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waiting for continuation..... realy

Well....After the I made the first kite, I decided to use some better materials (sail quality 4oz dacron and 1.5 oz ripstop nylon) and make a strutless kite. I had a chance to demo a Maui Cloud 10m and I loved the simplicity of it and how the design flew. I figured that the construction might be a little less time consuming and easier not having any struts.
It came together much quicker and I think my experience from, the first kite made things easier. The bridle was a little bit of a challenge, but I've got it al together and will hopefully test fly it tomorrow. Hopefully it flies. I'll post some pics as soon I get a shot of it in the air.

Hey guys, question for people who knows how to build kites.

I have an active blog on the Northern California web site Bay Area Kiteboarding:
http://www.bayareakiteboarding.com/foru ... =1&t=12235

Since kite materials are expensive, I started small and tweaked a beginner friendly strutless kite using old discarded kites. I have the kite setup to specific behavior that I want in a kite. I posted the plans there for someone who wants to play around and build a kite from scratch.

I am now in the middle of designing bigger versions, 7 meter and 11 meter with new materials. Anybody here have any pointers on how to easily translate my current 3.5 m design to different kite sizes with surfplan?

Thanks in advance for any help,
Rey

Hi zmax,
how do you proceed with your strutless kite? Did you testfly it already? And how about the trailing edge fluttering on your first kite? This reminds me of my strutless kite attempt. Twisted Tips and fluttering
After developing my own software program to calculate the kites all these problems disappeared
Here are some pics of my latest kite
http://www.wingworks.de/kite-selber-bauen/kite-easy-s/
Meanwhile i removed the outer struts and even without Struts the kite flies OK.

Cheers
PanTau

PanTau
Still some issues with the strutless kite. Not as many as my first kite, but training edge still flapping a little bit. It's funny you said you had wing tip problem until you made your own kite design software. I noticed with both kites I've constructed that the wing tips tend to twist in. I though it was just an error in my sewing, but sound like it might be a problem with the software. Your kite looks great, very professional. I'm not giving up on the strut less kite yet, I'm still playing around with the bridle set up. Hopefully I'll get it dialed in one of the days.

Hi zmax,
twisted tips are not always sewing errors. Especially not if the twist is symmetrically on both wingtips...
I tried to fix it by cutting and resewing the last segments of the FT but without success. So i spent more time trying to fix the problem than sewing the kite. The wider the tips and higher AOA the bigger the problem. If you find a solution i would be very pleased to get some hints.
Alternatively i could provide you the plan for my "Easy" Kite. The latest version has wider wingtips and only one centerstrut. Feel free to contact me.

Cheers
PanTau

Hi Zmax, I love your kite design and would like to build a similar one of my own. But I am fairly new to Surfplan and I not confident with kite designing as yet, I was wondering if you were willing to share a set of your plans that I could base my plans off of. It would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Hello Crisis,
I'm not sure my plan would be the best to work off of. While the kites did fly, they weren't with our issues. Twisted wing tips, fluttering trailing edge, not to mention trying to figure out the bridle. I thought that it might be because of my sewing or the hundreds of pages I had to piece together from the Surfplan print off. PanTau seems to have discovered that Surfplan (at least the free version) might have some problems with the design. He's come up with different method to design kites and has had good success. I'd try to get one of his plans to work off of, as he had a proven design that flies well.
Good luck with your project

zmax wrote: PanTau seems to have discovered that Surfplan (at least the free version) might have some problems with the design.

Hi zmax,
surfplan is a great software to get into kite design and it can't be praised enought that Dave offers this software for free. It is easy to configure a kite and to see how the parameters change the 3d model of the kite.
But if you start to print and build the kite, there are some limitations (i wouldn't call them problems, sorry for my ambiguous description)
The main reason for twisted tips is that the fronttube segment seams do not exactly match on both sides of the fronttube closing seam. If there is a little difference (even less than 1mm) your tips will twist.
Surfplan (free version) cuts the fronttube segments along the flying direction of the kite. With a high sweep back of the fronttube (delta kite) you get a very long seam and it is difficult to sew the panels together. And also to close the fronttube with the segment seams (coming from top and bottom) matching exactly with the closing seam in one point.
If surfplan would cut along the bisector of the segment angle everything would be much easier (that's what the commercial versions and my software does).
For a more rectangular kite (c-shape) the effect is very little.



Cheers
PanTau

Hi guys!

I'll ask some question, apologizes if answered already:

- what type of sewing machine can do the normal zig-zag stitching, and all the rest?
- what type of thread is used normally? Where to buy it?
- in your opinion, what is the paint when coloring a kite?
- and lastly, what would be a glue applied under the sewing? Looks like very thin, equally wide everywhere. A tape?

Coloring is really interesting, it looks like colored after main panels have been sewed. Main panels would be at least half of all canopy, minus leading and trailing fabric.

Cheers

D.