Skewer Kite Posts—Sode

(Bamboo BBQ Skewer Spars)

It's an archive of sorts, although there are no dates and times. Kite flying is timeless, don't you agree?

I trust there is plenty in here to educate, inform, and often entertain!

These short flight reports once appeared as posts in the site-blog page, although that page is no longer present on this site. Below, the latest posts come first. Just scroll down and stop at any heading that appeals :-)

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2-Skewer Sode Kite

2-Skewer Sode Poses

Today I was down at a field often used by either dog club members or an archery club. So you have to pick your time for kite flying ;-)

Bamboo Sode Dusted Off Again

I went out for a short fly today, after taking the 2-Skewer Sode off the dusty bookcase top. The kite had been gathering dust there for quite a while.

The vertical spar of bamboo BBQ skewers had taken on a bit of a twist due to the extended storage. So I twisted the kite back into shape as hard as I dared. The kite seemed straighter after that, although flight loads would keep it flat in the air. Hopefully!

Some extra tail was added too, since the breeze was gusting much more than light strength today.

Down at the reserve, the breeze was pushing through the trees at the perimeter. I had a feeling this kite would be tested in winds fresher than it had ever flown in before.

Sure enough, up the sode popped and over it went to the right, when pushed hardest. The edges of the upper part of the sail curved a lot as the two horizontal main spars strained toward each other in that distinctive sode way. But bamboo is tough and the skewers held firm.

Leaving the block winder with 20-pound Dacron on the dry grass, I went out to the kite, bringing it down for retrimming.

After shifting the bridle knot to the left by several millimeters, the bright-orange sode behaved better in the gusty and thermic conditions.

On about 15 meters (50 feet) of line, some video was taken. Then it was time to get some serious height!

With the line out to 60 meters (200 feet), the small sode wandered about at between 60 and 70 degrees of line angle for most of the flight. As happened just days ago at this same reserve (with another kite), the sode wanted to take a closer look at power lines. Wanting none of that, I quickly walked away to the other side of the reserve!

Then followed a few glorious minutes, just enjoying the sight of the kite soaring about almost overhead. The orange plastic belied its age, being backlit by the sun to a glowing hue. The sky was completely blue. At one point I thought I spotted a small patch of cloud near the horizon but it was the pale faintness of the moon in broad daylight!

After taking the kite down, a minute with the wind meter held high registered 12 kph gusting to 19 kph. No doubt the wind was pushing into the low end of moderate, up at 200 feet. It was a good flight, despite the kite still being a fraction out of balance to the right.

2-Skewer Sode Dusted Off

To tell the truth, I did notice quite a bit of dust on this kite as I removed it from the top of a bookcase.

Being in the thick of redoing the Paper Diamond e-book, it was going to be a while before the new colored diamond was flown. Hence, today was a quick outing to at least fly something. It was going to be warm out there, with an extreme-fire-danger day coming up tomorrow.

Aren had his small quadcopter up and was taking movies from it, before I had the sode hooked up and floating out on 20-pound Dacron.

Due to the heat, I had launched from some shade, but it was soon clear that to get more line out I would have to move. So, after a brief stint on about 15 meters (50 feet) of line, I walked out into the furnace and flew on 30 meters (100 feet) for a while. It was rough up there, with thermal turbulence twisting and tossing the lightweight sode all around.

Occasionally the breeze would smooth out, allowing the bright-orange kite to float slowly upward, nose high.

This small sode does well in smooth and/or light winds on its 3-leg bridle. But a 4-leg bridle would definitely help in rough air! A bit more tail would help too.

Continuing to walk out and into wind, there was soon room to fly on 60 meters (200 feet). This was done for just a couple of minutes. I couldn't remember ever flying this particular kite really high, so I ended up letting out 90 meters (300 feet) of the Dacron. This was no problem in a giant field of dry-weed stubble, which was opposite a large multistory shopping complex on a similarly sized block.

Up so high, the 2-Skewer Sode found slightly smoother air but had a hard time pulling most of the sag out of the line. Feeling the tension, I surmised that the kite would actually fly on polyester sewing thread—at least for a few minutes, in unpredictable air like this!

Not wanting to spend too long out there dehydrating, like peaches in a drier, I wound the 20-pound line back onto its blocky solid-wood winder. Uncrushable!

It wasn't a bad outing, although the gusts kept Aren busy stopping his quadcopter from drifting out of range downwind.

Sode Kite Rooftop Escapades

A large mass of low gray cloud had just passed over, accompanied by a freshening of the gusty light breeze through our backyard. Aren and I had taken out the 58 cm (23 in.) 2-Skewer Sode for a spot of white-knuckle rooftop flying. Flying over the rooftop that is, not from it! As it turned out, the kite did end up dragged into the gutter a couple of times, but it escaped injury.

We both had turns flying while the other took some video on the camera. The last clip showed the kite being flown several meters over the roof, before a lull forced a pull in of line. This resulted in a closeup of the bright-orange sode as it floated down past the gutter and then hovered over our side lawn in a fortuitous puff of air.

One of the dangers was getting the loop tail caught on the TV aerial, but the sode managed to evade that one. Another danger was swirling air looping the kite onto the roof tiles. That did happen once! On another occasion, Aren allowed the kite to sink out onto the flat verandah. But each time, it was possible to gently prise the kite out of the gutter after it got pulled there by the flying line.

The 2-Skewer Sode kite is now safely back on the wall in the living room.

2-Skewer Sode at the Limit

The last time this kite went out, it was a test of its light-wind capabilities. Today was the very opposite, with gusts at shoulder height reaching 24 kph!

For the first 20 minutes or so I just played around with bridle settings, to learn a bit more about the characteristics of the new 2-Skewer Sode. It turns out the kite doesn't respond well to forward towing points at all, as a remedy for higher winds. Instead, it seems to fly better on the same setting which works well for the lightest flyable winds.

With the more aft position for the bridle knot, the extra air pressure seems to make the kite fly steadier and more stable. The frame is distorted in a way which keeps the nose pointing upwind. Mainly, I think this is the lower horizontal spar assuming more dihedral in flight than the upper one, which has two bridle attachment points on it.

I also tried shifting the upper bridle-loop knot quite a way to the left and then to the right. Surprisingly, the expected looping did not occur! So it's not much use for trimming the kite left or right. It seems the single lower bridle attachment point is letting the lower spar float into a position that negates the trimming. This particular kite seems to be quite well trimmed already, but if necessary, a short "tail-let" off one wingtip would correct a turning problem.

Mind you, the Dowel Sode—with its four-leg bridle keeping the frame more rigid—is beautifully trimmable. Small changes in the upper bridle-loop knot do the trick!

After this I just played around with the kite on 30 meters (100 feet) of line. Occasionally it would get forced down in wide arcs to near the ground, during the fiercest gusts. At other times it would soar overhead in rising air, the strong sunlight lighting up the sail in brilliant orange. Wonderful.

The outer portions of the upper sail can sometimes curl up to a ridiculous extent under pressure, with the skewer tips on the same side moving toward each other. Yet the kite keeps flying well, if squashing down a little in terms of line angle. This is a peculiarity of sodes.

According to the wind meter, the average breeze was 9.6 kph with the already-mentioned max gust to 24 kph. No great altitudes were flown today, but it was fun never-the-less!

Out With the Backup Kite: 2-Skewer Sode

After getting becalmed yesterday, today was looking much better for seeing what the little paper Minimum Sled could do on a generous length of polyester sewing thread.

However, down at the reserve, the gusty breeze uncovered a problem. The sled had been hanging on a wall in our hallway for so long that the paper had set in the closed position. It was all curled up so the towing points touched. In every lull, the towing points would snap together again, causing the kite to spin and drop. Pity. But it was nothing an ordinary household iron wouldn't fix! So I ironed it flat when I got home, ready for another attempt.

This time I wasn't caught out without a backup kite. The 2-Skewer Sode was it for today. A little earlier, the wind meter had registered an average wind speed of about 8 kph and gusts to 18 kph, at shoulder height. The breeze was just enough to generate some leaf noise from the nearby tree.

The sode immediately popped into the air and I flew it around on just a few meters of line while taking video. Then it was straightforward to move upwind toward the far side of the grassed area while letting out more line.

At 60 meters (200 feet), out came the camera again for some more video. The orange-sailed Sode kite was flying about, experiencing wind speeds all over its comfort range. For a while it just sat up there, almost stationary, during a period of smoother breeze.

Later, on 90 meters (300 feet) of line, comfort turned to stress and strain as the thermal gusts grew stronger. At wind speeds around the mid-20s in kph, the 2-Skewer Sode goes to one side and will do a complete loop if pushed any further. Patches of moderately strong sinking and rising air also affected the kite, causing it to drop and pull hard before flying way overhead at other times.

All up, it was a very enjoyable flight, with the midsize kite really showing off on its long light Dacron line. In the almost cloudless sky, the sun lit up the bright-orange sail from behind. The sode would have been spotted by dozens of motorists in the area. They would have been puzzled by its shape no doubt, since it's not a diamond or a delta!

2-Skewer Sode Rises and Falls

A short and somewhat frustrating session unfolded yesterday as a very light breeze got even lighter. With the 2-Skewer Sode on hand, light winds were covered. Or so I thought! When very light winds are combined with a lack of thermal activity (convection), no kite will stay up there.

Anyway, it was just possible to get some video of the kite rising slowly in a "gust," before the inevitable happened. Pan the camera slowly all the way to the dry grass.

No less than four opportunities went by to video the kite flying with a passenger jet passing by in the same region of sky. Each time, the bright-orange sode was on the ground. Never-the-less, a number of short flights were obtained as I worked the 20-pound Dacron line in and out to maximize the flight time. The maximum height obtained was only 100 feet or so.

What about the wind-meter reading? I didn't bother, since it would have sat there with the tiny cups motionless most of the time!

First Time Out With New 2-Skewer Sode

The new instructions for the 2-Skewer Sode are nearly complete. All that remains is to double-check the design in actual flight—which was just as well on this occasion.

The two-leg bridle of the original 2-Skewer Sode kite had been replaced with a three-leg one. The idea being that the bridle loop would allow for convenient trim changes, in case the kite pulled one way or the other under pressure. Hence one leg went to the vertical spar near the nose while the other two went to the lower horizontal spar, almost halfway out to the tips.

Well, the sode flew like a dog! It was unstable as anything, and even a long tail didn't do much.

I soon realized my mistake—the upper horizontal spar was free to flex much more than the lower one. At the risk of getting a little technical, dear reader, this meant the tips would often go to a higher angle of attack than the mid-section of the cambered "wing" of the kite. A tip stall on one side or the other would then be likely to happen. Result—a violent twist in the direction of the stalled tip.

It was handy that the bridle lines had not yet been fixed with glue. So it was easy to loosen and remove the lines from the lower horizontal spar. After attaching both lines to the vertical spar instead, I tried again with the resulting two-leg bridle. The extremely gusty wind conditions were not helpful, but this time the kite flew better. At least most flights were now measured in minutes rather than seconds!

The next flights will be with a three-leg bridle again but with the loop attached to the upper horizontal spar. Maybe a looped tail will be tried as well, since it would be a natural fit to the square tail-end of the kite.

Near the ground, the wind meter registered gusts to 12.8 kph. However, medium-level cloud was scooting past at a much faster rate. Dense shadow alternated with bright sunshine too, so patches of rising and sinking air were everywhere.

 

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1-Skewer Sode Kite

1-Skewer Sode Dusted Off

With rather too much wind speed for most of my larger light-wind kites, it struck me that it wouldn't hurt to take out a little 1-Skewer kite for a change! So, several were put in the car: the rok, sode, and dopero, all with generous tails.

 

 

 

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