captain_spalding said:

Anyway, about that kite i made…

No pics yet, because it’s bloody hard to try to get a kite to fly and simultaneously try to get pics of it, all on your own.

Suffice to say that, on its first test outing, it flew abominably.

Most reluctant to take to the sky, and on the one or two launches that did get it aloft, it was most unstable, and would soon drop the starboard wing and dive groundwards.

Observed troubles were: too much flex in the wing spars and spar ends prone to jumping out of their housings. Also began to suspect that the attachment point for the line is on a keel that is too deep for the kite, and the attachment point is too far forward.

Next day, with stiffened wing spars and secured spar ends, it was still reluctant to fly, and still dove off to starboard for crash landings. Tried shifting the attachment point farther aft, which seemed to help somewhat, but it’s still got problems.

Seems that the starboard wing either doesn’t generate lift, or, more likely, is a little slack and it flaps a bit, making it prone to dumping its lift.

i’ve ‘taken a reef’ in the starboard wing (made a longitudinal fold in it, and tack-stitched it into place) so as to tauten it up a bit, and done similar to reduce the depth of the keel.

I await suitable conditions for further trials.

Keep the kite reports coming. I’ll get some vicarious pleasure from them.

I never learnt to fly a kite; my father helped me build several, but insisted that he teach me how to fly them, by flying them himself. I never got to hold the line…