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Kiting Season Again!
Mike,
Great looking work! I hadn't even considered combining paper modeling into kiting. Many intriguing possibilities....
Kiting is fantastic hobby, perhaps among mankind's oldest hobbies. When you get the chance, look into the design and history of the Cody 'War kite' (Samuel Franklin Cody), and the Tetrahedron kite, as made famous by Alexander Graham Bell. Both are fantastic flyers, extremely stable, and great lifter platforms for altimeter instrumentation and airborne photography (MD80 mini dvr camera, the size of a Bic lighter, about $6.00 on ebay). The Tetrahedron kite's design is modular, and can be configured in many different ways.
The Cody kite, in particular, was used as a 'manlifter' observation platform, often towed behind British warships of the late 19th and early 20th century. The design is a natural flyer; you almost can't keep it down. The Manlifter Cody could lift a single observer to altitudes as high as eight thousand feet. Samuel Cody, a wild west showman, set an altitude record in England, and is acknowledge as Britian's first aviator. This was right at the dawn of motorized flight. Cody died in a motorized aircraft crash (his own design), and was given a state funeral as a national hero in England.
Please keep the pictures coming, and let us know how it flies.
Taut stings beneath your wings,
James
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