Homemade Genki

by Ian
(Cambodia)

Hi all. Sometime back I built a genki called 'Migenk' (from KitePlanBase). It, like all my mbk kites, I built as a solid one piece kite as my flying field was straight out my back door. When I moved I had to kit form all my kites.

That migenk was built to original plan size of 120cm but its problem was a plastic sail that tape wouldn't stick to properly so it was mostly just canned. Time to build a new one and this time I had some fiberglass spars and joiners that I had got from a kite shop in Singapore...

So 2x4mm and 1x5mm, one mtr long rods were pulled out and 2 60cm lengths of 4mm were cut for the vertical spars and for the horizontal spar the full length of 5mm with joiners fitted each end that were then squeezed smaller to firmly hold the remaining 2 40cm lengths of 4mm giving a horizontal spar of 180cms.

The rest was built using Tim's standard 'mbk' building techniques, including a bow line to pull some dihedral into the wing and this time the sail was cut from 2 light-weight plastic ponchos.

This one flies even better than the last one which I had been very happy to fly. If I compared all my kites for the fastest climber from ground to 100mts overhead, I'm sure this one would win hands down as it leaps out your hand and goes straight overhead even on a short line. It catches me out its so unexpected.

Once up there its quite stable and doesn't seem to drop wing tips or do a zigzag as much as some of my other high aspect ratio kites can do, or the smaller version would do at times. It needs tails but only light ones.

This kite is only for light winds, which I expected as here in the tropics the most reliable wind is a light wind. If its windy it could do anything. Like pour down any second.

So its right up there as one of my favourite kites now, but I do like high aspect ratio kites anyway. An easy build. Well worth while.