MBK Dopero Kite Stories

Featuring Sticked MBK Doperos

An MBK Dopero kite can take a little fiddling around with bridle knots before it returns its best flights. But the effort is worth it, since the four-leg bridle helps to keep this design in shape over a wide range of wind speeds. And it excels in very light wind.

On this site, there's more kite-making info 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.

Very large doperos can be used for kite aerial photography (KAP) in light winds, when other designs would fail to stay up at all.

It's often been a surprise seeing how steep the dopero can fly, considering that compared to other MBK Dowel designs it has quite a bit more wood in the frame. Despite that extra weight, the flat central portions of the upper and lower sails make for one efficient flying machine!

Here's a short-format flight report featuring the Dowel Series kite:

As Good As Ever

With 6-year-old Aren at soccer practice for 45 minutes and a gusty breeze tickling the treetops, it was a chance to pull out the Dowel Dopero.

MBK Dowel Dopero - versatile

This kite has had a good break from flying, so I had a quick check of all the tape spar-caps, after rigging. The ones on the lower horizontal spar were a little suspect, but would hold up for a while—I hoped.

The next 20 minutes or so were spent with short flights, walking out to bring the kite down, adjusting the upper bridle-loop, and relaunching. After about three tries, the dopero flew straight and true. This kite responds very predictably to the knot position. Shift the knot right, to turn to the right, and vice versa.

Given the limited time available for flying, it was sensible to stay under a 60-meter (200-foot) line length. The air was rough up there, causing the normally sedate kite to twitch its tail and accelerate upward suddenly from time to time.

Five turns of line around a smooth-barked sapling was enough to hold the strain, as the MBK Dopero kite held a high line-angle in the cool breeze.

The efficiency of this design is just amazing. There was no thermal activity to speak of, and yet the kite kept bobbing up to high angles, pulling like a horse. A check of the Windtronic meter showed an average wind strength of just 1.4 kph and a peak gust to 3.6 kph. However, there was a dense row of pine trees upwind. The clouds moving overhead indicated moderate-strength winds higher up. So did the very taut flying line!

Tim's Blog Posts
Featuring MBK Dopero Kites

Since these are short-format reports, they are grouped together. One page covers dowel-sparred kites while the other covers bamboo-skewer kites:

MBK Dopero Kite Posts—Dowel

MBK Dopero Kite Posts—Skewer

Tim's Flight Reports
Featuring MBK Dopero Kites

The links below are full-length reports recorded by me, each featuring an MBK dopero kite of one type or another:

Eventful Outing—Pelicans, Failed Tape and More (Dowel)

Simply Superb Thermal Floater! (Dowel)

Promising Test Flight in a Sharp Winter Wind Gradient (Dowel)

Gusty Fresh Winds Spring Up From Nowhere (2-Skewer)

Moderate Winds, and Not Too Gusty—Perfect! (1-Skewer)

The story or stories above document actual flying experiences. My write-ups are definitely "warts and all" since things don't always go totally as planned. However, half the fun of kiting is anticipating the perfect flight. When it happens, it's magic!

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?