Kite Blog Posts

February 2009

February 17, 2009—Dowel Barn Door Kite Floats Aloft

It's been a while since the last post, for a few reasons—mainly, consistent strong gusty wind! That's a bit irritating when you have just completed a large light-wind kite.

Well, today was looking reasonable with a relatively light prevailing breeze. It was going to be a very warm day however, and thermal activity was increasing by the hour. The sky was gradually filling with growing cumulus clouds through the morning. As the clouds grew, so did the strength of the gusts, but Aren and I managed to get out early enough in the day to get some flying in. This was down at the Wilfred Taylor Reserve.

Setting up the Dowel Barn Door kite is tricky, and even more so with a breeze trying to flip the kite inside out while you are fiddling with the ties! After a few minutes, all ties were in place and I let the kite float up on a short line. It's such a decent-sized thing that no zoom was necessary to get the kite filling enough of the frame.

With a number of still photos taken, I let out another 20 meters (60 feet) or so of line and let the kite move around against the cloudy backdrop in bright sunlight. This made for a nice little piece of movie footage. A fair bit of zoom, perhaps two to three times, was used. Wind speed was just right most of the time, with the spars just starting to bend in the strongest gusts. Some of the dowel was slightly bowed before the kite was constructed, which might explain why this kite leans to the left when the bridle seems to be centered.

Movie-making finished, it was time to try and get this kite high! That wasn't so easy, as the wind speed started to pick up and the left-leaning problem got much worse. The sail was accurately made, and fiddling with the ties to shift it left or right a bit would be tricky, so I just adjusted the bridle. That's the nice thing about kites with an upper bridle-loop! By shifting the Prusik knot across by a centimeter or two, it was easy to get more sail area to the left of the towing point. This did the trick—near the top of the wind range! At the lowest wind speeds there was still a slight tendency to hang left. Never mind, the kite now willingly lofted up to over 100 feet as I let out more line.

Unfortunately, the wind problem continued to get worse, forcing the kite down to low line-angles and bending the diagonal spars to a horrendous degree! In this state, it would hover and loop slowly but tightly to the right. The breeze wasn't really that strong, but this kite is very lightly built with those 4 mm spars. In fact, with its current small wind range I'm a bit worried that it will disappoint too many people who try to make and fly it. Hence I have jotted down a few ideas at the bottom of its web page to improve the design. Having said that, all this kite needs is a light breeze without much thermal activity. I'm positive it will go straight to 400 feet under those conditions! Not only that, but it might even be possible to put it up on only 20-pound line, despite its size. That would make it a real light-wind floater!

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

Want to know the most convenient way of using it all?

The Big MBK E-book Bundle is a collection of downloads—printable PDF files which provide step-by-step instructions for many kites large and small.

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