Skewer Kite Posts—Diamond

(Bamboo BBQ Skewer Spars)

It's an archive of sorts, although there are no dates and times. Kite flying is timeless, don't you agree?

I trust there is plenty in here to educate, inform, and often entertain!

These short flight reports once appeared as posts in the site-blog page, although that page is no longer present on this site. Below, the latest posts come first. Just scroll down and stop at any heading that appeals :-)

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2-Skewer Diamond Kite

Super Light Sortie

Going by the online weather readings, it looked like testing a new Tyvek drogue might have been on the cards.

But it was not to be. On arrival at the field, it was hard to spot a moving leaf :-( It was definitely too light for the two Tyvek Diamonds. The intention had been to test the new Tyvek drogue on one kite against the shorter and fatter plastic drogue on the other. A side-by-side flight on two separate lines would soon show up whether the new drogue would stabilize no worse than the plastic one.

Epic Flight Over the Roof

The neighbor's roof over the road that is, not just our own roof!

Late Saturday afternoon, light gusts were disturbing palm fronds and tree leaves. It looked good for a backyard flight with a light-wind kite. The 2-Skewer Diamond was close at hand, hanging from the wall near our kitchen. So out I went, kite and block winder in hand.

A few launch attempts were made on a short line. This is never an easy task, of course, in the chaotic air between houses and fences in suburbia. But soon I had the kite up over gutter level by dragging the diamond off the lawn grass on a few more meters of line. After some minutes of careful flying, the kite was bobbing and floating around over the roof in a reasonably predictable fashion. Having a bit of dihedral, the diamond kite was more predictable than a flat one anyway :-)

The scene was quite different from that of a typical kite-flying outing. The lowering sun lit up a couple of jet streams and a rising moon. Occasionally, small birds would flit past at gutter-height, just missing the flying line!

After just a moment of consideration I made the decision to go out to 30 meters (100 feet) of line. The breeze would only smooth out more as sunset approached and the air's speed was ideal for the kite. Gusts had just enough energy to power the bright-orange kite to 60 or 70 degrees of angle, even on the longer length of line.

So far so good. So good, in fact, that I got really bold and went for 60 meters (200 feet)! This time the weight of the line caused much more sag, although the breeze was gradually moderating too. Even so, the kite managed to touch about 55 degrees of angle in one of the last decent gusts of the flight. That would equate to about 140 feet over the neighbor's house on the far side of the road running past our place!

In weaker air the kite would get up a slight wobble, sending long ripples down the 20-pound Dacron. It was at this time that I noticed that the wind direction up there was much more southerly than at rooftop height, where it was southwest.

The plastic diamond sail flashed through several shades as the kite's own shadow played across the rear surface. Being light and efficient, the 2-Skewer design was sitting almost flat in the air, face down as it maintained height or slowly floated down.

Eventually, there were signs of the breeze dying more quickly, so it was decided to take the kite down. After a long slow descent the 2-Skewer Diamond arrived right back on the lawn close to my feet. There were no dramas despite the choppier air down near our house roof.

This was all gentle stuff but it felt like a huge flight never-the-less!

Flying the Brand

An orange diamond—is the title making any more sense? It will in a moment...

On arrival at the field yesterday, the breeze seemed very light and variable. Looking across at an adjacent field, which I have used very occasionally, I decided to fly there again—just for a change.

But what was this ... several people were fiddling about, pulling arrows out of a large target. Now, that was a "red flag." I didn't want to get shot at while flying! And close by, there it was—a literal red flag. Just above the sign it said, and I paraphrase, "tick off if the red flag is up!" So I did.

Shortly after, at the more usual flying field, the bright-orange 2-Skewer Diamond was soon flitting about on several meters of line. A prolonged gust saw the small kite quickly climb and take out 30 meters (100 feet) of 20-pound Dacron.

This diamond kite was the very one in the image that brands My Best Kite on each online platform: the website, Facebook page, and Pinterest page. You know, the orange diamond with black tail against a blue sky with a hint of cloud in one corner. You might even see it in your browser tab up there.

Back to the aerial action. With the wind so very light and dropping out completely from time to time, it was tricky keeping the kite up. Eventually, 60 meters (200 feet) of Dacron was out. But not before there were plenty of ups and downs and pulling the kite right in to within several meters of my hand.

Sizable spring thermals were about, shifting the breeze direction all the time. In fact, at one point, the kite was hanging up at 50 feet while I felt the breeze on my face! Of course, when the kite got lower, it was hard to pull line in quick enough before it touched the grass—a tailwind landing!

2-Skewer Diamond Floats Over the Neighborhood

With the sun going down and an ever-so-gentle breeze barely moving the leaves on the peach tree, I decided to put up the 2-Skewer Diamond from our small backyard. This was yesterday afternoon.

The trimming hole has been sealed up with sticky tape and its function replaced with a small length of sail plastic taped near one tip of the horizontal spar. In flight, it's really not that obvious.

Well, what a flight it turned out to be. After a few attempts to get the kite to stay above gutter level, it finally caught a waft of breeze and soared up to a high angle. A few more meters of line went out and then a few more. The kite was flying right on the "edge of the envelope." It was sometimes barely able to climb, then not quite able to maintain height. All this kept yours truly busy on the line!

Eventually, the bright-orange diamond was at something like three or four times the height of our roof and well over the neighbor's property.

There was barely a wiggle, and even the tail just had a few tiny ripples right near the end as the kite clung on. It was a low-risk situation though, since the wind speeds were so low. After perhaps 10 or 15 minutes of this, the wind died almost completely. And that was enough to defeat any level of flying skill and kite efficiency :-)

Bringing the kite in was straightforward. It's nice being only two strides from the back door away from a kite-flying location!

A Small Wintery Window

Yesterday's window of opportunity that is, to get out and fly something while the sun peeked out and wind speeds were down somewhat on previous days.

There were still some fresh gusts moving the treetops around and loudly rustling the leaves when we arrived at the reserve. I was hoping the wind would moderate after some rain clouds moved on, out to the west. In the meantime, we put up the 2-Skewer Diamond, and it coped quite well. Soon, it was powering around the sky, occasionally being pushed down and to the right by the wind strength.

After a few minutes around 350 feet, I brought the bright-orange diamond down, with optimistic thoughts of trying the 2-Skewer Sled.

The breeze certainly was too strong for the sled initially, causing it to collapse frequently. This kite does reinflate rather well though, perhaps because of the angled (non-parallel) vertical spars. Hence there was one flight where it went through an accelerate/collapse/reinflate cycle more than half a dozen times!

Later, there was a lull in the breeze, and the 2-Skewer Sled managed to stay inflated long enough in the still-turbulent air for me to take a short video for the web page. Hopefully, more ideal conditions might come along later in the week, so I can do justice to this very light and efficient little sled kite.

All this time, the trusty Windtronic meter was running. The breeze had averaged 5.1 kph and had peaked at 18.9 kph.

Two Kites, Four Boys

It's been school holidays for more than a week now, and Aren had three of his Grade 3 school friends over for the morning. Fast forwarding now to the kiting bit...

May and I walked down to the nearby small reserve with the boys. The weather was sunny, with a comfortable air temperature and a moderate amount of high cloud about.

We had with us the Tiny Tots Diamond and the 2-Skewer Diamond. The former kite was on polyester thread and the latter on 20-pound Dacron.

Both kites flew magnificently in the gusty gentle breeze. That's "gentle" in the technical sense, meaning a wind strength no higher than 19 kph (10 knts). It's on Wikipedia; it must be true ;-) Most of the kids had a go on both kites, not to mention having a great time trying to pelt the orange 2-Skewer Diamond with twigs and seed pods when it was low!

It was a real pleasure seeing, once again, how the tiny diamond (on thread ) was able to handle quite a wide range of wind speed. And this on just a single-point attachment to the flying line. It's the very simplest kite I have ever designed and built, although the Simple Diamond made from dowel and thicker plastic is essentially the same design, except scaled up.

The 2-Skewer Diamond could have done with a touch more tail length to stay straighter in the freshest gusts today. But it still soared high on around 100 feet of line. When lower down, turbulence from trees upwind made things a bit more interesting for both kites.

All up, it was some easy, enjoyable, and thoroughly uncomplicated flying today!

 

 

 

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