A Conyne Build

by Ian Hammond
(Kampong Chhnang, Cambodia)

I was looking to build something a big bigger than all my 2 skewer mbk kites. But I didn't want to make all my 2 skewer kites redundant by building bigger versions of them. Once they are getting a bit haggard then sure I will do that.

So I had a look in the kite plan base website and found this conyne called "plano". Does that mean plane? It certainly reminded me of an old Bleriot monoplane. Something just a little unique in conyne design.

The writing with it is, I guess, in German so I can't read it but I can read the numbers. It was drawn at 2mtr span but I have 1.2mtr dowels so I rescaled and built it pretty close to design. I built it following mbk style building methods as I've now built 9 mbk kites so I had a good idea how to do it. Its like building 2 kites in one so a fair bit of tape was used.

I wasn't expecting it to be the lightest kite ever. Heading out to fly for the first time I didn't know if it would need a tail as I'd bowed the horizontal spar. It was a bit gusty though not that strong a breeze and with the first few mtrs of line out it was looping and not happy.

I had some tail in my back pocket in case and once fitted it flew much better though still wandering a lot so a bit more tail needed.

After getting a whole lot more line out it got up to smoother air so it shot up overhead and was happy to stay way up. The sort of flight to give a neck ache from looking up so far.

The next flight was just enough air for it to fly in so I had to keep pulling the line in to keep it up during the lulls until there just wasn't enough to keep it there and it sunk down gracefully.

I'm very happy with it. A pretty kite in the sky and a bit different to my other kites.