Firstly, what exactly is an Eddy kite? The original design was a large diamond-shaped kite from the 1800s which flew without a tail.
Unlike the historical Eddy, most retail Diamonds these days are tailed. Most also have some dihedral or bow in the horizontal spar. This greatly helps stability and enables the use of shorter tails.
This little list sums up the history of the Eddy...
When the weather's good and you have the time, it's great to get out with a kite or 3. But what about on bad weather days? Then it's time to pull out...
"Kites Up!" - my downloadable kite-flying board game! Apart from towing indoor kites, doing a spot of imaginary flying is the next best thing :-)
Our MBK Dowel Series of kites are all tail-less, like the Eddy-inspired Dowel Diamond. That's an old version of it in the first photo on this page.
However, we have made some minor changes in a later version. They both fly beautifully in very light wind.
I remember on one occasion in the late afternoon, this kite floated right up to 400 feet, going almost overhead. At the time, there was barely a breath of wind at ground level!
In case you are curious about Eddy himself, here's a few interesting details...
His full name was William A. Eddy.
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!
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 was the inspiration for my original Dowel Diamond design, which you can see in the first photo on this page. It's hard to spot in the photo but it had a 2-leg bridle.
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 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!
It's relaxing seeing the Dowel Diamond hang up there in a light
breeze. Having a 3-leg bridle, my most recent version doesn't waggle its wing tips like an Eddy
kite would do. See the photo and video below. 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.
It seems Eddy kites 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.
As mentioned earlier, there's another alternative to towing indoor kites if it's just not possible to fly outdoors...
"Kites Up!" is my downloadable board game. It's a PDF file which has all the documentation for the game plus images for all the components. Tokens, cards, the board itself and so on. Anyway, just click that link to see more info :-)
It's a printable PDF file. Make a diamond, delta or sled step-by-step. They fly hundreds of feet up for hours on end. Woohoo!
Could you do me just a small favor though? If you're over 16, please sign up for Tethered Flying - my free twice-per-month publication. Here's just a sampling of the total content...
* 3 "tips of the month" (for beginners, parents & experienced)
* A fresh "photo of the month" (+ link to big hi-res version)
* A fresh "flight report of the month" (my personal flying)
* Updates on the latest board game from my-best-kite.com
Any questions? Here's more info on both the e-book and the newsletter.