This house used to be on University Ave, just south of UT in Austin.
Good friends, and good times.
The house was moved away in about 1975 or so. I’m trying to find out where it was moved – I’d like to see it still around.
The house was built in the late 1800s, and would have been a very stylish home back then.
We’ve got the (31) pieces of the parafoil ready. So far the sewing has been pretty straightforward, so to speak. The next job will be to join both the front fins and the flat edge of the aerofoil shape to the 1.5M square front piece. That will be a combination of tacking and pinning to make sure the seams get all the layers they should. But the final sewing, putting the 1.5M square back piece onto the curved side of the aerofoil, creating the pockets, will be the most demanding. Not only do you have to contend with sewing to the curve, but also making sure seams on both left and right side are inside their pockets. And the last seam, as I remember from previous parafoil constructions, involves putting the entire kite into one of its pockets, and having to use extra care not to stitch through any of it when the seam is done. I have confidence in Sophia’s sewing expertise!
The new parafoil is now in pieces, cut from the bright blue material. 1 front piece, 1 back, 18 fins (6 each of 3 patterns) and 11 aerofoil pieces – 31 pieces of ripstop nylon in total.
Hot cut using a soldering iron. Sophia has added about 5 meters of bias binding.
I need to do some maths to work out the location of some lines that will help distribute the towing tension, but figured drinking a beer has precedence.
A local childcare centre was throwing out some stuff, including a glass table top which had been a bit defaced with scratching. But a good size to put on top of our outdoor table to use as a kite cutting and pattern-making table.
I’ve calculated all the data points for making a large, but pretty straightforward, parafoil. It will be the fourth ‘proper’ parafoil I’ve made over the years.
The finished kite will have 10 ‘pockets’ – I’ve never made one with more than 6 previously. The kite will be about 1.5M wide and just under that in height – it will likely be too strong to hand fly. I’ll need to tie it down, I expect…
I’ve marked the glass with marking pens – and it can be wiped off later to start another project. Next job is to cut some brown paper pattern pieces.
My daughter Sophia is going to be doing all the sewing – that takes away a heap of trouble and worry for me…
I’ve progressed with using a camera below a kite. Need to work more with software – image stabilisation and encoding generally. This is across the road from where I drink beer, late 2017 I think.
I’ve never seen a pan flute kite made by anyone else… I’ve seen photos, and plans – but never seen another actual kite. And yet, they are an easy, forgiving kite to make. Not a remarkable flyer, but sometimes it can be fun.
“Pan flute” really describes it well, though I’ve also heard the name “rammed air Ferrari” kite. It consists, generally, of 7 ‘tubes’ of fabric, bigger at the top than the trailing edge of each tube.
Though it seems it could best be made with just two pieces of fabric, it is nicer if made as discrete ‘tubes’ – and makes a more colourful design. I’ve made these anywhere from about 500mm tall up to about 1800mm.
The kite is not a ‘high flyer’ – some that I’ve made struggle to gain height. But others, a pull on the line results in a quick climb.
Flys well without a tail, too, with a back and forth swaying motion.
I’ve made kites since I was a kid – mostly Eddy type (two stick, cross shaped) kites from bamboo, newspaper and glue and string from my paper route rolling!
Sort of like ham radio, there are few periods of years in my life when I haven’t been active to some extent.
With kites, I find myself mostly settling on making soft kites, and especially smaller soft kites that I can fold up and put in my pocket.
And something I learned with Marcus, a long time ago – if the kite is well-designed and built, it shouldn’t need to have a tail. While watchers will be dazzled by tails, me? I feel I can get more kites into the sky at the same time, tied to logs and signs, if the kites don’t have tails to tangle it all together.
Three designs predominate my kite work (not that I’ve been all that active recently) – parasled, pan flute and parafoil.
I’ll try to write a few paragraphs about my experiences with each at another time.
A few older photos of kites and people flying them…
http://wallingford.nz/older-photos-of-kites-and-kite-flying/
I have more than 100 tropical shirts – but I decided to sacrifice this one to make a kite. My friend Marcus used to say that you can fly absolutely anything, if you get the bridling right and the wind is strong enough…
Flying at the beach south of Mt. Maunganui.
The purple parafoil in April 2017, some of its first flying…
We were in the caravan at Tapu, on the Coromandel Peninsula.
