Kites & kiting

[LaurieAG]

 Flymaxion™ 1, done & done. I am entertaining the idea of driving to the coast this week to find some wind.

 

DSCN2608b.jpg

 

Lookin good Turtle, is that about how you would want it to point into the wind off the harness? 

[JMJones0424]

I'm working on touching up the sails and this brought to mind a few things on rip-stop nylon. Even though it is resistant to ripping because of the lattice of heavier threads, it does fray. Fraying in terms of flight adds drag and when this drag is not on lifting surfaces (where it is essential) it reduces the flight performance. Many professional kite makers use a wood-burning iron with a sharp-edged tip to cut the fabric and this seals the edge and prevents fraying. Doing this requires not only the iron, but a straightedge and table that won't burn. A workaround is to [carefully] pass a lighter flame along the edge to seal it after it is cut and that is what I do.

 

Parachute riggers have an electrical device that they use to simultaneously cut and melt the edges of nylon panels.  I think a cheap soldering iron would be an adequate substitute.  You don't need to have a table that won't burn, but instead you need a surface that won't melt or quickly burn.  Any cheap sheet of plywood should be sufficient.

Edited August 9, 2017 by JMJones0424

[Turtle]

Parachute riggers have an electrical device that they use to simultaneously cut and melt the edges of nylon panels.  I think a cheap soldering iron would be an adequate substitute.  You don't need to have a table that won't burn, but instead you need a surface that won't melt or quickly burn.  Any cheap sheet of plywood should be sufficient.

Thanks for the tips! If I end up doing enough building, I may be able to justify acquiring that kit.

 

While at the coast I noticed some kites had little plastic sliders for adjusting tension, so asked if they had them at a kite shop. They didn't, but the fella suggested using washers. I didn't understand how that would work 'til I got home and fiddled around. Voila! These babies hold fast and adjust easily.  Will be replacing my taut-line hitches on the new kite ASAP.

 

 

Edited September 28, 2017 by Turtle

[Buffy]

That oscillation is very regular, like a feedback loop created by the design rather than any variation in wind speed. Exposure of the front-lower and back-upper panels along with some redistribution to move the center of mass might do it...

 

I'm just babbling. I know nothing about kites, but I like things that fly! :cheer:

 

Great job, Turtle! :cheer: :cheer: :cheer:

 

 

The Guide says there is an art to flying, or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss, :phones:

Buffy

[Buffy]

So I know that Bucky's geodesics eschew internal supports and you're staying true to that, but my only experience with anything like these was a tetrahedral kite, topologically really four tetrahedra joined together, and thus having panels on the "internal" surfaces.

 

Have you thought yet about multi-polyhedral structures? A classic Box kite design but with dodecahedra on each end? :cheer:

 

 

When you send it flyin' up there, all at once you're lighter than air, :phones:

Buffy

[LaurieAG]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cMlf0eovbc&feature=youtu.be

A preliminary analysis indicates that whether I rig it to fly on a single line bridle, vertex foremost, or from a two leg bridle, edge foremost, I can put sails on 8 faces. They would be 4 above-back and 4 below-front as with the Flymaxion™. 

 

Will it still rock like the Flymaxion™ does in the video Turtle?

 

Maybe you could rig up some sort of double line bridle that has elastic line(s) (under tension) on one or both sides of the bridle.

[Turtle]

I borrowed a soldering iron and I'm going to have a go at using it to cut my sails. With the pentagons there will be odd angles crossing the square grid of the rip-stop threads and I'm concerned about the fraying. Given my lack of depth perception and the long edges of the pentagons, the passing-a-flame-along-the edge routine is an invitation to disaster.

 

I have a metal straight-edge already, and I prepared a 12" X 30" plywood board as a cutting surface. I'm hoping that the moving iron won't stay in once place long enough to burn the wood.

 

Picked up some gray thread today. Penny for a spool of thread, a nickel for a needle; that's the way the money goes, pop! goes the weasel.

[Turtle]

One pentagon panel cut with the soldering iron. It's 35W and I was reading that 50W is better because you can move it along faster. I don't doubt it as it was slow going. The metal straightedge draws heat and so that slows things a bit too. I didn't burn any holes or overly wrinkle any edges so I'm fairly satisfied. Hard on my back though! (As if everything isn't. :lol: )

 

Next will do some stitch and join-line mark-ups and then start sewing. I have to wait as the machine I am borrowing is in use. Ain't kite making fun!?

[Turtle]

Okaly dokaly folkaly. I sewed the 3 hems in one pentagon that enfold struts with no neighboring sails and then installed the stuts. (Red arrows in image point to edges that will be joined to triangular sail panesl.) Sehr gut! I can now proceed to cut the rest of the sails and continue the assembly. :circle:

 

Edited September 28, 2017 by Turtle

[Turtle]

I am somewhere between 'gracefully surrendering the things of youth'  and 'rage, rage against the dying of the light'.   I suppose I am satisfied but not happy, or the reverse. Yada yada yada, 2 panels to show for myself.

Edited September 28, 2017 by Turtle

[Turtle]

Making haste slowly. I am unhappy that the factory crease in the fabric won't iron out, as well as incidental creases/wrinkles resulting from the fabric being folded after it was cut. I suppose these won't matter as far as how it looks in the sky or how it flies, but it bugs me all the same. :rant:

[LaurieAG]

In spite of the stiffening effect of the sail(s), it is still a flopsy-mopsy assemblage. I am leaning to the opinion that I will need tensioning lines radiating from the center to all 30 vetices in order to lock down the frame. Time will tell...

 

At the worst Turtle, if it doesn't tighten up from the inside you could add a light weight circle/ring around the outside of the 5 points of each hexagon to stiffen things up in that plane, but doing this also makes the whole kite heavier.

 

Hmm looking at things in a slightly different way, you could just create 12 circles (icosidodecahedron), cover them and join them together so that the connections between them create the triangles without any extra weight. The surface area of each 'side' goes from being the area of a pentagon within a circle to the area of the circle itself so you'd get a larger total surface area over all 12 sides, without including any other triangles. You just put cloth over each circle and leave reinforced holes at 5 equal points around the circumference so that you can just use zip ties to connect all 12 circular panels together, semi permanently, without using one triangular filler panel. ;)

[Turtle]

PS On your rings idea Laurie, it prompted me to recall seeing this kite:
EO6 Cellular Box Kite

The Prism EO6 (Expandable Object) kite series is the original brainchild of Phil McConnachie, internationally renowned kite designer from Australia. His EO6 is a dynamic box kite with 6 intersecting elliptical planes that fly stable or as marvelous tumblers. ...

Edited July 14, 2018 by Turtle

[Turtle]

...

Off to read Synergetics for what illuming Bucky may provide on said great circles of polyhedra.

So yeah, the candle says it all. I need a spotlight in a storm and I get a candle in a closet. Oh that someone had got you out with a kite Bucky! Best regards as ever as it is. :lol:

 

That the rest of ye may judge: Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking

 

...

1132.01 This omnidirectional, convergent-divergent, systems-reporting device can print out the most-economical-interrelationships trackings and information-coordinating routings of all systems, because it embraces the pattern of all 87 of the most economical and only available great-circle railroad tracks and no-loss-holding stations of energetic Universe; i.e., through all the closest-sphere-packed systems; i.e., through all the isotropic vector matrixes. In other words, if you want to go from here to there in Universe in the quickest and most economical way, while stopping over here and there for indefinite periods at no-extra-cost hotels, you have got to go through the 12 points of intertangency of the 25 great circles of fundamental symmetry that apply to all the atoms and their association in all seven of the fundamental symmetry subsets.

1132.02 The 31 great circles of the icosahedron always shunt the energies into local- holding great-circle orbits, while the vector equilibrium opens the switching to omniuniverse energy travel. The icosahedron is red light, holding, no-go; whereas vector equilibrium is green light, go. The six great circles of the icosahedron act as holding patterns for energies. The 25 great circles of the vector equilibrium all go through the 12 tangential contact points bridging between the 12 atomic spheres always closest packed around any one spherical atom domain. ...

[Turtle]

Another kite designed and built, but I won't be showing it 'til I can test it out. Could be a while as trips to the coast are few and far between for me. Also have yet another design under construction for which I will just hint it is something of an outside-in job.

 

Mostly just posting because I noticed the noise here dropped back while I was propounding on kites. Noise sucks, but kites blow.

[Turtle]

Some eye-candy I spotted on one of my beach trips.