit tricky, with the kite flying close to the direction of the late afternoon sun.
The little diamond kite looped and dived a lot. In the fresh breeze, it really needed more tail for added stability. Never-the-less, we soon had the plastic reel in Aren's hand. He started trotting off downwind, still flying the kite with his left hand. Very cute to watch, there he is in the photo, in mid-stride! To make the kite big enough to see in the photos, we needed to fly it on a short string. Of course that meant a lot of re-launches as it struggled in the fresh conditions and kept contacting the ground. To add a little more challenge, Aren decided that it would be fun to drop the reel and run towards the kite each time it landed! However, May persevered and we ended up with plenty of pics. Eventually, Aren found yet another game to play. It was called 'throw the reel onto the ground and watch Daddy chase after the kite'. Again and again and again. End of photo shoot. With the breeze freezing our collective butts off, we quickly reeled in both kites and drove home. No records were broken, but it was fun watching Aren fly the Kids Diamond kite! Date: Mon 1 Oct 2007 Comments: It was a Public Holiday, so after a few hours work on this website in the morning, we headed off to our latest favorite kite flying park. Just a bit of a rustle in the bushes around the house was enough, since most of our kites are good in light breezes. Conveniently, the breeze was from the west so we didn't have to walk far past the tree-line to find a suitable spot to launch the kites. The MBK Sled came out first, and to begin with things looked promising. A gust soon had it in the air and climbing. Too bad I hadn't got around to fixing its hang-to-the-right tendencies though. It was soon on the ground again. Then the wind went really light and variable, sometimes with the direction shifting by 180 degrees! On top of that, there so many thistles and burrs in the grass that the tails kept getting caught. And the flying line would hang up on a thistle from time to time too. Not much fun. Time to forget the sled for a while, and hook up the diamond. Back at home I had attached it to the double-width blue tail for extra visibility. For these very light conditions, the tail was a bit heavy, so again there were multiple launches followed by sagging to earth again. At last a stronger breath of air came through that actually lasted for a while. In no time, the MBK Diamond was sitting pretty at 10 meters or so, while I fiddled around trying to get a burr out of the line. The burr was knotted in tight, and refused to come out. Meanwhile, the kite ran out of puff and had ended up on the ground. I should have just let the burr go for a ride to 300 feet, and worried about removing it later! Never mind. I briefly tried to remove the blue tail, hoping to change to a lighter one but the cotton had separated into strands and the Larks Head knot was too hard to loosen without my reading glasses. Oh well, there's one more kite in the bag... Those tails probably need a heavier kind of cotton line so the larks Head knots aren't so fiddly. It's just a very short length of cotton, so there wouldn't be much extra weight at all. We'll get to it later. There seemed to be thermals popping everywhere, judging by the gusts disturbing the highest treetops in cycles. Perfect for the Windjam delta! Well, it took quite a few attempts before a good gust got it to treetop height. Once there, it climbed strongly in the light but steadier breeze higher up. May started the stopwatch on her mobile phone, since this was a perfect opportunity to break our kite duration record! The delta went straight up to around 300 feet or so. It has a distinctly different feel to my skewer kites, due to the flexibility of its fiberglass spars. They are free-floating too, not being solidly attached to the nose. Give it a good pull, and it absorbs the tension for a second or so before accelerating upwards.
We took some photos of Aren flying the Windjam kite at this point. The top pic shows Aren hanging onto the reel, quite unaware of the kite on the other end. The middle pic shows an excited little man, thinking 'Hey Dad, I'm flying that thing!' He can't talk just yet. Finally, in the bottom pic he seems to be thinking 'This kite flying business is just so cool...' After a while, I got a bit bored with a mere 300 feet, so out went some more line. We don't have measurement tags on this line yet, so we don't know for sure how high the kite was. So no setting a height record on this occasion. However, with roughly half the line out, I think the Windjam delta was pushing close to the erm.. legal limit of 400 feet above ground. Yes, it's got to that. To set altitude records from now on is going to require some arrangements with CASA, the Air Safety authority. On that point, we did notice 3 aircraft which flew overhead or close by. Two light aircraft and one jet, all under 3000 feet by my estimation! After 25 minutes elapsed time since we started the stopwatch, it was time to start reeling in. The idea was, we would take ages to get the kite down, and the duration record would be broken by the time we did this. With Aren strapped into pram, I pulled in the 8 kg monofilament line hand over hand while May wound it onto the reel. Doing things like this has 2 advantages. It's fairly fast, and the line gets wound onto the reel with low tension. Remember the last time I reeled the Windjam delta in by myself, and it crushed the plastic reel? It turned out we were winding in too fast. In order to set our duration record, we needed to pause for a while. May had some fun flying the kite at around 200 feet or so. After that, we just wound the line around the pram handle a few times, with the reel sitting in the plastic tray. It held fine. This reminded me of a mathematical formula I once came across. In a nutshell, the frictional resistance of a line or rope wound around a cylinder increases extremely rapidly with the number of winds. So just a few loops will hold something, like a kite, quite firmly. Anyway, enough of the applied mathematics ;-) We eventually starting winding in again, this time with May pulling down the kite and me winding the line onto the reel. Aren 'helped' May with the pull-down from time to time :-) As the kite got down to about twice tree-top height, we began to hear the fluttering of the tails. Down below tree-top height, there was very little air movement so it bobbed and glided around until gently settling on the grass about 15 meters away. 50 minutes air time! A new duration record. Date: Sat 22 Sep 2007 Comments: We thought we'd try a new flying ground today, after checking out all the nearby reserves in the street directory. A short drive away, we parked the car and headed over to the reserve next to Reynella Primary School. Even before we got through the tree line surrounding the park, it was clear that we had found a very good spot for kite flying!
In no time, I had the diamond out but had trouble hooking in the paper clip. Thanks to advancing age and no reading glasses... May did it for me, then started the photo-shoot while I test flew the kite close to the ground. After a while, I took the camera and by some fluke took a fascinating shot of the brilliantly-backlit kite hovering over our little son like an angelic being. Once we had plenty of shots taken, I headed out towards the center of the grounds, letting the diamond take out line at a great pace. 50 meters, then 100 meters, and the kite was flying beautifully. With the fresh breeze up aloft, the kite showed signs of wanting a more forward attachment point, but still flew around the 45 - 50 degree mark. With the late afternoon sunlight glinting off its fluttering shoulders and brightly illuminating the snaking tail, it was quite a sight. Quite a satisfying sight actually, since I have been painstakingly documenting and photographing its construction for a few days! Newsletter subscribers will find a link to the relevant page on the website at the end of the month. By now, May had the Windjam delta in the air too, and flew it for a while at low altitude. She told me later she didn't want to take forever to wind it back in! With the extra room available in the reserve, I let out another 50 meters of monofilament. So finally, the little diamond was just a dot in the sky with the ripples in its bright shimmering tail making it a bit easier to spot. It managed to reach about 45 degrees, with a line angle from my hand of about 25 degrees. It might do better with the bridle adjusted better, but 150 meters is a lot of line for such a small kite. I might eventually try it on even finer line.
With this kite, I have dropped the paper clip idea for attaching tails, and gone with using a simple Larks Head knot. Simpler, and most importantly, lighter. All the MBK kites from here on will do it this way. With help from May, we reeled in the MBK Diamond and packed it away before hooking up the MBK Delta. Maybe I can get the delta much higher! It is certainly capable of a much higher line angle than the diamond. As before, letting out line was very easy in the good breeze. However, the temperamental delta never made it to a really high angle since it was right on the edge of its wind window. Yep, too much wind! It looped this way, it looped that way, climbed a bit, scudded across the sky sideways for a while, corrected, climbed some more, looped some more, on and on. All in all, it never got any higher than the diamond, and I stopped letting line out at around 120 meters or so. Winding it in was interesting. It got so close to the trees at one point. One time I was sure it hit a house roof! I gave a pull, and it magically re-appeared and shot back up to 20 or 30 meters. A moment later, after some more looping misbehavior, it disappeared from view once more. 'That's it' I thought, but no, it just flew back into view again! I should mention here that the reserve has an uneven surface, and the far side had a considerable downward slope. Eventually the delta hit the ground and stayed there while I walked towards it and reeled in. I'm really pleased with that diamond! So stable in a fairly strong gusty wind, and yet I expect this to be my best light breeze kite also for quite a while. Date: Sat 15 Sep 2007 Comments: It was late in the day, with a reasonable bit of breeze about. Not much cloud, and a bit cool. The 3 of us went out with the Windjam kite and the MBK Diamond. Approaching the reserve, we found kids kicking a football and others clambering over the play equipment. Ok, it's on to the usual Plan B. Another right turn, and back up the hill to the vacant block. Throwing a bit of dirt in the air confirmed that we had a Northerly, so we parked the pram near the edge of the grass and attached the diamond kite. Not quite enough wind to launch it in the wind shadow of the fences and tree, so I walked maybe 15 meters or so, laying out line with May holding the reel. A brisk walk back, feeling the tension in the line as I pulled it up to smoother air. Turning around, I let it pull line off the reel slowly with each long gust. I stopped the reel from spinning once in a while to let the kite gain height. There was only just enough breeze to do this, but eventually, there it was with bright blue tail attached, hovering at around 35 degrees of line angle. It's capable of a better angle, but needs a few more knots of wind! Just over 100 meters of line was out, as indicated by the second bit of dark tape attached to the line. There's one every 50 meters. It took a bit of patience to put them on, I can tell you... This kite is just like the one I am constructing for this month's newsletter Our one-and-a-half year old Aren came close to wrecking this kite a few weeks ago, hence it flies now with a patched-up hole on one side, and a similar area of sticky tape on the opposite side to balance it up! No doubt, the extra weight has added an extra knot or 2 of wind speed to the bottom of its wind speed range... Never mind, we'll be flying a new one this week. With sunset approaching, the wind died right off. Just the occasional gentle gust would come through, moving the highest leaves in the surrounding trees. The diamond was down, with May reeling it in across the grass. I couldn't resist trying to launch the Windjam kite however! I towed it up to 10 meters or so a couple of times, but the air was barely moving. It just wasn't enough even for this rather efficient kite. Time to call it a day. Date: Tue 4 Sep 2007 Comments: I've been itching to put the Windjam kite through its paces recently, so Aren and I went down to the reserve armed with a brand new 300m reel of 8 kg monofilament line. With the standard MBK paper clip attached of course. :-) With cross spar removed, the kite rolls up and takes hardly any space at all. Weather was a touch windy, but nothing a moderate-wind kite like this couldn't handle. Plus I was curious as to how this kite would react to thermals. First launch resulted in a short flight, when a tall tree beside us shot the kite down with a swirl of turbulence. On the next launch however, the kite soon had tree-top height and the air was smoother and stronger from there. Not too smooth though! There was heaps of thermal activity around. This was evident when the kite started pulling strongly and parked itself at a 70 or 80 degree line angle for a while! I continued to let out line, with an eye on the trees at the far side of the reserve. The Windjam kite took some strong gusts, and it became clear that despite having that 'shop-bought' look, it had a small bias to the right. During one particularly strong gust it actually performed a very deep loop to the right, losing more than half its height before recovering. After that, the wind died a little, although thermals continued to push the kite to very high line angles from time to time. The line tension was too great to allow Aren to fly the kite, but I let him hold the reel a few times while I took the line tension in my hand. With maybe 150 meters of line out and no sign of the kite coming down any time soon, I decided it would be a good idea to start reeling in. Taking note of the time, I started the laborious process, taking care to not let too much line tension end up on the reel. Or so I thought! With the kite on less than 20 meters or so, I heard a small snap. Oh-oh.
Sure enough, with another minute or so, the reel failed pretty badly, with half of one side folding over. See the photo! I don't know how the line stayed in place, but fortunately it did, while I wound on the last few meters. Lesson learnt. This stuff needs to go on a decent reel right from the very first flight! Another reason was that it took me a full 20 minutes to bring the kite in. Without really trying, this kite probably broke my height record by a large margin and also nearly broke the duration record. While pushing the pram home, thoughts of mechanical or maybe electric winches and oversize reels played on my mind... MBK Flying Skewers And Plastic is a fun publication for single-line kite lovers. This FREE monthly newsletter will keep you in touch with what's happening here. Including the latest news on the Kite Of The Month! Also, please don't forget to pick up your FREE COPY of a great 87-page eBook on popular kites.
Last updated: 8 Oct 2007 Return to Our Kite Flying Adventures from Our Kite Flying Log All the way back to Home Page
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