Kite
Flyer
November 2000 Issue Supplemental Route
66 Kite Club (R66KC)
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Kite Club Phoenix, AZ
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To Visit Our Web Site Click Here!
This Weekend’s
Flying Events
Note: All flying events will be from
12:00 noon through 4 or 5 p.m. unless otherwise posted.
Tucson Kite
Festival @ Arthur Pack Park – 11/19/00 – Sunday:
10am To 5pm
Directions:
- From Phoenix, go east
(south-east) on I-10 towards Tucson
- Exit at Ina Rd. and
turn left (east) at the intersection.
- Go to Thornydale Rd.
and turn left (north) at the intersection.
- Go up the road a mile
or so until you see kites in the air.
- Arthur Pack Park will
be on the left hand (west) side, watch for signs.
There is a Kite workshop
for the kids and a candy drop. Single line events and an informal stunt kite
competition. The pima county Parks and Rec. have an arts and crafts fair
simultaneously. There will be a raffle as well.
Additional information contact
is Jo Anne Grabe @ 520-299-7701
Last time R66KC Members
went there were crafts, food and refreshments. Best to always bring your own
shade but there is excellent spectator opportunities and restrooms. They fly on
2 or 3 baseball fields and it is less than a mile to other amenities. fast food
and markets.
Club Fly At
The Hippie Man Park – 11/18/00 – Saturday: (See web site Kite Field Recommendations for
maps.) As per usual the fly times are from 12 noon to about 5pm in the
afternoon. Let’s try to do
dinner and drinks after.
Original Hippie Park (North)
Was the “Jim Jennings Park”, and can be located by going north on I-17 to Bell
Rd., west on Bell to 29th Ave., then south on 29th to
Grandview, and finally west again on Grandview for two blocks.
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Rating: |
Great |
Restrooms: |
None |
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Kiters That Can Fly: |
30 |
Drinking Fountains: |
None |
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Non-Kiter Visibility: |
Poor |
Park Benches: |
Yes |
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Distance To Amenities: |
1 Mile |
Shade Available: |
Lots |
Note: By popular demand and the desire
to socialize after a fly with a meal and possibly drinks, the club flying
events will be moving, periodically,
to SATURDAYS!!! Stay tuned as to when this
will start. Park selection will be
alternated so that no single group of individuals will have to drive a long way
all of the time.
Special
Note: Jane
and I have purposely bought three
indestructible Beetles for guests! Please
do not hesitate to ask for them when you have a guest attending our events.
Other News
A New
Non-Wind Flying Machine
Check this great little device
out on the web URL: http://www.hobby-lobby.com/skysurfer.htm This is so
cool that the Gadget Man may just have to have one to go with all of his other
remote control toys. (They don’t call him Gadget for nothing.) Be careful when
viewing the web site, you will notice that it has a special battery and
recharger that are not included in the price. (Note: Contributed from the ArFF
site.)
Remember this goody from the
original new letter? Well the Gadget Man could not contain himself and bought
one. He and Billy Mad Dog Dines have been flying the hell out of it and it
blasts!!! It is slow enough to control easily, and takes a biffing and keeps on
ticking. The Gadget dude of course had to spread his wings the day he got it at
the end of the cul-de-sac that he lives in and enjoyed 20 minutes of fun before
getting it stuck at the top, yes the TOP, of a four story Sycamore tree. This
cost the nut case an extra $40 for a tree climber to get the new toy down.
Gadget man will be bringing it to some of the field events so you might just
get a chance to fly this outrageous do-hicky. And don’t forget to heckle him
about the tree climber.
Al-Habib
The Tent Maker
Al-Habib’s Charter: I will be more than happy to help
anybody who wants to design or make a kite, banner, or kite bag, (to the best
of my ability), on a one-on-one basis.
Al-Habib now
has his own web site so please go there and see what he can teach you about
Kite Making. Simply click his Icon below.
Hola Everybody.
I know that I
promised that I would post instructions for my single cell “triad” clone. I decided to make a few modifications to the
plan. I know that some of you don’t
have all the tools and equipment needed to hot knife and sew. Therefore, I have tweaked the plans to use
household or locally available (cheap) items.
Depending on how many items and tools you need to buy, this could set
you back anywhere from $5.00 to $35.00.
Most of the items should be around the home or “moochable”. The kite will fly well in 6 mph, takes about
1 hour to make and gives the children in your life a chance to join in on your
hobby. (Let them doodle on Clinton or
Tiger Wood’s face.) There is no bridle
to adjust out or balance and if it flies funky, you can pull out the excuse
that it’s a tumbling box kite and its supposed to do that… If it really gets bad, you can always burn
it and deny responsibility. Please read
through all the instructions before you start and feel free to e-mail me with
any questions. My kiting e-mail address
is al--habib@home.com. (Please note the
double hyphen in al-habib…)
Materials:
A Newspaper
(you really only need 3 full pages… So go ahead, your neighbor won’t miss those
three pages. Trust me.) or some of the
wrapping paper that is left over from your co-workers baby shower, bridal
shower, etc…
1 foot of fish tank air line (don’t worry, the fish won’t miss it)
3 ~ 48-inch
long 1/8-inch wooden dowels (Ace hardware, Home Depot, etc… Think about picking
up a few spares so you can fix it when you break one. I broke 3. It
happens. Dig through the bin. Some are better than others. )
1 roll scotch
tape (It’s almost Christmas, so you’ll need it anyway)
1 roll
strapping tape (Ya’ know, the stuff
with the fibers in it… It’s great for mailing Aunt Doddie’s brick like fruitcake
to the next victim.)
Some 30lb kite
line (Jutenhoops has some on the shelves.
I know, I know, but it’s the season for miracles)
Tools:
Craft scissors
(please don’t run with them…and don’t use your spouse’s good fabric
scissors. They will bonfire and /
or steal your kite collection in
retribution for ruining them)
Ruler (I bought
a nice steel “meter stick” but your average school ruler will work.)
Leather hole
punch (I scored mine from Ace hardware.
It has six different sizes of hole punches and looks like a starfish
crossed with a set of pliers. Set me
back about $10.00. Tell the spouse
“It’s not for kiting. I’m going on a
diet and I’m going to need to punch extra holes in my belt” and by the time
they find out, it will be too late to return it. Pick it up when you get the dowels)
Square. (I’ve got a set of acrylic squares, but all
you really need is something that will allow you to make a 90-degree angle, so
a large hardbound book will also do the trick.)
Pen or marker
(Sharpie)
Instructions:
Collect all
your stuff and a soda. Make it a diet
soda so the spouse will believe the “diet story” you used to justify the hole
punch. Set up shop on the kitchen
table. (Remember to give yourself some
extra time. You do not want to collect
the “Evil Eye” by holding everybody up at dinner by having a ¾ finished kite
spread out where the Spouse’s carefully prepared dinner should be served.)
Take your 3
wooden dowels. Measure and mark a
section 15 inches long on each one. Cut
the 15-inch section off. You can do
this with the craft scissors. Kinda’
nibble your way around on the mark to create a grove all the way around the
dowel and the cut it. Unless you
managed to score ironwood dowels, it should work nicely.
Measure two 15
1/2-inch sections on each dowel. Cut
them off.
You should now
be in possession of:
Three 15-inch
dowels
Six 15 ½-inch
dowels
Measure and cut
six 1 ½-inch long sections of the air line.
Fold the airline over in half and punch a hole near the fold on each
one. Look at the following picture to
make sure that you are getting it right.
When you are finished, there should be four separate holes in the
airline.
Find three
pages of newspaper with some good color and / or events you want 100 feet off
the ground. Use your ruler and square
to mark off a 15-inch by 15 ¼-inch square on each one. Cut them out.
Take the edge
that is 15 ¼-inches long and fold a piece of Scotch tape over the entire
edge. This will add some reinforcement
to a spot that needs it and will stop it from fluttering too much. Repeat until you run out of long edges. Give the paper to your kids and let them
play with the markers.
While your kids
are letting the inner-artist out, grab the 15-inch dowels and the chunks of
airline. Fold the airline over the same
way that you had it when you punched the holes and slip it over the end of the
dowel. Slide it on about ¾ of an inch
away from the end. Repeat until you run
out of ends and airline. If you run out
of one before the other, call me. I
need a good laugh. Then we will work
out where it all went wrong. Swivel the
airline until the ends are both pointed away from the axis of the dowel in
roughly the same direction.
Recover the
paper from your aspiring Picasso and patch any holes that they poked in the
paper with scotch tape. (Wasn’t it nice
of 3M to distribute a patch kite for your kite to over half a million locations
nationwide?). Line up the pieces so
that the untaped edges overlap by ¼-inch total. Tape them together on both sides with a long strip of scotch
tape. Repeat this until you have joined
all three pieces together into a paper tube.
Now, go find
your strapping tape. Either the spouse
grabbed it to ship the fruitcake or the kid is in the process of wrapping up
the family pet as punishment for you stifling their artistic expression. (Maybe if you didn’t spend so much time on
kites, junior would be a better kid.)
Cut off a 3-inch section and fold it over the edge of the kite at the
seam between the pieces of paper.
Repeat at all the seams. This
will serve as a reinforcement to keep the kite from getting extra holes. When done right, you should have tape along
1-inch of the edge and 1 ½ inch down into the body.
Grab a drink of
soda before it gets too warm. Don’t
worry, you’ll get used to the diet aftertaste sooner or later and it was worth
it to start building you kite-tool-collection.
Find the three
dowels with the airline on them. Grab
one and put it on the inside of the paper tube at the seam line. Center it in the middle of the strapping
tape that up applied in step 11. It
should run from one end of the tube to the other end perpendicular to the
reinforced edge. Grab a 2-inch piece of
strapping tape and attach the dowel to the sail. Repeat until you run out of dowels.
Now you should
have a paper tube with sticks and hose taped to the inside of it. You’re almost finished. Make peace with your loved ones. Now for the easy part. Grab one of the 15-½ inch dowels and insert
one end of the dowel into an airline.
Gently bow the dowel and place the end into an open-air line on another
corner on the same end. If you really
have to bend the spar to run from corner to corner, then you might want to trim
it. You only need a slight bow to keep
tension on the sail and the “mouth” of the kite open. Repeat until you run out of dowels and corners.
The sail is
finished. Dance around like an idiot until you family starts rolling their eyes
at you and muttering something about insanity under their breath.
Cut about 12 inches of 30lb test
line off the end of your spool. Tie the
ends together so that you have a loop.
Larkhead this loop around a spar inside the air line. The end of the line should hang outside the
kite. This is where you attach your fly
line.
Clean up your
mess and go have fun.
Some quick
notes on this kite:
You will break
the spars sooner or later. The dowels
you pick up at the hardware store will not be high quality dowels. Most wood framed kites use a Ramin or Birch
dowel. Kinda hard to get locally tho’.
Water will not
be kind to your new kite. A quick
rainstorm, sprinklers and / or dog slobber will reduce the sail material to
gray goo in no time flat.
High winds will
not be too kind to your kite.
This kite is
not an optimal design. The whole thing
is compromised by my desire for y’all to be able to obtain everything locally
and cheaply. Optimal sail material is ½
oz. Icarex and the spars should be made out of .07 carbon rod. Edge reinforcement should be done with a
sewn hem and the spar pockets should be 3 oz. Dacron. The stuff I just listed is hard or impossible to get locally and
requires additional tools and skills that everybody may not have and / or have
access to.
Play with the
design and experiment. If you make it
better, please e-mail or call me with the improvements.
This kite is a
fairly blatant copy of a PRISM “Triad.”
The measurements differ slightly and I’ve never seen or heard of a PRISM
kite using newspaper and wooden dowels.
Mark Reed probably buried a big chunk of his life in designing the
Triad. If you like the kite that you
built and want to see a prime example of this kite, score a Triad and help keep
Mark Reed and a quality kite retailer (I use Gone With The Wind Kites) in
business. I’ve bought two of them and
love the way that they fly. They set be
back less than $50.00 for the pair, including shipping to my doorstep. The Triad will fly in 3 to 15 mph
winds. Add a tail to calm it down and
you are probably good to 20 mph.
Next time
around I’ll start discussing the tools needed to get something a bit fancier
done.
Al-Habib, The Tent Maker
Disclaimer
The Route 66 Kite Club (R66KC), the editors of the “Route 66 Kite Club - Kite Flyer” (currently Thomas Gadget Man Manson), the American Kitefliers Association (AKA), and any contributors to this editorial, make no claims concerning the accuracy of materials appearing in this publication. Any and all information relating to kiting, rumors or otherwise, will be published without efforts in authentication or verification of the source. Efforts will be made to screen out items of malicious intent, without any guarantee of the success of these efforts. Updates or clarifications of previously posted information or rumors, are requested, and will gladly be posted in the following edition.
Copyright
NON-Restrictions
Reprints or redistribution of
this publication ARE permitted.
Notification of the editor is required, and the “by line” or “photo by”
required for all reprints. Default to: “Reprinted from Route 66 Kite Club-Kite
Flyer By Tom Gadget Man Manson” unless otherwise specified. So help yourself!