Flying Barn Door Kites

One of our first barn doors

Several 1-Skewer Barn Door kites were made, while I experimented with spar configurations and one or two other things. This photo shows one of the earliest ones, where the diagonal spars come to a point at the tail end of the kite.

These originals were made from clear freezer-bag plastic, which made them hard to see against a gray sky. However, it's a different story when backlit by the setting sun!

MBK 1-Skewer Barn Door

This little barn door required considerable dihedral to fly properly. But the reward was a great reliable little moderate-wind flyer!

We flew this kite on 50 meters (150 feet) of 20-pound line. It doesn't need that strength, but we also flew our 2-Skewer Series kites on the same line.

Over there is a photo of the latest version of the 1-Skewer Barn Door, in orange garden-bag plastic.

The tail is cut from a cheap black garbage bag. The looped tail gives the kite more stability than if the same length was allowed to just hang by one end.

Check out the video below, which shows two more of these kites bobbing around in a gusty breeze. The dark-blue kite is flying off a 2 meter (6 feet) line from the light-blue kite. Extra loops of tail have been added to settle the kites down in the moderate strength gusts.

MBK 2-Skewer Barn Door

The 2-Skewer Barn Door is, as the name suggests, exactly twice as tall as the 1-Skewer design. This gives it four times the sail area with not much more than double the weight. Hence, it doesn't need quite as much wind as the smaller design.

The kite pictured has two-ply plastic which makes it a little heavier, but it still flies great. A little dihedral plus the three-leg bridle keeps this kite much steadier in the air than the tiny 1-Skewer version.

This is the kite we pulled out when there was too much wind for all the other skewer kites!

The video below shows this kite flying in rough air that caused it to sweep around quite a bit. Up higher and on a lot more line the kite settled down and flew smoother.

Barn-door kites like this one have no trouble climbing up to 400 feet on a 20-pound line.

MBK Dowel Barndoor

For a few years this was the largest of the MBK Barn Door kites.

It took a couple of attempts to design a barn door which was reasonably easy to rig and de-rig. Also, the original one used 4 mm dowel, which proved to be far too light. Not to mention non-standard, since the rest of the Dowel Series used 5 mm dowel.

The Dowel Barn Door is a reliable flyer in light and moderate breezes.

Like most barn-door kites, the flying line angles are modest, but it climbs easily to 400 feet if you let enough line out.

Size? It's twice as tall as the 2-Skewer version, so that's four times the sail area. Compared to the 1-Skewer version, the Dowel Barn Door has 16 times as much area!

MBK Multi-Dowel Barn Door

The big daddy of MBK Barn Door kites, is the Multi-Dowel Barn Door. Or, depending on your culture, perhaps the mother of them all!

Like the Dowel Barn Door, this design is a reliable flyer in light and moderate breezes. Due to its sheer size and also its predictable flying characteristics, the Multi-Dowel version does very well hoisting a camera for aerial photos.

Again, like most barn-door kites, the flying line angles are modest. However, this kite can go directly overhead if rising air is encountered in summer weather. That's one aspect that isn't so good if you have a camera dangling from the line!

Size? It's twice as tall as the Dowel version, so that's four times the sail area. Compared to the 1-Skewer version, the Multi-Dowel Barn Door has 64 times as much area!

In the video below, the big kite is wallowing down near the bottom of its wind range. For aerial photography it would need a little more breeze to fly steadier and higher.