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How to Make a Dopero Kite
Step by Step—Page 4 of 4
How to Make a Dopero Kite
Prepare to Fly
Make up a flying line, and attach it to the bridle with a Lark's Head knot. See the photo, where the Lark's Head has been left loose.
The bridle is a bit long to check on the ground, so fly the kite on a very short line to see where the towing point is. Shift the Prusik Knot along the bridle line until the towing point appears to be level with the upper horizontal spar or a little below it. To lock the Prusik in place, take the two bridle lines in one hand, the flying line in the other, and pull tight. To unlock it, you just pull the bridle line straight, with the knot in the middle.
Check the bridle slip knots on the upper horizontal spar. Retighten if necessary, and smear a little wood glue around where the line contacts the spar and into the knot. This way, the knots can never come loose or shift along the spar. You won't have to wait the full drying time for this glue to dry, since the amounts are small.
How to Make a Dopero Kite
Flying!
First, if it's very windy outside, stay home! Although this design has some tolerance for moderate-to-fresh winds, it won't like being launched in a gale. If the wind is too strong, it might get damaged.
The Prusik knot on the bridle line can loosen off a little over time. If necessary, pull on all the lines to tighten the knot up before a flying session.
Assuming there is some breeze
outside, just dangle the kite at arm's length until the wind catches
it. As long as you feel the kite pulling, let out line slowly by taking
loop after loop off the winder.
Be cautious about letting line
slip through your fingers. If a big gust hits the kite, the line could
burn you! For any kite this big or bigger, it's a good idea to wear a
glove of some sort unless the wind is very light.
Another approach is to get a helper to hold the kite up and let it go, on the end of maybe 15 or 20 meters (50 feet) of line. This way, the kite soon gets high enough to make it easy to let more line out.
Out in the Field
Dopero-kite stories of my real-life flying experiences are worth checking out!
Illustrated with photos and videos, of course.
Have fun flying, and I hope you've enjoyed learning how to make a dopero kite!
The e-book instructions for
this kite include even more handy hints that will ensure you
get the most success possible when flying this particular design. They
show you how to make the kite more transportable too, so you can remove a couple of spars and roll the kite up into a slim bundle.
Now, just in case you have actually made and flown this kite at least once already:
Flight Reports From Other Visitors
Click below to read about various kite-flying adventures, contributed by other visitors to this page...
My First Dowel Kite
I used to make kites when I was smaller. Some were poorly constructed and refused to fly. As I got older and more experienced, I started to build better …
Tyvek Dopero
We, my wife and I, are in the process of using MBK's book and plans to make our DOPERO kite. We decided to use lightweight Tyvek plain white, NOT the …
As mentioned earlier, there's more kite making on this site 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.
That's every kite in every MBK series.
