Make up a flying line and attach it to the keel's towing point with a Lark's Head knot. See the photo, where the Lark's Head has been left loose.
Check the keel knots on the vertical spar. Retighten if necessary. Also, put a generous drop of wood glue on each so they can never come loose nor slide along the vertical spar.
You won't have to wait the full drying time for this glue to dry, since the amounts are small.
Firstly, if it's very windy outside, stay home! This is a light-wind kite and won't like being launched in a gale or even a fairly fresh breeze. If the wind is way too strong, this delta will become unstable, and you could even snap one of the dowels.
Assuming there is some breeze outside, just dangle the kite at arm's length until the wind catches it. As long as you feel the kite pulling, let out line slowly by taking loop after loop off the winder. Be cautious about letting line slip through your fingers. If you let it slip too quickly, say in a moderate breeze, the line could burn you!
Another approach is to get a helper to hold the kite up and let it go, on the end of maybe 10 or 20 meters of line. This way, the kite soon gets high enough to make it easy to let more line out.
Delta-kite stories of my real-life flying experiences are worth checking out!
Illustrated with photos and videos, of course.
Have fun flying, and I hope you've enjoyed learning how to make a delta kite!
The e-book instructions for
this kite include even more handy hints which will ensure you
get the most success possible when flying this particular design.
Now, just in case you have actually made and flown this kite at least once already:
Click below to read about various kite-flying adventures, contributed by other visitors to this page...
"Kirby" the Delta Kite
I used a plain, pink, plastic table cloth as the material, with the recommended dowel rods. A few of my friends and I cut and trimmed the table cloth and …
A Dowel-Delta-Kite Success Story!
After several years of searching for a kite that is capable of flying on even the lightest of breezes, I have finally found it! The MBK Dowel Delta was …
Scaled Down Dowel Delta Experiment
Since the local hardware barn had 6mm and 4mm hardwood dowels, but not 5mm, I decided to adopt a two-pronged approach. The plan is to build two delta kites …
MBK Delta Kite Returns
The March 11 earthquake was a very stressful experience. I work on the 14th floor of a tall building right next to Tokyo station, and at some point I was …
MBK Delta Kite — The Last Flight
Following up on my first MBK Delta Kite story with the last flight of this valiant kite.
Unable to find sufficiently long 5mm dowels, I resorted to …
My First MBK Delta Experience
I just wanted to let you know about my experience flying my very own and first MBK Delta (earlier today, February 13, 2011). I constructed mine using 4mm …
As mentioned earlier, there's more kite making on this site than you can poke a stick at :-)
Want to know the most convenient way of using it all?
The Big MBK E-book Bundle is a collection of downloads — printable PDF files which provide step-by-step instructions for many kites large and small.
Every kite in every MBK series.