Kites
Many of you probably don’t know this, but I’ve recently become re-enamored (yeah, I know, it probably isn’t a real word) with kites. I used to like them as a kid, then simply didn’t have much contact with them for a long time. When Jenny and I were on the beach for our honeymoon, I was in one of those goofy beach stores and saw a stunt kite for sale for some silly price like $9. I thought maybe that was a bit pricey for a little kite, but I bought it anyway (if only I knew the kind of bargain I had just found). I brought it back to the beach, and set about getting it built (built? Since when did one have to build a kite? Sheesh). I then proceeded to look like an idiot trying to get it to fly. I followed the directions. I tried and tried and tried. I decided to stop trying to see if I could re-engineer the kite into being a normal kite, instead of a stunt kite. I thought that the two-line control system was just unstable, and that maybe the kite just wasn’t that great. I finally packed it up and figured I had just wasted a ten-spot.
The next day, the wind was a lot stronger. I decided to try again. Attempt #1 was another funny failure. Fortunately, this was the middle of the week in May, and there weren’t many people there to laugh at me. Attempt #2 got it into the air for the first time. This was the first time I had flown a stunt kite, and one can probably guess what happened about thirty seconds into this flight: High-speed nose dive straight into the sand. Oops. Try again. Attempt #3 got it into the air, and I decided not to try any steering again. My goal was level flight, nothing fancy. Finally, I had a stable kite in the air. It was awesome.
After I got a feel for the control of the kite, I started to have a little bit of fun with it, putting it into dives and making huge loops with it in the sky. This was cool! After the honeymoon, I put the kite into the corner with the beach umbrella, and Jenny and I got busy with the house, and changing my job, and just getting settled-into married life.
This summer, I had the urge to fly a kite again. I thought that it would be fun to have a little kite to take on the bikes with us, so that maybe I could fly a bit on some of our rides. We were at REI, and I saw that they had a small, packable kite, so I picked it up. Some time went by until we were going on a bike ride to a place at least moderately suitable for kite flying: Presque Isle State Park in Erie. I had started to read a little bit about modern kites in the meantime, and was finding out lots of information. This could be fun.
We got out to one of the beaches, and I saw someone else flying a kite on that beach. We took a break from the ride, and I unpacked the built the kite. Unfortunately, the beach we chose had some odd wind, and things weren’t working well. I got the kite up for a few minutes (when it did fly, it flew quite well), and that was about the longest flight it had. The other kite flier was also having issues, which I didn’t notice until after I was already out there. Oh well. It was fun. The kite did work, but it clearly needed more (and less turbulent) wind.
When we got home, I was hooked, and I decided to get my first “real” kite. I picked a dragonfly design with an eight-foot wing span, some “real” kite line (1000 feet of 100-pound-test braided dacron), and a line winder capable of holding all that line. I also picked up a spinning windsock and the parts necessary to attach it to the flying line, as I had been reading about “line laundry” and thought that was a pretty neat idea.
The day that the kite arrived, I took off from work as soon as I could so that I could get home. It was a beautiful day, and the winds seemed like they would work great for flying a kite. I had scoped-out a local park (Northmoreland Park, one of the Westmoreland County parks), and was eagerly awaiting Jenny’s return from work. I hoped to get out to the park and give the kite a test fly.
Jenny got home and ate, and we took off for the park. The sun was clearly getting ready to set, but we had enough time to get the kite up for about 30 minutes. I also managed to get the windsock attached in that time, so that we could test that.
WOW! This was fun. Here are a few pictures that Jenny took of the kite and me. Unfortunately, you can’t really see the kite–that’s how high up I had it. 🙂
At this point, I was completely hooked. Jenny and I started to think of other places we could go to fly, thinking about riding our bikes at the same time.
This past weekend, we decided to go to a trail out near IUP. We usually ride from IUP down the trail (literally downhill), then have to work our way back up the trail at the end of the day. This time, we decided we’d do a shorter section of the trail, and do the uphill part first, riding up to IUP. One of the reasons that we did it this way was because the IUP trailhead has a bunch of their athletic fields. That point is on top of one of the local hills, and I thought it would be great for kite flying.
The ride uphill was harder than we remembered (we were both feeling tired that day, too, which may have been just a combination of a busy week at work and some hot and humid weather), but we got up to the fields. The wind was blowing pretty strong with a few gusts here and there, but it felt pretty good. I put the kite together and it launched from my hand. I got it up in the air a bit and found that there was a good deal of turbulence at different altitudes. After a few instances of the kite taking a dive because of a cross-gust, I got it into stable airspace, and just sat there and relaxed a while. This was fun. I put the windsock on it and took it up a little higher. Jenny had the smaller packable kite out and was flying it. Good times were being had by all. Then, suddenly, the dragonfly ducked to one side and plummeted from the sky. I reeled-in line as fast as I could, hoping to right it (or maybe at least keep it from crashing in one of the fenced-off fields). I couldn’t get it righted again, but I did manage to keep it out of any fenced-off areas when it landed. I recovered the kite, and found that one of the carbon spars that that give support to the wing on one side had broken through its pocket in the wing, causing the wing to lose its shape and the kite to uncontrollably fall from the sky.
I took the kite up to my parents’ house, where Mom and Babcia said that they’d try to stitch the pocket back together. That night, I emailed the company where I bought the kite to explain that one rod had a rough edge, which I thought contributed to the problem. A day or so later, I hear from Mom that the pocket was fixed, and I hear from the kite shop that they are sending me a full set of endcaps, free of charge.
At around this same time, I was reading more about kites, and reading about kites designed to lift things. Specifically, I was reading about Kite Aerial Photography (KAP). KAP seems to be an interestingly popular form of kite recreation, so I decided I’d give it a try. I called the kite shop, where I found that they had a good “starter” lifter kite in their bargain bin, so I picked it up, along with appropriate line and a winder for it. I had to get a few other accessories to help manage a kite with some lifting power to it, so I planned a trip to REI.
Jenny and I went to REI today, partly to pick up some items that she had ordered online. I did a quick run up to the mountaineering section, where I picked up two figure-eight belay devices, a few load-bearing carabiners, and two 32-inch slings. The idea with the slings is that they can be used to tie-off to a fixed object with a lark’s head or a carabiner, then the kite attached via another carabiner. The belay devices are for control of kites with significant pull. While I probably won’t need these to control this particular kite, they sure wouldn’t hurt to learn how to use on a kite that is easier to handle. They’ll also make management of any kite tied to them a little easier, since it is much easier to control line flow through the device than it would be to try to undo a tie-off, make the line change, then re-do the tie-off.
The kite arrived today, and I had a lot of fun looking at it. Unfortunately, there are storms blowing through tonight, so I couldn’t get it up in the air. Here’s a picture of someone else’s kite, though the design and look of this one are essentially the same:
I’m hoping that tomorrow offers some decent winds and maybe some better weather. 🙂
jonathan
