Dowel Dopero Kite

Eventful! Pelicans, Failed Tape, ...

Gusty moderate winds almost prevented us flying the Dowel Dopero kite, but a good flight eventuated anyway. Immediately after pulling up in the car, it was clear there was no point in trying to fly the light-wind dopero immediately.

MBK Dowel Dopero

Thermals were popping and although the wind was moderate, the gusts seemed quite fresh as they tossed around the surrounding leafy treetops.

Hence we just waited for half an hour or so, after which a big blue hole moved overhead.

The active cumulus clouds were drifting away to the west and starting to die off, losing their puffy whiteness.

With this, the wind became less gusty and the average wind-strength seemed to drop a little too. Good!

Within half a minute of stepping out of the car, I was surprised to see four shadows flit across the grass, very close to where we were.

Looking up, there they were—four pelicans in a partial-V formation, heading south. These are incredible soaring birds, but on this occasion they were all flapping. That wouldn't last too long, I suspected, but we never saw the pelicans again.

The Dowel Dopero kite launched easily, but we had a little trouble when one of the vertical spars slipped from its corner tape. The air was still a bit rough! Never mind, it was a good opportunity to fiddle with the bridle a little before we relaunched.

I slipped the towing point back a touch to put more tension on the keel lines. Also, one of the bridle-loop knots was way off center, so that was fixed by sliding it across a centimeter (half inch) or so.

This time, all went well, and the kite was soon flying on a short line while a few photos were taken. After letting out another 10 or 20 meters of line, I zoomed in for a couple of short videos—about a minute in total. Unfortunately, there was just a featureless pale-blue sky as the background this time.

Climbing the kite further was a bit slow, since there was quite a lot of tension on the winder. Despite my experience of the last few years, I almost copped a couple of small line-burns on my finger!

Once in a while the dopero would send long ripples down the line as its tail wagged in the fresher gusts.

The Dowel Dopero kite flew at around 200 feet for a while and tended to track a long way left and right when under pressure. Now, as most kite flyers know, a single-line kite will generally go in just one direction every time it gets overpowered by a stiff breeze. Maybe the flexible keels were sitting one way or the other, to cause this behavior. Maybe it remained in perfect trim, but was bordering on instability due to the wind strength.

Finally, after more cautious letting out of line, the Dowel Dopero kite arrived at just over 300 feet.

The kite seemed nicely trimmed but was pulling strongly most of the time. Despite the blue sky, it wasn't totally devoid of thermals. At one point, the kite was pushed right up to 70 or 80 degrees of line angle, with the flying line slightly bowed out in two different directions.

Not long after this, the wind strength picked up a little more, and the dopero was forced lower. At first I thought it was just flying in sinking air, as sometimes happens. However, the struggling kite just stayed down there at around a 45-degree angle. The pull on the line reflected the stress it was under.

At one moment I saw a huge bow appear in the trailing edge of the upper sail. How something didn't rip or pull out, I don't know!

Eventually, all this air pressure took its toll, and a tape spar cap was pulled loose. With maybe 10 or 15 percent of the sail area gone on one side, the poor kite heaved over to the right and commenced a continuous loop. There were trees directly under the kite, so I desperately headed upwind to gain more room.

With the Dowel Dopero kite now down to under 100 feet, I also noticed trees to either side! There was no chance to reel in quickly enough, so I scooted sideways to bring the kite down between the trees.

Finally, the last loop was obviously going to meet the ground. With the kite still a couple of meters from impact, I thrust the winder at it, to lose all the tension in the line.

At this point, the kite disappeared over a small rise and came to rest.

As we approached the kite, we saw it had settled only a few meters in front of that downwind tree! There was somewhat more room across to the trees on either side. However, I still gave myself a small mental pat on the back for saving the kite :-)

Wheeeew. You can't whip up a new dopero in 20 minutes.

There was no other damage to the Dowel Dopero kite, so it must have landed softly as planned. As we packed up, it was clear that the weather had definitely got windier and gustier again. In fact, a telling sign was a small but rapidly growing cumulus cloud just upwind of us. Perhaps the whole area was about to enter another cycle of thermal activity.

I guess we squeezed out as much flying time as possible on this day!

As mentioned earlier, there's more kite-making info here than you can poke a stick at :-)

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