Indoor Sled Kite

MBK Indoor Sled

With a little practice, it was possible to tow the Indoor Sled kite from a bedroom into a hallway and from there through the living room and into the kitchen. Once that was mastered, I tried the reverse order. This proved just as tricky due to a couple of slow points where the direction of flight changed. A little finesse with changing the length of thread helped. Shorten up for the tricky bits, and then let an extra meter or so slip out while in the more spacious parts of the house. Dodge the light fitting on the way.

Trees are the bane of outdoor flying, and it seems light fittings fill that role indoors—not to mention doorways and arches!

There was a breeze outdoors that seemed more than light at times. However, the sun was shining, and this sled design has proven to be quite tolerant of high tow speeds or gusts of moving air. Even when pushed past its flying limits, the little sled just folds up momentarily, which seems to protect it from excessive stress. So it was out to the side lawn on an extra couple of meters of thread.

It wasn't too hard to get the kite up for brief flights. Occasional 180-degree wind shifts low over the grass didn't help, though! Once over gutter height, the airflow smoothed out a lot but still proved too strong for much of the time—as expected when flying an indoor kite outdoors, of course. But like I said, the Indoor Sled kite is a glutton for punishment, and it persisted through multiple collapses during each flight. The sail often ended up inside out, so some time was spent correcting that before relaunching.