by Doc Rod Hardin
(Germantown, Maryland, USA)
In the 1980s I made a 0.75 oz RS combination box kite based on a winged rombus tail and a forward Cody biplane. The longeron was about four feet down the center cutting unneeded weight. The wing span was roughly 4 feet. All hardwood dowel.
This kite was intended as a prototype. It would fly on one knot with almost no effort. It would glide at the top of a vertical line in a circle until it picked up another headwind. It won a Masters trophy from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC in 1996.
I scaled it up to twice the dimension later on that flew well enough, but it was never quite the same. It was my third and last trophy from that festival.
Comments for Low Wind High Flyers
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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.