MBK Octopus Kite In Fabric

by Chris B.
(The Netherlands)

Just to let you know I finished the kite! I ended up making it 20% larger as you suggested!

It flies pretty decently, as expected it does need a bit more wind than the plastic sheet version I also built as a prototype.

I flew it for the first time last Thursday with not too much wind, so it took a lot of effort to keep it airborne, but as the afternoon crept on the wind picked up and it ended up flying nicely, if a little bit unstable at times.

I took it out again today (Friday) and it was significantly windier. This made the kite very unstable and it tended to start spiralling downwards once it gained height and caught a stronger gust of wind. So I guessed that part of the problem was that all the tentacles were the same weight.

I had some Dacron ribbon lying around in the colour I originally wanted to make the kite (I changed colour after seeing the fabric in real life, I ordered flame red online which turned out to be pinkish red, so I could return the fabric and I got a nice grey green instead). I attached the ribbon to the middle tentacles and took the kite back out and it was more stable than earlier, although the wind might have died down a bit.

I also made a post about building the kite (with more pictures and two movies of it in flight) on my website: www.bellingwout.nl where I also linked to your website.