SPTF – Single Point Tail Free

On smartphone: use finger for scrolling sideways to be able to see all pictures.

Kite NamePicturePicture
Picture
The A-Kross train



Sala Allehanda train


The Tarot Train


Coleur X


Red A-Kross train
Fly50


Fly 50 		Fly50
Square Foot


Single point Square 		Square Foot


Square Swede
Butterfly


Butterfly 		Liv


Liv 		Anchor


Anchor 		Emborg


Emborg
Nyoman Shimmy


Nyoman 		Nyoman Shimmy


Nyoman Shimmy 		Nyoman Shimmy


Nyoman Shimmy - the movie
Ronbus


Ronbus 		Ronbus


Ronbus light
38. akka


akka 		akka (c)


akka 		akka (e)


akka - the flight

akka (e) – will get 3D printed connectors very soon

The flight of akka (c) was quite good, but still needed tuning. For the next edition I had the workshop drilling again, but the accuracy was less this time so I needed an alternative.

Fortunately, good friend offered to make the necessary connectors in 3D print, and that is the current status.

Flight of akka (d)

 

Prototype 3 flew so well so I decided it was time to give a name. I gave the kite the name akka (with a lower case initial a not to disturb the balance) like the wild leader goose in The Wonderful Adventures of Nils Holgersson.

What I had feared proved to be true: drilling straight through the carbon tube weakened the tube and made it inclined to break. By chance I had an aluminum tube that fitted exactly on Skyshark P300, so I cut that alu-tube in short pieces to use as reinforcement around the drilled holes.

After a full day’s search in Denpasar, Bali, I managed to find a workshop where they said they could drill those holes with the required accuracy.

Well, the accuracy turned out to not be 100%, but a considerable improvement compared to my drilling.

I made prototype 2 which was not too bad, but seemed to need changes to the body shape.

 

 

I had finished the first prototype late one evening: it was already dark, but there was a light breeze on my beach and I was anxious to see if this kite really could fly.

And it did! Not perfectly but well enough for me to tell me my thinking had not been all that bad.

Already in my second year of kite making I started to experiment with a single point wing. (I had this crush on single point and high aspect ratio quite early in my kite life). I had made one wing of IKEA bamboo and some porous material for garden use that did fly, but dived once in a while.

I had this idea of a self stabilizing wing, so I thought I knew how the wings should be made but I realized that I had not the skill to do that.

The sail ‘battens’ must be in fixed angles, both horizontally and sideways, and I thought that the only way to achieve this would be to drill through the spreader tube with a high precision. Which I knew I couldn’t do.

Furthermore I could not figure out how to make the centre section. Not until Henrik Fristrup Jensen showed me his wing kite in a hotel room in Beichuan, China, in March 2017.

Somehow I managed to find a drawing (on paper) of the wing shape I had in mind in 1993, worked with it a bit and started making the kite. I did the drilling that I thought I couldn’t do, and sure enough: the precision was not high!

Working ad hoc I made many mistakes and it didn’t turn out the way I wanted so I was doubtful that it would fly, but nevertheless I tested it and it actually flew! Not perfectly, but on a good angle and certainly well enough to prove that my original idea was correct. A good start for prototype 2.

 

I wanted to see how much of a light-wind kite the Ronbus could be, so I checked my stock of Icarex: I had two colours that would suffice; grey and yellow.

With P90 Skyshark tubes this Ronbus is a real good light-wind kite!

My good friend Ron Spaulding is always flying a big white diamond kite when there is very little wind. Over time he makes improvements, and recently he changed to single point with a bent spine, but was not quite happy with the location of the towing point. I asked him if I could tweak the kite, and he kindly gave me the permission.

                                             Ron with his diamond kite

Ron had got the plan from Peter Rieleit years ago and already tweaked it a bit: Peter Rieleit night fly diamond 2010

I did the things I know work: kick-up front and in-sail dihedral. And it worked beautifully! A soaring kite for really light winds.

And since the geometric name of this shape of a diamond is Rhombus I gave my version the name Ronbus

(It could also be called Double Diamond.)

 

The train has a dancing movement in the air and a friend called the movement “shimmy”. There was a dance in in the 1920s that was called Shimmy; the dance was often considered to be obscene and was frequently banned from dance halls during the 1920s:

Check at YouTube: The Shimmy.  The video will open in a new tab.

Anyway,  I found this to be a good name for the train: Nyoman Shimmy.

However, there was one problem: The line kept getting cut, entirely by itself (or by the kite). Even a kevlar line would be cut!

It took quite a while before I got around to make a complete train: I had the ripstop but lacked material for spars.

A year and a half later I had what I needed: ripstop in five colors and the fiberglass rods.

However, when I cut out the ripstop I cut too much. I had planned to make 60 kites but had cut out for 80 so run short of fiberglass in the end.

With five colours and using different colour for top and bottom there would be 20 colour combinations. Now, a challenge was to organize the order of the kites on the train so the same colour did not appear in any two neighboring kites, not even when joining two segments of 20 kites.

The first Nyoman train, made of IKEA ripstop and bamboo.

On July 26, 2016 I had an old friend, actually my first Balinese friend, visiting me at Draknästet: pak Nyoman Adnyana whom I met already on my first trip to Indonesia in 1995.

In the evening, after he had left, I felt like having a go with a recent idea: A tail-free, single point diamond kite with a straight cross spar and that you can put in a train. To have it tail-free and with a straight cross spar (i.e. no bend or dihedral) implies there was a need for an in-sail dihedral.

The first attempt wouldn’t fly at all, but already the second design was very promising, and before I went to bed I had flown the first kite in complete darkness at a wind speed of 6 m/s. To honour my visitor earlier in the day I decided to call it Nyoman [Nee-oh-man].

The first Nyoman, #5 of the prototypes.

How to make the in-sail dihedral:

I kept testing and tuning to find the optimal sizes and balancing point, sometimes with help of neighbour kids.

Emborg is a second butterfly from Denmark. It is meta-butterfly in that there are two butterflies depicted on it!

New Zealand Anchor, 10g

The Anchor butter from New Zealand comes in many variations: Salted 7 g, Salted 10 g, Salted Chinese and even Unsalted.

Australian Liv, 10 g

Second out was the slightly heavier Australian Liv.

First Butterfly out is the slightly salted Danish Lurpak, 7g

The Butterfly is a kite which I am a bit surprised that no-one has made before. It is an obvious pun! The small butter containers you get on aeroplanes and restaurants: just make the lid fly and there is a Butterfly!

                                     Note that there is a genuine butter-fly in the picture 

I had had the idea for many years, but it it wasn’t until a trip to China where I found the quality bamboo in the correct dimension that I could start making it.

This is what I posted on Facebook in January 2016:

Sometimes I get the feeling that I actually have aquired some understanding and know how to apply it. Today was such a time.

I need a frame for a new project: a rectangular kite, portrait orientation with rounded corners. Single point bridle and preferably a little bit flexible wings.

So starting off from my A-kross frame and with inspiration from Li RuoXin’s small kites I bent some bamboo last night and put it on a trash skin.

I thought the wind of today would not be strong enough (1 – 2 m/s), but lo and behold: the kite took off into the air and flew *steady* on the towing point I had chosen!

Finally I found a frame that when I had made 10 kites, 8 of them would fly directly and at least one more would fly after some tweaking. This was good enough, so I settled for this one.

I call the frame Square Swede, and it has a kick-up front.

And it was time to add the graphic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a discussion on Facebook about the size of a kite and how it should be measured; if tail should be included or not etc.

I decided to make a kite that was an exact measurement, and to make this a challenge it should be single point and, of course, tail free.

The shape should be a small square with a side of 30.48 cm, i.e. a foot.

I  made many experiments using Nylon Paper and different frames in bamboo, and it didn’t take long till I found a frame that worked. However, when I made 10 of the same only 2 of them would fly; that was too low a yield, so I kept on experimenting.

Fly 50 is an A-Kross train I built for my 50th anniversary. I had got hold of a lot of blue and yellow ripstop banners from IKEA from their 50th anniversary 1993: they were hanging all around in the shop. We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap got the banners under promise not to use the logo, but since the bottom part had this beautiful written number I could not resist using it when the right time came.

The train is of course 50 kites long. We got banners with 30 and 60 cm width; just less than 50 of 30 cm width, so I had to fill up the last three positions with Della Portas of 60 cm width.

The kite has been re-used at other’s anniversary, like in Thailand and for Sarawak. Unfortunately, in Singapore the train was cut and half the train went to sea. I scrapped the rest and kept only two cells.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

Fly 50 is an A-Kross train I built for my 50th anniversary. I had got hold of a lot of blue and yellow ripstop banners from IKEA from their 50th anniversary 1993: they were hanging all around in the shop. We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap got the banners under promise not to use the logo, but since the bottom part had this beautiful written number I could not resist using it when the right time came.

The train is of course 50 kites long. We got banners with 30 and 60 cm width; just less than 50 of 30 cm width, so I had to fill up the last three positions with Della Portas of 60 cm width.

The kite has been re-used at other’s anniversary, like in Thailand and for Sarawak. Unfortunately, in Singapore the train was cut and half the train went to sea. I scrapped the rest and kept only two cells.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

Fly 50 is an A-Kross train I built for my 50th anniversary. I had got hold of a lot of blue and yellow ripstop banners from IKEA from their 50th anniversary 1993: they were hanging all around in the shop. We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap got the banners under promise not to use the logo, but since the bottom part had this beautiful written number I could not resist using it when the right time came.

The train is of course 50 kites long. We got banners with 30 and 60 cm width; just less than 50 of 30 cm width, so I had to fill up the last three positions with Della Portas of 60 cm width.

The kite has been re-used at other’s anniversary, like in Thailand and for Sarawak. Unfortunately, in Singapore the train was cut and half the train went to sea. I scrapped the rest and kept only two cells.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

Fly 50 is an A-Kross train I built for my 50th anniversary. I had got hold of a lot of blue and yellow ripstop banners from IKEA from their 50th anniversary 1993: they were hanging all around in the shop. We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap got the banners under promise not to use the logo, but since the bottom part had this beautiful written number I could not resist using it when the right time came.

The train is of course 50 kites long. We got banners with 30 and 60 cm width; just less than 50 of 30 cm width, so I had to fill up the last three positions with Della Portas of 60 cm width.

The kite has been re-used at other’s anniversary, like in Thailand and for Sarawak. Unfortunately, in Singapore the train was cut and half the train went to sea. I scrapped the rest and kept only two cells.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

There was a discussion on Facebook about the size of a kite and how it should be measured; if tail should be included or not etc.

I decided to make a kite that was an exact measurement, and to make this a challenge it should be single point and, of course, tail free.

The shape should be a small square with a side of 30.48 cm, i.e. a foot.

I  made many experiments using Nylon Paper and different frames in bamboo, and it didn’t take long till I found a frame that worked. However, when I made 10 of the same only 2 of them would fly; that was too low a yield, so I kept on experimenting.

Fly 50 is an A-Kross train I built for my 50th anniversary. I had got hold of a lot of blue and yellow ripstop banners from IKEA from their 50th anniversary 1993: they were hanging all around in the shop. We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap got the banners under promise not to use the logo, but since the bottom part had this beautiful written number I could not resist using it when the right time came.

The train is of course 50 kites long. We got banners with 30 and 60 cm width; just less than 50 of 30 cm width, so I had to fill up the last three positions with Della Portas of 60 cm width.

The kite has been re-used at other’s anniversary, like in Thailand and for Sarawak. Unfortunately, in Singapore the train was cut and half the train went to sea. I scrapped the rest and kept only two cells.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

There was a discussion on Facebook about the size of a kite and how it should be measured; if tail should be included or not etc.

I decided to make a kite that was an exact measurement, and to make this a challenge it should be single point and, of course, tail free.

The shape should be a small square with a side of 30.48 cm, i.e. a foot.

I  made many experiments using Nylon Paper and different frames in bamboo, and it didn’t take long till I found a frame that worked. However, when I made 10 of the same only 2 of them would fly; that was too low a yield, so I kept on experimenting.

Fly 50 is an A-Kross train I built for my 50th anniversary. I had got hold of a lot of blue and yellow ripstop banners from IKEA from their 50th anniversary 1993: they were hanging all around in the shop. We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap got the banners under promise not to use the logo, but since the bottom part had this beautiful written number I could not resist using it when the right time came.

The train is of course 50 kites long. We got banners with 30 and 60 cm width; just less than 50 of 30 cm width, so I had to fill up the last three positions with Della Portas of 60 cm width.

The kite has been re-used at other’s anniversary, like in Thailand and for Sarawak. Unfortunately, in Singapore the train was cut and half the train went to sea. I scrapped the rest and kept only two cells.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

Finally I found a frame that when I had made 10 kites, 8 of them would fly directly and at least one more would fly after some tweaking. This was good enough, so I settled for this one.

I call the frame Square Swede, and it has a kick-up front.

And it was time to add the graphic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a discussion on Facebook about the size of a kite and how it should be measured; if tail should be included or not etc.

I decided to make a kite that was an exact measurement, and to make this a challenge it should be single point and, of course, tail free.

The shape should be a small square with a side of 30.48 cm, i.e. a foot.

I  made many experiments using Nylon Paper and different frames in bamboo, and it didn’t take long till I found a frame that worked. However, when I made 10 of the same only 2 of them would fly; that was too low a yield, so I kept on experimenting.

Fly 50 is an A-Kross train I built for my 50th anniversary. I had got hold of a lot of blue and yellow ripstop banners from IKEA from their 50th anniversary 1993: they were hanging all around in the shop. We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap got the banners under promise not to use the logo, but since the bottom part had this beautiful written number I could not resist using it when the right time came.

The train is of course 50 kites long. We got banners with 30 and 60 cm width; just less than 50 of 30 cm width, so I had to fill up the last three positions with Della Portas of 60 cm width.

The kite has been re-used at other’s anniversary, like in Thailand and for Sarawak. Unfortunately, in Singapore the train was cut and half the train went to sea. I scrapped the rest and kept only two cells.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

Finally I found a frame that when I had made 10 kites, 8 of them would fly directly and at least one more would fly after some tweaking. This was good enough, so I settled for this one.

I call the frame Square Swede, and it has a kick-up front.

And it was time to add the graphic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a discussion on Facebook about the size of a kite and how it should be measured; if tail should be included or not etc.

I decided to make a kite that was an exact measurement, and to make this a challenge it should be single point and, of course, tail free.

The shape should be a small square with a side of 30.48 cm, i.e. a foot.

I  made many experiments using Nylon Paper and different frames in bamboo, and it didn’t take long till I found a frame that worked. However, when I made 10 of the same only 2 of them would fly; that was too low a yield, so I kept on experimenting.

Fly 50 is an A-Kross train I built for my 50th anniversary. I had got hold of a lot of blue and yellow ripstop banners from IKEA from their 50th anniversary 1993: they were hanging all around in the shop. We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap got the banners under promise not to use the logo, but since the bottom part had this beautiful written number I could not resist using it when the right time came.

The train is of course 50 kites long. We got banners with 30 and 60 cm width; just less than 50 of 30 cm width, so I had to fill up the last three positions with Della Portas of 60 cm width.

The kite has been re-used at other’s anniversary, like in Thailand and for Sarawak. Unfortunately, in Singapore the train was cut and half the train went to sea. I scrapped the rest and kept only two cells.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

The Butterfly is a kite which I am a bit surprised that no-one has made before. It is an obvious pun! The small butter containers you get on aeroplanes and restaurants: just make the lid fly and there is a Butterfly!

                                     Note that there is a genuine butter-fly in the picture 

I had had the idea for many years, but it it wasn’t until a trip to China where I found the quality bamboo in the correct dimension that I could start making it.

This is what I posted on Facebook in January 2016:

Sometimes I get the feeling that I actually have aquired some understanding and know how to apply it. Today was such a time.

I need a frame for a new project: a rectangular kite, portrait orientation with rounded corners. Single point bridle and preferably a little bit flexible wings.

So starting off from my A-kross frame and with inspiration from Li RuoXin’s small kites I bent some bamboo last night and put it on a trash skin.

I thought the wind of today would not be strong enough (1 – 2 m/s), but lo and behold: the kite took off into the air and flew *steady* on the towing point I had chosen!

Finally I found a frame that when I had made 10 kites, 8 of them would fly directly and at least one more would fly after some tweaking. This was good enough, so I settled for this one.

I call the frame Square Swede, and it has a kick-up front.

And it was time to add the graphic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a discussion on Facebook about the size of a kite and how it should be measured; if tail should be included or not etc.

I decided to make a kite that was an exact measurement, and to make this a challenge it should be single point and, of course, tail free.

The shape should be a small square with a side of 30.48 cm, i.e. a foot.

I  made many experiments using Nylon Paper and different frames in bamboo, and it didn’t take long till I found a frame that worked. However, when I made 10 of the same only 2 of them would fly; that was too low a yield, so I kept on experimenting.

Fly 50 is an A-Kross train I built for my 50th anniversary. I had got hold of a lot of blue and yellow ripstop banners from IKEA from their 50th anniversary 1993: they were hanging all around in the shop. We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap got the banners under promise not to use the logo, but since the bottom part had this beautiful written number I could not resist using it when the right time came.

The train is of course 50 kites long. We got banners with 30 and 60 cm width; just less than 50 of 30 cm width, so I had to fill up the last three positions with Della Portas of 60 cm width.

The kite has been re-used at other’s anniversary, like in Thailand and for Sarawak. Unfortunately, in Singapore the train was cut and half the train went to sea. I scrapped the rest and kept only two cells.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

First Butterfly out is the slightly salted Danish Lurpak, 7g

The Butterfly is a kite which I am a bit surprised that no-one has made before. It is an obvious pun! The small butter containers you get on aeroplanes and restaurants: just make the lid fly and there is a Butterfly!

                                     Note that there is a genuine butter-fly in the picture 

I had had the idea for many years, but it it wasn’t until a trip to China where I found the quality bamboo in the correct dimension that I could start making it.

This is what I posted on Facebook in January 2016:

Sometimes I get the feeling that I actually have aquired some understanding and know how to apply it. Today was such a time.

I need a frame for a new project: a rectangular kite, portrait orientation with rounded corners. Single point bridle and preferably a little bit flexible wings.

So starting off from my A-kross frame and with inspiration from Li RuoXin’s small kites I bent some bamboo last night and put it on a trash skin.

I thought the wind of today would not be strong enough (1 – 2 m/s), but lo and behold: the kite took off into the air and flew *steady* on the towing point I had chosen!

Finally I found a frame that when I had made 10 kites, 8 of them would fly directly and at least one more would fly after some tweaking. This was good enough, so I settled for this one.

I call the frame Square Swede, and it has a kick-up front.

And it was time to add the graphic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a discussion on Facebook about the size of a kite and how it should be measured; if tail should be included or not etc.

I decided to make a kite that was an exact measurement, and to make this a challenge it should be single point and, of course, tail free.

The shape should be a small square with a side of 30.48 cm, i.e. a foot.

I  made many experiments using Nylon Paper and different frames in bamboo, and it didn’t take long till I found a frame that worked. However, when I made 10 of the same only 2 of them would fly; that was too low a yield, so I kept on experimenting.

Fly 50 is an A-Kross train I built for my 50th anniversary. I had got hold of a lot of blue and yellow ripstop banners from IKEA from their 50th anniversary 1993: they were hanging all around in the shop. We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap got the banners under promise not to use the logo, but since the bottom part had this beautiful written number I could not resist using it when the right time came.

The train is of course 50 kites long. We got banners with 30 and 60 cm width; just less than 50 of 30 cm width, so I had to fill up the last three positions with Della Portas of 60 cm width.

The kite has been re-used at other’s anniversary, like in Thailand and for Sarawak. Unfortunately, in Singapore the train was cut and half the train went to sea. I scrapped the rest and kept only two cells.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

Second out was the slightly heavier Australian Liv.

First Butterfly out is the slightly salted Danish Lurpak, 7g

The Butterfly is a kite which I am a bit surprised that no-one has made before. It is an obvious pun! The small butter containers you get on aeroplanes and restaurants: just make the lid fly and there is a Butterfly!

                                     Note that there is a genuine butter-fly in the picture 

I had had the idea for many years, but it it wasn’t until a trip to China where I found the quality bamboo in the correct dimension that I could start making it.

This is what I posted on Facebook in January 2016:

Sometimes I get the feeling that I actually have aquired some understanding and know how to apply it. Today was such a time.

I need a frame for a new project: a rectangular kite, portrait orientation with rounded corners. Single point bridle and preferably a little bit flexible wings.

So starting off from my A-kross frame and with inspiration from Li RuoXin’s small kites I bent some bamboo last night and put it on a trash skin.

I thought the wind of today would not be strong enough (1 – 2 m/s), but lo and behold: the kite took off into the air and flew *steady* on the towing point I had chosen!

Finally I found a frame that when I had made 10 kites, 8 of them would fly directly and at least one more would fly after some tweaking. This was good enough, so I settled for this one.

I call the frame Square Swede, and it has a kick-up front.

And it was time to add the graphic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a discussion on Facebook about the size of a kite and how it should be measured; if tail should be included or not etc.

I decided to make a kite that was an exact measurement, and to make this a challenge it should be single point and, of course, tail free.

The shape should be a small square with a side of 30.48 cm, i.e. a foot.

I  made many experiments using Nylon Paper and different frames in bamboo, and it didn’t take long till I found a frame that worked. However, when I made 10 of the same only 2 of them would fly; that was too low a yield, so I kept on experimenting.

Fly 50 is an A-Kross train I built for my 50th anniversary. I had got hold of a lot of blue and yellow ripstop banners from IKEA from their 50th anniversary 1993: they were hanging all around in the shop. We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap got the banners under promise not to use the logo, but since the bottom part had this beautiful written number I could not resist using it when the right time came.

The train is of course 50 kites long. We got banners with 30 and 60 cm width; just less than 50 of 30 cm width, so I had to fill up the last three positions with Della Portas of 60 cm width.

The kite has been re-used at other’s anniversary, like in Thailand and for Sarawak. Unfortunately, in Singapore the train was cut and half the train went to sea. I scrapped the rest and kept only two cells.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

Australian Liv, 10 g

Second out was the slightly heavier Australian Liv.

First Butterfly out is the slightly salted Danish Lurpak, 7g

The Butterfly is a kite which I am a bit surprised that no-one has made before. It is an obvious pun! The small butter containers you get on aeroplanes and restaurants: just make the lid fly and there is a Butterfly!

                                     Note that there is a genuine butter-fly in the picture 

I had had the idea for many years, but it it wasn’t until a trip to China where I found the quality bamboo in the correct dimension that I could start making it.

This is what I posted on Facebook in January 2016:

Sometimes I get the feeling that I actually have aquired some understanding and know how to apply it. Today was such a time.

I need a frame for a new project: a rectangular kite, portrait orientation with rounded corners. Single point bridle and preferably a little bit flexible wings.

So starting off from my A-kross frame and with inspiration from Li RuoXin’s small kites I bent some bamboo last night and put it on a trash skin.

I thought the wind of today would not be strong enough (1 – 2 m/s), but lo and behold: the kite took off into the air and flew *steady* on the towing point I had chosen!

Finally I found a frame that when I had made 10 kites, 8 of them would fly directly and at least one more would fly after some tweaking. This was good enough, so I settled for this one.

I call the frame Square Swede, and it has a kick-up front.

And it was time to add the graphic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a discussion on Facebook about the size of a kite and how it should be measured; if tail should be included or not etc.

I decided to make a kite that was an exact measurement, and to make this a challenge it should be single point and, of course, tail free.

The shape should be a small square with a side of 30.48 cm, i.e. a foot.

I  made many experiments using Nylon Paper and different frames in bamboo, and it didn’t take long till I found a frame that worked. However, when I made 10 of the same only 2 of them would fly; that was too low a yield, so I kept on experimenting.

Fly 50 is an A-Kross train I built for my 50th anniversary. I had got hold of a lot of blue and yellow ripstop banners from IKEA from their 50th anniversary 1993: they were hanging all around in the shop. We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap got the banners under promise not to use the logo, but since the bottom part had this beautiful written number I could not resist using it when the right time came.

The train is of course 50 kites long. We got banners with 30 and 60 cm width; just less than 50 of 30 cm width, so I had to fill up the last three positions with Della Portas of 60 cm width.

The kite has been re-used at other’s anniversary, like in Thailand and for Sarawak. Unfortunately, in Singapore the train was cut and half the train went to sea. I scrapped the rest and kept only two cells.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

The Anchor butter from New Zealand comes in many variations: Salted 7 g, Salted 10 g, Salted Chinese and even Unsalted.

Australian Liv, 10 g

Second out was the slightly heavier Australian Liv.

First Butterfly out is the slightly salted Danish Lurpak, 7g

The Butterfly is a kite which I am a bit surprised that no-one has made before. It is an obvious pun! The small butter containers you get on aeroplanes and restaurants: just make the lid fly and there is a Butterfly!

                                     Note that there is a genuine butter-fly in the picture 

I had had the idea for many years, but it it wasn’t until a trip to China where I found the quality bamboo in the correct dimension that I could start making it.

This is what I posted on Facebook in January 2016:

Sometimes I get the feeling that I actually have aquired some understanding and know how to apply it. Today was such a time.

I need a frame for a new project: a rectangular kite, portrait orientation with rounded corners. Single point bridle and preferably a little bit flexible wings.

So starting off from my A-kross frame and with inspiration from Li RuoXin’s small kites I bent some bamboo last night and put it on a trash skin.

I thought the wind of today would not be strong enough (1 – 2 m/s), but lo and behold: the kite took off into the air and flew *steady* on the towing point I had chosen!

Finally I found a frame that when I had made 10 kites, 8 of them would fly directly and at least one more would fly after some tweaking. This was good enough, so I settled for this one.

I call the frame Square Swede, and it has a kick-up front.

And it was time to add the graphic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a discussion on Facebook about the size of a kite and how it should be measured; if tail should be included or not etc.

I decided to make a kite that was an exact measurement, and to make this a challenge it should be single point and, of course, tail free.

The shape should be a small square with a side of 30.48 cm, i.e. a foot.

I  made many experiments using Nylon Paper and different frames in bamboo, and it didn’t take long till I found a frame that worked. However, when I made 10 of the same only 2 of them would fly; that was too low a yield, so I kept on experimenting.

Fly 50 is an A-Kross train I built for my 50th anniversary. I had got hold of a lot of blue and yellow ripstop banners from IKEA from their 50th anniversary 1993: they were hanging all around in the shop. We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap got the banners under promise not to use the logo, but since the bottom part had this beautiful written number I could not resist using it when the right time came.

The train is of course 50 kites long. We got banners with 30 and 60 cm width; just less than 50 of 30 cm width, so I had to fill up the last three positions with Della Portas of 60 cm width.

The kite has been re-used at other’s anniversary, like in Thailand and for Sarawak. Unfortunately, in Singapore the train was cut and half the train went to sea. I scrapped the rest and kept only two cells.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

New Zealand Anchor, 10g

The Anchor butter from New Zealand comes in many variations: Salted 7 g, Salted 10 g, Salted Chinese and even Unsalted.

Australian Liv, 10 g

Second out was the slightly heavier Australian Liv.

First Butterfly out is the slightly salted Danish Lurpak, 7g

The Butterfly is a kite which I am a bit surprised that no-one has made before. It is an obvious pun! The small butter containers you get on aeroplanes and restaurants: just make the lid fly and there is a Butterfly!

                                     Note that there is a genuine butter-fly in the picture 

I had had the idea for many years, but it it wasn’t until a trip to China where I found the quality bamboo in the correct dimension that I could start making it.

This is what I posted on Facebook in January 2016:

Sometimes I get the feeling that I actually have aquired some understanding and know how to apply it. Today was such a time.

I need a frame for a new project: a rectangular kite, portrait orientation with rounded corners. Single point bridle and preferably a little bit flexible wings.

So starting off from my A-kross frame and with inspiration from Li RuoXin’s small kites I bent some bamboo last night and put it on a trash skin.

I thought the wind of today would not be strong enough (1 – 2 m/s), but lo and behold: the kite took off into the air and flew *steady* on the towing point I had chosen!

Finally I found a frame that when I had made 10 kites, 8 of them would fly directly and at least one more would fly after some tweaking. This was good enough, so I settled for this one.

I call the frame Square Swede, and it has a kick-up front.

And it was time to add the graphic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a discussion on Facebook about the size of a kite and how it should be measured; if tail should be included or not etc.

I decided to make a kite that was an exact measurement, and to make this a challenge it should be single point and, of course, tail free.

The shape should be a small square with a side of 30.48 cm, i.e. a foot.

I  made many experiments using Nylon Paper and different frames in bamboo, and it didn’t take long till I found a frame that worked. However, when I made 10 of the same only 2 of them would fly; that was too low a yield, so I kept on experimenting.

Fly 50 is an A-Kross train I built for my 50th anniversary. I had got hold of a lot of blue and yellow ripstop banners from IKEA from their 50th anniversary 1993: they were hanging all around in the shop. We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap got the banners under promise not to use the logo, but since the bottom part had this beautiful written number I could not resist using it when the right time came.

The train is of course 50 kites long. We got banners with 30 and 60 cm width; just less than 50 of 30 cm width, so I had to fill up the last three positions with Della Portas of 60 cm width.

The kite has been re-used at other’s anniversary, like in Thailand and for Sarawak. Unfortunately, in Singapore the train was cut and half the train went to sea. I scrapped the rest and kept only two cells.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

Emborg is a second butterfly from Denmark. It is meta-butterfly in that there are two butterflies depicted on it!

New Zealand Anchor, 10g

The Anchor butter from New Zealand comes in many variations: Salted 7 g, Salted 10 g, Salted Chinese and even Unsalted.

Australian Liv, 10 g

Second out was the slightly heavier Australian Liv.

First Butterfly out is the slightly salted Danish Lurpak, 7g

The Butterfly is a kite which I am a bit surprised that no-one has made before. It is an obvious pun! The small butter containers you get on aeroplanes and restaurants: just make the lid fly and there is a Butterfly!

                                     Note that there is a genuine butter-fly in the picture 

I had had the idea for many years, but it it wasn’t until a trip to China where I found the quality bamboo in the correct dimension that I could start making it.

This is what I posted on Facebook in January 2016:

Sometimes I get the feeling that I actually have aquired some understanding and know how to apply it. Today was such a time.

I need a frame for a new project: a rectangular kite, portrait orientation with rounded corners. Single point bridle and preferably a little bit flexible wings.

So starting off from my A-kross frame and with inspiration from Li RuoXin’s small kites I bent some bamboo last night and put it on a trash skin.

I thought the wind of today would not be strong enough (1 – 2 m/s), but lo and behold: the kite took off into the air and flew *steady* on the towing point I had chosen!

Finally I found a frame that when I had made 10 kites, 8 of them would fly directly and at least one more would fly after some tweaking. This was good enough, so I settled for this one.

I call the frame Square Swede, and it has a kick-up front.

And it was time to add the graphic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a discussion on Facebook about the size of a kite and how it should be measured; if tail should be included or not etc.

I decided to make a kite that was an exact measurement, and to make this a challenge it should be single point and, of course, tail free.

The shape should be a small square with a side of 30.48 cm, i.e. a foot.

I  made many experiments using Nylon Paper and different frames in bamboo, and it didn’t take long till I found a frame that worked. However, when I made 10 of the same only 2 of them would fly; that was too low a yield, so I kept on experimenting.

Fly 50 is an A-Kross train I built for my 50th anniversary. I had got hold of a lot of blue and yellow ripstop banners from IKEA from their 50th anniversary 1993: they were hanging all around in the shop. We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap got the banners under promise not to use the logo, but since the bottom part had this beautiful written number I could not resist using it when the right time came.

The train is of course 50 kites long. We got banners with 30 and 60 cm width; just less than 50 of 30 cm width, so I had to fill up the last three positions with Della Portas of 60 cm width.

The kite has been re-used at other’s anniversary, like in Thailand and for Sarawak. Unfortunately, in Singapore the train was cut and half the train went to sea. I scrapped the rest and kept only two cells.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

Emborg is a second butterfly from Denmark. It is meta-butterfly in that there are two butterflies depicted on it!

New Zealand Anchor, 10g

The Anchor butter from New Zealand comes in many variations: Salted 7 g, Salted 10 g, Salted Chinese and even Unsalted.

Australian Liv, 10 g

Second out was the slightly heavier Australian Liv.

First Butterfly out is the slightly salted Danish Lurpak, 7g

The Butterfly is a kite which I am a bit surprised that no-one has made before. It is an obvious pun! The small butter containers you get on aeroplanes and restaurants: just make the lid fly and there is a Butterfly!

                                     Note that there is a genuine butter-fly in the picture 

I had had the idea for many years, but it it wasn’t until a trip to China where I found the quality bamboo in the correct dimension that I could start making it.

This is what I posted on Facebook in January 2016:

Sometimes I get the feeling that I actually have aquired some understanding and know how to apply it. Today was such a time.

I need a frame for a new project: a rectangular kite, portrait orientation with rounded corners. Single point bridle and preferably a little bit flexible wings.

So starting off from my A-kross frame and with inspiration from Li RuoXin’s small kites I bent some bamboo last night and put it on a trash skin.

I thought the wind of today would not be strong enough (1 – 2 m/s), but lo and behold: the kite took off into the air and flew *steady* on the towing point I had chosen!

Finally I found a frame that when I had made 10 kites, 8 of them would fly directly and at least one more would fly after some tweaking. This was good enough, so I settled for this one.

I call the frame Square Swede, and it has a kick-up front.

And it was time to add the graphic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a discussion on Facebook about the size of a kite and how it should be measured; if tail should be included or not etc.

I decided to make a kite that was an exact measurement, and to make this a challenge it should be single point and, of course, tail free.

The shape should be a small square with a side of 30.48 cm, i.e. a foot.

I  made many experiments using Nylon Paper and different frames in bamboo, and it didn’t take long till I found a frame that worked. However, when I made 10 of the same only 2 of them would fly; that was too low a yield, so I kept on experimenting.

Fly 50 is an A-Kross train I built for my 50th anniversary. I had got hold of a lot of blue and yellow ripstop banners from IKEA from their 50th anniversary 1993: they were hanging all around in the shop. We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap got the banners under promise not to use the logo, but since the bottom part had this beautiful written number I could not resist using it when the right time came.

The train is of course 50 kites long. We got banners with 30 and 60 cm width; just less than 50 of 30 cm width, so I had to fill up the last three positions with Della Portas of 60 cm width.

The kite has been re-used at other’s anniversary, like in Thailand and for Sarawak. Unfortunately, in Singapore the train was cut and half the train went to sea. I scrapped the rest and kept only two cells.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

On July 26, 2016 I had an old friend, actually my first Balinese friend, visiting me at Draknästet: pak Nyoman Adnyana whom I met already on my first trip to Indonesia in 1995.

In the evening, after he had left, I felt like having a go with a recent idea: A tail-free, single point diamond kite with a straight cross spar and that you can put in a train. To have it tail-free and with a straight cross spar (i.e. no bend or dihedral) implies there was a need for an in-sail dihedral.

The first attempt wouldn’t fly at all, but already the second design was very promising, and before I went to bed I had flown the first kite in complete darkness at a wind speed of 6 m/s. To honour my visitor earlier in the day I decided to call it Nyoman [Nee-oh-man].

The first Nyoman, #5 of the prototypes.

How to make the in-sail dihedral:

I kept testing and tuning to find the optimal sizes and balancing point, sometimes with help of neighbour kids.

Emborg is a second butterfly from Denmark. It is meta-butterfly in that there are two butterflies depicted on it!

New Zealand Anchor, 10g

The Anchor butter from New Zealand comes in many variations: Salted 7 g, Salted 10 g, Salted Chinese and even Unsalted.

Australian Liv, 10 g

Second out was the slightly heavier Australian Liv.

First Butterfly out is the slightly salted Danish Lurpak, 7g

The Butterfly is a kite which I am a bit surprised that no-one has made before. It is an obvious pun! The small butter containers you get on aeroplanes and restaurants: just make the lid fly and there is a Butterfly!

                                     Note that there is a genuine butter-fly in the picture 

I had had the idea for many years, but it it wasn’t until a trip to China where I found the quality bamboo in the correct dimension that I could start making it.

This is what I posted on Facebook in January 2016:

Sometimes I get the feeling that I actually have aquired some understanding and know how to apply it. Today was such a time.

I need a frame for a new project: a rectangular kite, portrait orientation with rounded corners. Single point bridle and preferably a little bit flexible wings.

So starting off from my A-kross frame and with inspiration from Li RuoXin’s small kites I bent some bamboo last night and put it on a trash skin.

I thought the wind of today would not be strong enough (1 – 2 m/s), but lo and behold: the kite took off into the air and flew *steady* on the towing point I had chosen!

Finally I found a frame that when I had made 10 kites, 8 of them would fly directly and at least one more would fly after some tweaking. This was good enough, so I settled for this one.

I call the frame Square Swede, and it has a kick-up front.

And it was time to add the graphic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a discussion on Facebook about the size of a kite and how it should be measured; if tail should be included or not etc.

I decided to make a kite that was an exact measurement, and to make this a challenge it should be single point and, of course, tail free.

The shape should be a small square with a side of 30.48 cm, i.e. a foot.

I  made many experiments using Nylon Paper and different frames in bamboo, and it didn’t take long till I found a frame that worked. However, when I made 10 of the same only 2 of them would fly; that was too low a yield, so I kept on experimenting.

Fly 50 is an A-Kross train I built for my 50th anniversary. I had got hold of a lot of blue and yellow ripstop banners from IKEA from their 50th anniversary 1993: they were hanging all around in the shop. We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap got the banners under promise not to use the logo, but since the bottom part had this beautiful written number I could not resist using it when the right time came.

The train is of course 50 kites long. We got banners with 30 and 60 cm width; just less than 50 of 30 cm width, so I had to fill up the last three positions with Della Portas of 60 cm width.

The kite has been re-used at other’s anniversary, like in Thailand and for Sarawak. Unfortunately, in Singapore the train was cut and half the train went to sea. I scrapped the rest and kept only two cells.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

The first Nyoman train, made of IKEA ripstop and bamboo.

On July 26, 2016 I had an old friend, actually my first Balinese friend, visiting me at Draknästet: pak Nyoman Adnyana whom I met already on my first trip to Indonesia in 1995.

In the evening, after he had left, I felt like having a go with a recent idea: A tail-free, single point diamond kite with a straight cross spar and that you can put in a train. To have it tail-free and with a straight cross spar (i.e. no bend or dihedral) implies there was a need for an in-sail dihedral.

The first attempt wouldn’t fly at all, but already the second design was very promising, and before I went to bed I had flown the first kite in complete darkness at a wind speed of 6 m/s. To honour my visitor earlier in the day I decided to call it Nyoman [Nee-oh-man].

The first Nyoman, #5 of the prototypes.

How to make the in-sail dihedral:

I kept testing and tuning to find the optimal sizes and balancing point, sometimes with help of neighbour kids.

Emborg is a second butterfly from Denmark. It is meta-butterfly in that there are two butterflies depicted on it!

New Zealand Anchor, 10g

The Anchor butter from New Zealand comes in many variations: Salted 7 g, Salted 10 g, Salted Chinese and even Unsalted.

Australian Liv, 10 g

Second out was the slightly heavier Australian Liv.

First Butterfly out is the slightly salted Danish Lurpak, 7g

The Butterfly is a kite which I am a bit surprised that no-one has made before. It is an obvious pun! The small butter containers you get on aeroplanes and restaurants: just make the lid fly and there is a Butterfly!

                                     Note that there is a genuine butter-fly in the picture 

I had had the idea for many years, but it it wasn’t until a trip to China where I found the quality bamboo in the correct dimension that I could start making it.

This is what I posted on Facebook in January 2016:

Sometimes I get the feeling that I actually have aquired some understanding and know how to apply it. Today was such a time.

I need a frame for a new project: a rectangular kite, portrait orientation with rounded corners. Single point bridle and preferably a little bit flexible wings.

So starting off from my A-kross frame and with inspiration from Li RuoXin’s small kites I bent some bamboo last night and put it on a trash skin.

I thought the wind of today would not be strong enough (1 – 2 m/s), but lo and behold: the kite took off into the air and flew *steady* on the towing point I had chosen!

Finally I found a frame that when I had made 10 kites, 8 of them would fly directly and at least one more would fly after some tweaking. This was good enough, so I settled for this one.

I call the frame Square Swede, and it has a kick-up front.

And it was time to add the graphic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a discussion on Facebook about the size of a kite and how it should be measured; if tail should be included or not etc.

I decided to make a kite that was an exact measurement, and to make this a challenge it should be single point and, of course, tail free.

The shape should be a small square with a side of 30.48 cm, i.e. a foot.

I  made many experiments using Nylon Paper and different frames in bamboo, and it didn’t take long till I found a frame that worked. However, when I made 10 of the same only 2 of them would fly; that was too low a yield, so I kept on experimenting.

Fly 50 is an A-Kross train I built for my 50th anniversary. I had got hold of a lot of blue and yellow ripstop banners from IKEA from their 50th anniversary 1993: they were hanging all around in the shop. We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap got the banners under promise not to use the logo, but since the bottom part had this beautiful written number I could not resist using it when the right time came.

The train is of course 50 kites long. We got banners with 30 and 60 cm width; just less than 50 of 30 cm width, so I had to fill up the last three positions with Della Portas of 60 cm width.

The kite has been re-used at other’s anniversary, like in Thailand and for Sarawak. Unfortunately, in Singapore the train was cut and half the train went to sea. I scrapped the rest and kept only two cells.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

It took quite a while before I got around to make a complete train: I had the ripstop but lacked material for spars.

A year and a half later I had what I needed: ripstop in five colors and the fiberglass rods.

However, when I cut out the ripstop I cut too much. I had planned to make 60 kites but had cut out for 80 so run short of fiberglass in the end.

With five colours and using different colour for top and bottom there would be 20 colour combinations. Now, a challenge was to organize the order of the kites on the train so the same colour did not appear in any two neighboring kites, not even when joining two segments of 20 kites.

The first Nyoman train, made of IKEA ripstop and bamboo.

On July 26, 2016 I had an old friend, actually my first Balinese friend, visiting me at Draknästet: pak Nyoman Adnyana whom I met already on my first trip to Indonesia in 1995.

In the evening, after he had left, I felt like having a go with a recent idea: A tail-free, single point diamond kite with a straight cross spar and that you can put in a train. To have it tail-free and with a straight cross spar (i.e. no bend or dihedral) implies there was a need for an in-sail dihedral.

The first attempt wouldn’t fly at all, but already the second design was very promising, and before I went to bed I had flown the first kite in complete darkness at a wind speed of 6 m/s. To honour my visitor earlier in the day I decided to call it Nyoman [Nee-oh-man].

The first Nyoman, #5 of the prototypes.

How to make the in-sail dihedral:

I kept testing and tuning to find the optimal sizes and balancing point, sometimes with help of neighbour kids.

Emborg is a second butterfly from Denmark. It is meta-butterfly in that there are two butterflies depicted on it!

New Zealand Anchor, 10g

The Anchor butter from New Zealand comes in many variations: Salted 7 g, Salted 10 g, Salted Chinese and even Unsalted.

Australian Liv, 10 g

Second out was the slightly heavier Australian Liv.

First Butterfly out is the slightly salted Danish Lurpak, 7g

The Butterfly is a kite which I am a bit surprised that no-one has made before. It is an obvious pun! The small butter containers you get on aeroplanes and restaurants: just make the lid fly and there is a Butterfly!

                                     Note that there is a genuine butter-fly in the picture 

I had had the idea for many years, but it it wasn’t until a trip to China where I found the quality bamboo in the correct dimension that I could start making it.

This is what I posted on Facebook in January 2016:

Sometimes I get the feeling that I actually have aquired some understanding and know how to apply it. Today was such a time.

I need a frame for a new project: a rectangular kite, portrait orientation with rounded corners. Single point bridle and preferably a little bit flexible wings.

So starting off from my A-kross frame and with inspiration from Li RuoXin’s small kites I bent some bamboo last night and put it on a trash skin.

I thought the wind of today would not be strong enough (1 – 2 m/s), but lo and behold: the kite took off into the air and flew *steady* on the towing point I had chosen!

Finally I found a frame that when I had made 10 kites, 8 of them would fly directly and at least one more would fly after some tweaking. This was good enough, so I settled for this one.

I call the frame Square Swede, and it has a kick-up front.

And it was time to add the graphic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a discussion on Facebook about the size of a kite and how it should be measured; if tail should be included or not etc.

I decided to make a kite that was an exact measurement, and to make this a challenge it should be single point and, of course, tail free.

The shape should be a small square with a side of 30.48 cm, i.e. a foot.

I  made many experiments using Nylon Paper and different frames in bamboo, and it didn’t take long till I found a frame that worked. However, when I made 10 of the same only 2 of them would fly; that was too low a yield, so I kept on experimenting.

Fly 50 is an A-Kross train I built for my 50th anniversary. I had got hold of a lot of blue and yellow ripstop banners from IKEA from their 50th anniversary 1993: they were hanging all around in the shop. We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap got the banners under promise not to use the logo, but since the bottom part had this beautiful written number I could not resist using it when the right time came.

The train is of course 50 kites long. We got banners with 30 and 60 cm width; just less than 50 of 30 cm width, so I had to fill up the last three positions with Della Portas of 60 cm width.

The kite has been re-used at other’s anniversary, like in Thailand and for Sarawak. Unfortunately, in Singapore the train was cut and half the train went to sea. I scrapped the rest and kept only two cells.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

It took quite a while before I got around to make a complete train: I had the ripstop but lacked material for spars.

A year and a half later I had what I needed: ripstop in five colors and the fiberglass rods.

However, when I cut out the ripstop I cut too much. I had planned to make 60 kites but had cut out for 80 so run short of fiberglass in the end.

With five colours and using different colour for top and bottom there would be 20 colour combinations. Now, a challenge was to organize the order of the kites on the train so the same colour did not appear in any two neighboring kites, not even when joining two segments of 20 kites.

The first Nyoman train, made of IKEA ripstop and bamboo.

On July 26, 2016 I had an old friend, actually my first Balinese friend, visiting me at Draknästet: pak Nyoman Adnyana whom I met already on my first trip to Indonesia in 1995.

In the evening, after he had left, I felt like having a go with a recent idea: A tail-free, single point diamond kite with a straight cross spar and that you can put in a train. To have it tail-free and with a straight cross spar (i.e. no bend or dihedral) implies there was a need for an in-sail dihedral.

The first attempt wouldn’t fly at all, but already the second design was very promising, and before I went to bed I had flown the first kite in complete darkness at a wind speed of 6 m/s. To honour my visitor earlier in the day I decided to call it Nyoman [Nee-oh-man].

The first Nyoman, #5 of the prototypes.

How to make the in-sail dihedral:

I kept testing and tuning to find the optimal sizes and balancing point, sometimes with help of neighbour kids.

Emborg is a second butterfly from Denmark. It is meta-butterfly in that there are two butterflies depicted on it!

New Zealand Anchor, 10g

The Anchor butter from New Zealand comes in many variations: Salted 7 g, Salted 10 g, Salted Chinese and even Unsalted.

Australian Liv, 10 g

Second out was the slightly heavier Australian Liv.

First Butterfly out is the slightly salted Danish Lurpak, 7g

The Butterfly is a kite which I am a bit surprised that no-one has made before. It is an obvious pun! The small butter containers you get on aeroplanes and restaurants: just make the lid fly and there is a Butterfly!

                                     Note that there is a genuine butter-fly in the picture 

I had had the idea for many years, but it it wasn’t until a trip to China where I found the quality bamboo in the correct dimension that I could start making it.

This is what I posted on Facebook in January 2016:

Sometimes I get the feeling that I actually have aquired some understanding and know how to apply it. Today was such a time.

I need a frame for a new project: a rectangular kite, portrait orientation with rounded corners. Single point bridle and preferably a little bit flexible wings.

So starting off from my A-kross frame and with inspiration from Li RuoXin’s small kites I bent some bamboo last night and put it on a trash skin.

I thought the wind of today would not be strong enough (1 – 2 m/s), but lo and behold: the kite took off into the air and flew *steady* on the towing point I had chosen!

Finally I found a frame that when I had made 10 kites, 8 of them would fly directly and at least one more would fly after some tweaking. This was good enough, so I settled for this one.

I call the frame Square Swede, and it has a kick-up front.

And it was time to add the graphic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a discussion on Facebook about the size of a kite and how it should be measured; if tail should be included or not etc.

I decided to make a kite that was an exact measurement, and to make this a challenge it should be single point and, of course, tail free.

The shape should be a small square with a side of 30.48 cm, i.e. a foot.

I  made many experiments using Nylon Paper and different frames in bamboo, and it didn’t take long till I found a frame that worked. However, when I made 10 of the same only 2 of them would fly; that was too low a yield, so I kept on experimenting.

Fly 50 is an A-Kross train I built for my 50th anniversary. I had got hold of a lot of blue and yellow ripstop banners from IKEA from their 50th anniversary 1993: they were hanging all around in the shop. We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap got the banners under promise not to use the logo, but since the bottom part had this beautiful written number I could not resist using it when the right time came.

The train is of course 50 kites long. We got banners with 30 and 60 cm width; just less than 50 of 30 cm width, so I had to fill up the last three positions with Della Portas of 60 cm width.

The kite has been re-used at other’s anniversary, like in Thailand and for Sarawak. Unfortunately, in Singapore the train was cut and half the train went to sea. I scrapped the rest and kept only two cells.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

The train has a dancing movement in the air and a friend called the movement “shimmy”. There was a dance in in the 1920s that was called Shimmy; the dance was often considered to be obscene and was frequently banned from dance halls during the 1920s:

Check at YouTube: The Shimmy.  The video will open in a new tab.

Anyway,  I found this to be a good name for the train: Nyoman Shimmy.

However, there was one problem: The line kept getting cut, entirely by itself (or by the kite). Even a kevlar line would be cut!

It took quite a while before I got around to make a complete train: I had the ripstop but lacked material for spars.

A year and a half later I had what I needed: ripstop in five colors and the fiberglass rods.

However, when I cut out the ripstop I cut too much. I had planned to make 60 kites but had cut out for 80 so run short of fiberglass in the end.

With five colours and using different colour for top and bottom there would be 20 colour combinations. Now, a challenge was to organize the order of the kites on the train so the same colour did not appear in any two neighboring kites, not even when joining two segments of 20 kites.

The first Nyoman train, made of IKEA ripstop and bamboo.

On July 26, 2016 I had an old friend, actually my first Balinese friend, visiting me at Draknästet: pak Nyoman Adnyana whom I met already on my first trip to Indonesia in 1995.

In the evening, after he had left, I felt like having a go with a recent idea: A tail-free, single point diamond kite with a straight cross spar and that you can put in a train. To have it tail-free and with a straight cross spar (i.e. no bend or dihedral) implies there was a need for an in-sail dihedral.

The first attempt wouldn’t fly at all, but already the second design was very promising, and before I went to bed I had flown the first kite in complete darkness at a wind speed of 6 m/s. To honour my visitor earlier in the day I decided to call it Nyoman [Nee-oh-man].

The first Nyoman, #5 of the prototypes.

How to make the in-sail dihedral:

I kept testing and tuning to find the optimal sizes and balancing point, sometimes with help of neighbour kids.

Emborg is a second butterfly from Denmark. It is meta-butterfly in that there are two butterflies depicted on it!

New Zealand Anchor, 10g

The Anchor butter from New Zealand comes in many variations: Salted 7 g, Salted 10 g, Salted Chinese and even Unsalted.

Australian Liv, 10 g

Second out was the slightly heavier Australian Liv.

First Butterfly out is the slightly salted Danish Lurpak, 7g

The Butterfly is a kite which I am a bit surprised that no-one has made before. It is an obvious pun! The small butter containers you get on aeroplanes and restaurants: just make the lid fly and there is a Butterfly!

                                     Note that there is a genuine butter-fly in the picture 

I had had the idea for many years, but it it wasn’t until a trip to China where I found the quality bamboo in the correct dimension that I could start making it.

This is what I posted on Facebook in January 2016:

Sometimes I get the feeling that I actually have aquired some understanding and know how to apply it. Today was such a time.

I need a frame for a new project: a rectangular kite, portrait orientation with rounded corners. Single point bridle and preferably a little bit flexible wings.

So starting off from my A-kross frame and with inspiration from Li RuoXin’s small kites I bent some bamboo last night and put it on a trash skin.

I thought the wind of today would not be strong enough (1 – 2 m/s), but lo and behold: the kite took off into the air and flew *steady* on the towing point I had chosen!

Finally I found a frame that when I had made 10 kites, 8 of them would fly directly and at least one more would fly after some tweaking. This was good enough, so I settled for this one.

I call the frame Square Swede, and it has a kick-up front.

And it was time to add the graphic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a discussion on Facebook about the size of a kite and how it should be measured; if tail should be included or not etc.

I decided to make a kite that was an exact measurement, and to make this a challenge it should be single point and, of course, tail free.

The shape should be a small square with a side of 30.48 cm, i.e. a foot.

I  made many experiments using Nylon Paper and different frames in bamboo, and it didn’t take long till I found a frame that worked. However, when I made 10 of the same only 2 of them would fly; that was too low a yield, so I kept on experimenting.

Fly 50 is an A-Kross train I built for my 50th anniversary. I had got hold of a lot of blue and yellow ripstop banners from IKEA from their 50th anniversary 1993: they were hanging all around in the shop. We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap got the banners under promise not to use the logo, but since the bottom part had this beautiful written number I could not resist using it when the right time came.

The train is of course 50 kites long. We got banners with 30 and 60 cm width; just less than 50 of 30 cm width, so I had to fill up the last three positions with Della Portas of 60 cm width.

The kite has been re-used at other’s anniversary, like in Thailand and for Sarawak. Unfortunately, in Singapore the train was cut and half the train went to sea. I scrapped the rest and kept only two cells.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

The train has a dancing movement in the air and a friend called the movement “shimmy”. There was a dance in in the 1920s that was called Shimmy; the dance was often considered to be obscene and was frequently banned from dance halls during the 1920s:

Check at YouTube: The Shimmy.  The video will open in a new tab.

Anyway,  I found this to be a good name for the train: Nyoman Shimmy.

However, there was one problem: The line kept getting cut, entirely by itself (or by the kite). Even a kevlar line would be cut!

It took quite a while before I got around to make a complete train: I had the ripstop but lacked material for spars.

A year and a half later I had what I needed: ripstop in five colors and the fiberglass rods.

However, when I cut out the ripstop I cut too much. I had planned to make 60 kites but had cut out for 80 so run short of fiberglass in the end.

With five colours and using different colour for top and bottom there would be 20 colour combinations. Now, a challenge was to organize the order of the kites on the train so the same colour did not appear in any two neighboring kites, not even when joining two segments of 20 kites.

The first Nyoman train, made of IKEA ripstop and bamboo.

On July 26, 2016 I had an old friend, actually my first Balinese friend, visiting me at Draknästet: pak Nyoman Adnyana whom I met already on my first trip to Indonesia in 1995.

In the evening, after he had left, I felt like having a go with a recent idea: A tail-free, single point diamond kite with a straight cross spar and that you can put in a train. To have it tail-free and with a straight cross spar (i.e. no bend or dihedral) implies there was a need for an in-sail dihedral.

The first attempt wouldn’t fly at all, but already the second design was very promising, and before I went to bed I had flown the first kite in complete darkness at a wind speed of 6 m/s. To honour my visitor earlier in the day I decided to call it Nyoman [Nee-oh-man].

The first Nyoman, #5 of the prototypes.

How to make the in-sail dihedral:

I kept testing and tuning to find the optimal sizes and balancing point, sometimes with help of neighbour kids.

Emborg is a second butterfly from Denmark. It is meta-butterfly in that there are two butterflies depicted on it!

New Zealand Anchor, 10g

The Anchor butter from New Zealand comes in many variations: Salted 7 g, Salted 10 g, Salted Chinese and even Unsalted.

Australian Liv, 10 g

Second out was the slightly heavier Australian Liv.

First Butterfly out is the slightly salted Danish Lurpak, 7g

The Butterfly is a kite which I am a bit surprised that no-one has made before. It is an obvious pun! The small butter containers you get on aeroplanes and restaurants: just make the lid fly and there is a Butterfly!

                                     Note that there is a genuine butter-fly in the picture 

I had had the idea for many years, but it it wasn’t until a trip to China where I found the quality bamboo in the correct dimension that I could start making it.

This is what I posted on Facebook in January 2016:

Sometimes I get the feeling that I actually have aquired some understanding and know how to apply it. Today was such a time.

I need a frame for a new project: a rectangular kite, portrait orientation with rounded corners. Single point bridle and preferably a little bit flexible wings.

So starting off from my A-kross frame and with inspiration from Li RuoXin’s small kites I bent some bamboo last night and put it on a trash skin.

I thought the wind of today would not be strong enough (1 – 2 m/s), but lo and behold: the kite took off into the air and flew *steady* on the towing point I had chosen!

Finally I found a frame that when I had made 10 kites, 8 of them would fly directly and at least one more would fly after some tweaking. This was good enough, so I settled for this one.

I call the frame Square Swede, and it has a kick-up front.

And it was time to add the graphic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a discussion on Facebook about the size of a kite and how it should be measured; if tail should be included or not etc.

I decided to make a kite that was an exact measurement, and to make this a challenge it should be single point and, of course, tail free.

The shape should be a small square with a side of 30.48 cm, i.e. a foot.

I  made many experiments using Nylon Paper and different frames in bamboo, and it didn’t take long till I found a frame that worked. However, when I made 10 of the same only 2 of them would fly; that was too low a yield, so I kept on experimenting.

Fly 50 is an A-Kross train I built for my 50th anniversary. I had got hold of a lot of blue and yellow ripstop banners from IKEA from their 50th anniversary 1993: they were hanging all around in the shop. We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap got the banners under promise not to use the logo, but since the bottom part had this beautiful written number I could not resist using it when the right time came.

The train is of course 50 kites long. We got banners with 30 and 60 cm width; just less than 50 of 30 cm width, so I had to fill up the last three positions with Della Portas of 60 cm width.

The kite has been re-used at other’s anniversary, like in Thailand and for Sarawak. Unfortunately, in Singapore the train was cut and half the train went to sea. I scrapped the rest and kept only two cells.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

My good friend Ron Spaulding is always flying a big white diamond kite when there is very little wind. Over time he makes improvements, and recently he changed to single point with a bent spine, but was not quite happy with the location of the towing point. I asked him if I could tweak the kite, and he kindly gave me the permission.

                                             Ron with his diamond kite

Ron had got the plan from Peter Rieleit years ago and already tweaked it a bit: Peter Rieleit night fly diamond 2010

I did the things I know work: kick-up front and in-sail dihedral. And it worked beautifully! A soaring kite for really light winds.

And since the geometric name of this shape of a diamond is Rhombus I gave my version the name Ronbus

(It could also be called Double Diamond.)

 

The train has a dancing movement in the air and a friend called the movement “shimmy”. There was a dance in in the 1920s that was called Shimmy; the dance was often considered to be obscene and was frequently banned from dance halls during the 1920s:

Check at YouTube: The Shimmy.  The video will open in a new tab.

Anyway,  I found this to be a good name for the train: Nyoman Shimmy.

However, there was one problem: The line kept getting cut, entirely by itself (or by the kite). Even a kevlar line would be cut!

It took quite a while before I got around to make a complete train: I had the ripstop but lacked material for spars.

A year and a half later I had what I needed: ripstop in five colors and the fiberglass rods.

However, when I cut out the ripstop I cut too much. I had planned to make 60 kites but had cut out for 80 so run short of fiberglass in the end.

With five colours and using different colour for top and bottom there would be 20 colour combinations. Now, a challenge was to organize the order of the kites on the train so the same colour did not appear in any two neighboring kites, not even when joining two segments of 20 kites.

The first Nyoman train, made of IKEA ripstop and bamboo.

On July 26, 2016 I had an old friend, actually my first Balinese friend, visiting me at Draknästet: pak Nyoman Adnyana whom I met already on my first trip to Indonesia in 1995.

In the evening, after he had left, I felt like having a go with a recent idea: A tail-free, single point diamond kite with a straight cross spar and that you can put in a train. To have it tail-free and with a straight cross spar (i.e. no bend or dihedral) implies there was a need for an in-sail dihedral.

The first attempt wouldn’t fly at all, but already the second design was very promising, and before I went to bed I had flown the first kite in complete darkness at a wind speed of 6 m/s. To honour my visitor earlier in the day I decided to call it Nyoman [Nee-oh-man].

The first Nyoman, #5 of the prototypes.

How to make the in-sail dihedral:

I kept testing and tuning to find the optimal sizes and balancing point, sometimes with help of neighbour kids.

Emborg is a second butterfly from Denmark. It is meta-butterfly in that there are two butterflies depicted on it!

New Zealand Anchor, 10g

The Anchor butter from New Zealand comes in many variations: Salted 7 g, Salted 10 g, Salted Chinese and even Unsalted.

Australian Liv, 10 g

Second out was the slightly heavier Australian Liv.

First Butterfly out is the slightly salted Danish Lurpak, 7g

The Butterfly is a kite which I am a bit surprised that no-one has made before. It is an obvious pun! The small butter containers you get on aeroplanes and restaurants: just make the lid fly and there is a Butterfly!

                                     Note that there is a genuine butter-fly in the picture 

I had had the idea for many years, but it it wasn’t until a trip to China where I found the quality bamboo in the correct dimension that I could start making it.

This is what I posted on Facebook in January 2016:

Sometimes I get the feeling that I actually have aquired some understanding and know how to apply it. Today was such a time.

I need a frame for a new project: a rectangular kite, portrait orientation with rounded corners. Single point bridle and preferably a little bit flexible wings.

So starting off from my A-kross frame and with inspiration from Li RuoXin’s small kites I bent some bamboo last night and put it on a trash skin.

I thought the wind of today would not be strong enough (1 – 2 m/s), but lo and behold: the kite took off into the air and flew *steady* on the towing point I had chosen!

Finally I found a frame that when I had made 10 kites, 8 of them would fly directly and at least one more would fly after some tweaking. This was good enough, so I settled for this one.

I call the frame Square Swede, and it has a kick-up front.

And it was time to add the graphic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a discussion on Facebook about the size of a kite and how it should be measured; if tail should be included or not etc.

I decided to make a kite that was an exact measurement, and to make this a challenge it should be single point and, of course, tail free.

The shape should be a small square with a side of 30.48 cm, i.e. a foot.

I  made many experiments using Nylon Paper and different frames in bamboo, and it didn’t take long till I found a frame that worked. However, when I made 10 of the same only 2 of them would fly; that was too low a yield, so I kept on experimenting.

Fly 50 is an A-Kross train I built for my 50th anniversary. I had got hold of a lot of blue and yellow ripstop banners from IKEA from their 50th anniversary 1993: they were hanging all around in the shop. We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap got the banners under promise not to use the logo, but since the bottom part had this beautiful written number I could not resist using it when the right time came.

The train is of course 50 kites long. We got banners with 30 and 60 cm width; just less than 50 of 30 cm width, so I had to fill up the last three positions with Della Portas of 60 cm width.

The kite has been re-used at other’s anniversary, like in Thailand and for Sarawak. Unfortunately, in Singapore the train was cut and half the train went to sea. I scrapped the rest and kept only two cells.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

My good friend Ron Spaulding is always flying a big white diamond kite when there is very little wind. Over time he makes improvements, and recently he changed to single point with a bent spine, but was not quite happy with the location of the towing point. I asked him if I could tweak the kite, and he kindly gave me the permission.

                                             Ron with his diamond kite

Ron had got the plan from Peter Rieleit years ago and already tweaked it a bit: Peter Rieleit night fly diamond 2010

I did the things I know work: kick-up front and in-sail dihedral. And it worked beautifully! A soaring kite for really light winds.

And since the geometric name of this shape of a diamond is Rhombus I gave my version the name Ronbus

(It could also be called Double Diamond.)

 

The train has a dancing movement in the air and a friend called the movement “shimmy”. There was a dance in in the 1920s that was called Shimmy; the dance was often considered to be obscene and was frequently banned from dance halls during the 1920s:

Check at YouTube: The Shimmy.  The video will open in a new tab.

Anyway,  I found this to be a good name for the train: Nyoman Shimmy.

However, there was one problem: The line kept getting cut, entirely by itself (or by the kite). Even a kevlar line would be cut!

It took quite a while before I got around to make a complete train: I had the ripstop but lacked material for spars.

A year and a half later I had what I needed: ripstop in five colors and the fiberglass rods.

However, when I cut out the ripstop I cut too much. I had planned to make 60 kites but had cut out for 80 so run short of fiberglass in the end.

With five colours and using different colour for top and bottom there would be 20 colour combinations. Now, a challenge was to organize the order of the kites on the train so the same colour did not appear in any two neighboring kites, not even when joining two segments of 20 kites.

The first Nyoman train, made of IKEA ripstop and bamboo.

On July 26, 2016 I had an old friend, actually my first Balinese friend, visiting me at Draknästet: pak Nyoman Adnyana whom I met already on my first trip to Indonesia in 1995.

In the evening, after he had left, I felt like having a go with a recent idea: A tail-free, single point diamond kite with a straight cross spar and that you can put in a train. To have it tail-free and with a straight cross spar (i.e. no bend or dihedral) implies there was a need for an in-sail dihedral.

The first attempt wouldn’t fly at all, but already the second design was very promising, and before I went to bed I had flown the first kite in complete darkness at a wind speed of 6 m/s. To honour my visitor earlier in the day I decided to call it Nyoman [Nee-oh-man].

The first Nyoman, #5 of the prototypes.

How to make the in-sail dihedral:

I kept testing and tuning to find the optimal sizes and balancing point, sometimes with help of neighbour kids.

Emborg is a second butterfly from Denmark. It is meta-butterfly in that there are two butterflies depicted on it!

New Zealand Anchor, 10g

The Anchor butter from New Zealand comes in many variations: Salted 7 g, Salted 10 g, Salted Chinese and even Unsalted.

Australian Liv, 10 g

Second out was the slightly heavier Australian Liv.

First Butterfly out is the slightly salted Danish Lurpak, 7g

The Butterfly is a kite which I am a bit surprised that no-one has made before. It is an obvious pun! The small butter containers you get on aeroplanes and restaurants: just make the lid fly and there is a Butterfly!

                                     Note that there is a genuine butter-fly in the picture 

I had had the idea for many years, but it it wasn’t until a trip to China where I found the quality bamboo in the correct dimension that I could start making it.

This is what I posted on Facebook in January 2016:

Sometimes I get the feeling that I actually have aquired some understanding and know how to apply it. Today was such a time.

I need a frame for a new project: a rectangular kite, portrait orientation with rounded corners. Single point bridle and preferably a little bit flexible wings.

So starting off from my A-kross frame and with inspiration from Li RuoXin’s small kites I bent some bamboo last night and put it on a trash skin.

I thought the wind of today would not be strong enough (1 – 2 m/s), but lo and behold: the kite took off into the air and flew *steady* on the towing point I had chosen!

Finally I found a frame that when I had made 10 kites, 8 of them would fly directly and at least one more would fly after some tweaking. This was good enough, so I settled for this one.

I call the frame Square Swede, and it has a kick-up front.

And it was time to add the graphic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a discussion on Facebook about the size of a kite and how it should be measured; if tail should be included or not etc.

I decided to make a kite that was an exact measurement, and to make this a challenge it should be single point and, of course, tail free.

The shape should be a small square with a side of 30.48 cm, i.e. a foot.

I  made many experiments using Nylon Paper and different frames in bamboo, and it didn’t take long till I found a frame that worked. However, when I made 10 of the same only 2 of them would fly; that was too low a yield, so I kept on experimenting.

Fly 50 is an A-Kross train I built for my 50th anniversary. I had got hold of a lot of blue and yellow ripstop banners from IKEA from their 50th anniversary 1993: they were hanging all around in the shop. We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap got the banners under promise not to use the logo, but since the bottom part had this beautiful written number I could not resist using it when the right time came.

The train is of course 50 kites long. We got banners with 30 and 60 cm width; just less than 50 of 30 cm width, so I had to fill up the last three positions with Della Portas of 60 cm width.

The kite has been re-used at other’s anniversary, like in Thailand and for Sarawak. Unfortunately, in Singapore the train was cut and half the train went to sea. I scrapped the rest and kept only two cells.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

I wanted to see how much of a light-wind kite the Ronbus could be, so I checked my stock of Icarex: I had two colours that would suffice; grey and yellow.

With P90 Skyshark tubes this Ronbus is a real good light-wind kite!

My good friend Ron Spaulding is always flying a big white diamond kite when there is very little wind. Over time he makes improvements, and recently he changed to single point with a bent spine, but was not quite happy with the location of the towing point. I asked him if I could tweak the kite, and he kindly gave me the permission.

                                             Ron with his diamond kite

Ron had got the plan from Peter Rieleit years ago and already tweaked it a bit: Peter Rieleit night fly diamond 2010

I did the things I know work: kick-up front and in-sail dihedral. And it worked beautifully! A soaring kite for really light winds.

And since the geometric name of this shape of a diamond is Rhombus I gave my version the name Ronbus

(It could also be called Double Diamond.)

 

The train has a dancing movement in the air and a friend called the movement “shimmy”. There was a dance in in the 1920s that was called Shimmy; the dance was often considered to be obscene and was frequently banned from dance halls during the 1920s:

Check at YouTube: The Shimmy.  The video will open in a new tab.

Anyway,  I found this to be a good name for the train: Nyoman Shimmy.

However, there was one problem: The line kept getting cut, entirely by itself (or by the kite). Even a kevlar line would be cut!

It took quite a while before I got around to make a complete train: I had the ripstop but lacked material for spars.

A year and a half later I had what I needed: ripstop in five colors and the fiberglass rods.

However, when I cut out the ripstop I cut too much. I had planned to make 60 kites but had cut out for 80 so run short of fiberglass in the end.

With five colours and using different colour for top and bottom there would be 20 colour combinations. Now, a challenge was to organize the order of the kites on the train so the same colour did not appear in any two neighboring kites, not even when joining two segments of 20 kites.

The first Nyoman train, made of IKEA ripstop and bamboo.

On July 26, 2016 I had an old friend, actually my first Balinese friend, visiting me at Draknästet: pak Nyoman Adnyana whom I met already on my first trip to Indonesia in 1995.

In the evening, after he had left, I felt like having a go with a recent idea: A tail-free, single point diamond kite with a straight cross spar and that you can put in a train. To have it tail-free and with a straight cross spar (i.e. no bend or dihedral) implies there was a need for an in-sail dihedral.

The first attempt wouldn’t fly at all, but already the second design was very promising, and before I went to bed I had flown the first kite in complete darkness at a wind speed of 6 m/s. To honour my visitor earlier in the day I decided to call it Nyoman [Nee-oh-man].

The first Nyoman, #5 of the prototypes.

How to make the in-sail dihedral:

I kept testing and tuning to find the optimal sizes and balancing point, sometimes with help of neighbour kids.

Emborg is a second butterfly from Denmark. It is meta-butterfly in that there are two butterflies depicted on it!

New Zealand Anchor, 10g

The Anchor butter from New Zealand comes in many variations: Salted 7 g, Salted 10 g, Salted Chinese and even Unsalted.

Australian Liv, 10 g

Second out was the slightly heavier Australian Liv.

First Butterfly out is the slightly salted Danish Lurpak, 7g

The Butterfly is a kite which I am a bit surprised that no-one has made before. It is an obvious pun! The small butter containers you get on aeroplanes and restaurants: just make the lid fly and there is a Butterfly!

                                     Note that there is a genuine butter-fly in the picture 

I had had the idea for many years, but it it wasn’t until a trip to China where I found the quality bamboo in the correct dimension that I could start making it.

This is what I posted on Facebook in January 2016:

Sometimes I get the feeling that I actually have aquired some understanding and know how to apply it. Today was such a time.

I need a frame for a new project: a rectangular kite, portrait orientation with rounded corners. Single point bridle and preferably a little bit flexible wings.

So starting off from my A-kross frame and with inspiration from Li RuoXin’s small kites I bent some bamboo last night and put it on a trash skin.

I thought the wind of today would not be strong enough (1 – 2 m/s), but lo and behold: the kite took off into the air and flew *steady* on the towing point I had chosen!

Finally I found a frame that when I had made 10 kites, 8 of them would fly directly and at least one more would fly after some tweaking. This was good enough, so I settled for this one.

I call the frame Square Swede, and it has a kick-up front.

And it was time to add the graphic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a discussion on Facebook about the size of a kite and how it should be measured; if tail should be included or not etc.

I decided to make a kite that was an exact measurement, and to make this a challenge it should be single point and, of course, tail free.

The shape should be a small square with a side of 30.48 cm, i.e. a foot.

I  made many experiments using Nylon Paper and different frames in bamboo, and it didn’t take long till I found a frame that worked. However, when I made 10 of the same only 2 of them would fly; that was too low a yield, so I kept on experimenting.

Fly 50 is an A-Kross train I built for my 50th anniversary. I had got hold of a lot of blue and yellow ripstop banners from IKEA from their 50th anniversary 1993: they were hanging all around in the shop. We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap got the banners under promise not to use the logo, but since the bottom part had this beautiful written number I could not resist using it when the right time came.

The train is of course 50 kites long. We got banners with 30 and 60 cm width; just less than 50 of 30 cm width, so I had to fill up the last three positions with Della Portas of 60 cm width.

The kite has been re-used at other’s anniversary, like in Thailand and for Sarawak. Unfortunately, in Singapore the train was cut and half the train went to sea. I scrapped the rest and kept only two cells.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

I wanted to see how much of a light-wind kite the Ronbus could be, so I checked my stock of Icarex: I had two colours that would suffice; grey and yellow.

With P90 Skyshark tubes this Ronbus is a real good light-wind kite!

My good friend Ron Spaulding is always flying a big white diamond kite when there is very little wind. Over time he makes improvements, and recently he changed to single point with a bent spine, but was not quite happy with the location of the towing point. I asked him if I could tweak the kite, and he kindly gave me the permission.

                                             Ron with his diamond kite

Ron had got the plan from Peter Rieleit years ago and already tweaked it a bit: Peter Rieleit night fly diamond 2010

I did the things I know work: kick-up front and in-sail dihedral. And it worked beautifully! A soaring kite for really light winds.

And since the geometric name of this shape of a diamond is Rhombus I gave my version the name Ronbus

(It could also be called Double Diamond.)

 

The train has a dancing movement in the air and a friend called the movement “shimmy”. There was a dance in in the 1920s that was called Shimmy; the dance was often considered to be obscene and was frequently banned from dance halls during the 1920s:

Check at YouTube: The Shimmy.  The video will open in a new tab.

Anyway,  I found this to be a good name for the train: Nyoman Shimmy.

However, there was one problem: The line kept getting cut, entirely by itself (or by the kite). Even a kevlar line would be cut!

It took quite a while before I got around to make a complete train: I had the ripstop but lacked material for spars.

A year and a half later I had what I needed: ripstop in five colors and the fiberglass rods.

However, when I cut out the ripstop I cut too much. I had planned to make 60 kites but had cut out for 80 so run short of fiberglass in the end.

With five colours and using different colour for top and bottom there would be 20 colour combinations. Now, a challenge was to organize the order of the kites on the train so the same colour did not appear in any two neighboring kites, not even when joining two segments of 20 kites.

The first Nyoman train, made of IKEA ripstop and bamboo.

On July 26, 2016 I had an old friend, actually my first Balinese friend, visiting me at Draknästet: pak Nyoman Adnyana whom I met already on my first trip to Indonesia in 1995.

In the evening, after he had left, I felt like having a go with a recent idea: A tail-free, single point diamond kite with a straight cross spar and that you can put in a train. To have it tail-free and with a straight cross spar (i.e. no bend or dihedral) implies there was a need for an in-sail dihedral.

The first attempt wouldn’t fly at all, but already the second design was very promising, and before I went to bed I had flown the first kite in complete darkness at a wind speed of 6 m/s. To honour my visitor earlier in the day I decided to call it Nyoman [Nee-oh-man].

The first Nyoman, #5 of the prototypes.

How to make the in-sail dihedral:

I kept testing and tuning to find the optimal sizes and balancing point, sometimes with help of neighbour kids.

Emborg is a second butterfly from Denmark. It is meta-butterfly in that there are two butterflies depicted on it!

New Zealand Anchor, 10g

The Anchor butter from New Zealand comes in many variations: Salted 7 g, Salted 10 g, Salted Chinese and even Unsalted.

Australian Liv, 10 g

Second out was the slightly heavier Australian Liv.

First Butterfly out is the slightly salted Danish Lurpak, 7g

The Butterfly is a kite which I am a bit surprised that no-one has made before. It is an obvious pun! The small butter containers you get on aeroplanes and restaurants: just make the lid fly and there is a Butterfly!

                                     Note that there is a genuine butter-fly in the picture 

I had had the idea for many years, but it it wasn’t until a trip to China where I found the quality bamboo in the correct dimension that I could start making it.

This is what I posted on Facebook in January 2016:

Sometimes I get the feeling that I actually have aquired some understanding and know how to apply it. Today was such a time.

I need a frame for a new project: a rectangular kite, portrait orientation with rounded corners. Single point bridle and preferably a little bit flexible wings.

So starting off from my A-kross frame and with inspiration from Li RuoXin’s small kites I bent some bamboo last night and put it on a trash skin.

I thought the wind of today would not be strong enough (1 – 2 m/s), but lo and behold: the kite took off into the air and flew *steady* on the towing point I had chosen!

Finally I found a frame that when I had made 10 kites, 8 of them would fly directly and at least one more would fly after some tweaking. This was good enough, so I settled for this one.

I call the frame Square Swede, and it has a kick-up front.

And it was time to add the graphic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a discussion on Facebook about the size of a kite and how it should be measured; if tail should be included or not etc.

I decided to make a kite that was an exact measurement, and to make this a challenge it should be single point and, of course, tail free.

The shape should be a small square with a side of 30.48 cm, i.e. a foot.

I  made many experiments using Nylon Paper and different frames in bamboo, and it didn’t take long till I found a frame that worked. However, when I made 10 of the same only 2 of them would fly; that was too low a yield, so I kept on experimenting.

Fly 50 is an A-Kross train I built for my 50th anniversary. I had got hold of a lot of blue and yellow ripstop banners from IKEA from their 50th anniversary 1993: they were hanging all around in the shop. We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap got the banners under promise not to use the logo, but since the bottom part had this beautiful written number I could not resist using it when the right time came.

The train is of course 50 kites long. We got banners with 30 and 60 cm width; just less than 50 of 30 cm width, so I had to fill up the last three positions with Della Portas of 60 cm width.

The kite has been re-used at other’s anniversary, like in Thailand and for Sarawak. Unfortunately, in Singapore the train was cut and half the train went to sea. I scrapped the rest and kept only two cells.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

Already in my second year of kite making I started to experiment with a single point wing. (I had this crush on single point and high aspect ratio quite early in my kite life). I had made one wing of IKEA bamboo and some porous material for garden use that did fly, but dived once in a while.

I had this idea of a self stabilizing wing, so I thought I knew how the wings should be made but I realized that I had not the skill to do that.

The sail ‘battens’ must be in fixed angles, both horizontally and sideways, and I thought that the only way to achieve this would be to drill through the spreader tube with a high precision. Which I knew I couldn’t do.

Furthermore I could not figure out how to make the centre section. Not until Henrik Fristrup Jensen showed me his wing kite in a hotel room in Beichuan, China, in March 2017.

Somehow I managed to find a drawing (on paper) of the wing shape I had in mind in 1993, worked with it a bit and started making the kite. I did the drilling that I thought I couldn’t do, and sure enough: the precision was not high!

Working ad hoc I made many mistakes and it didn’t turn out the way I wanted so I was doubtful that it would fly, but nevertheless I tested it and it actually flew! Not perfectly, but on a good angle and certainly well enough to prove that my original idea was correct. A good start for prototype 2.

 

I wanted to see how much of a light-wind kite the Ronbus could be, so I checked my stock of Icarex: I had two colours that would suffice; grey and yellow.

With P90 Skyshark tubes this Ronbus is a real good light-wind kite!

My good friend Ron Spaulding is always flying a big white diamond kite when there is very little wind. Over time he makes improvements, and recently he changed to single point with a bent spine, but was not quite happy with the location of the towing point. I asked him if I could tweak the kite, and he kindly gave me the permission.

                                             Ron with his diamond kite

Ron had got the plan from Peter Rieleit years ago and already tweaked it a bit: Peter Rieleit night fly diamond 2010

I did the things I know work: kick-up front and in-sail dihedral. And it worked beautifully! A soaring kite for really light winds.

And since the geometric name of this shape of a diamond is Rhombus I gave my version the name Ronbus

(It could also be called Double Diamond.)

 

The train has a dancing movement in the air and a friend called the movement “shimmy”. There was a dance in in the 1920s that was called Shimmy; the dance was often considered to be obscene and was frequently banned from dance halls during the 1920s:

Check at YouTube: The Shimmy.  The video will open in a new tab.

Anyway,  I found this to be a good name for the train: Nyoman Shimmy.

However, there was one problem: The line kept getting cut, entirely by itself (or by the kite). Even a kevlar line would be cut!

It took quite a while before I got around to make a complete train: I had the ripstop but lacked material for spars.

A year and a half later I had what I needed: ripstop in five colors and the fiberglass rods.

However, when I cut out the ripstop I cut too much. I had planned to make 60 kites but had cut out for 80 so run short of fiberglass in the end.

With five colours and using different colour for top and bottom there would be 20 colour combinations. Now, a challenge was to organize the order of the kites on the train so the same colour did not appear in any two neighboring kites, not even when joining two segments of 20 kites.

The first Nyoman train, made of IKEA ripstop and bamboo.

On July 26, 2016 I had an old friend, actually my first Balinese friend, visiting me at Draknästet: pak Nyoman Adnyana whom I met already on my first trip to Indonesia in 1995.

In the evening, after he had left, I felt like having a go with a recent idea: A tail-free, single point diamond kite with a straight cross spar and that you can put in a train. To have it tail-free and with a straight cross spar (i.e. no bend or dihedral) implies there was a need for an in-sail dihedral.

The first attempt wouldn’t fly at all, but already the second design was very promising, and before I went to bed I had flown the first kite in complete darkness at a wind speed of 6 m/s. To honour my visitor earlier in the day I decided to call it Nyoman [Nee-oh-man].

The first Nyoman, #5 of the prototypes.

How to make the in-sail dihedral:

I kept testing and tuning to find the optimal sizes and balancing point, sometimes with help of neighbour kids.

Emborg is a second butterfly from Denmark. It is meta-butterfly in that there are two butterflies depicted on it!

New Zealand Anchor, 10g

The Anchor butter from New Zealand comes in many variations: Salted 7 g, Salted 10 g, Salted Chinese and even Unsalted.

Australian Liv, 10 g

Second out was the slightly heavier Australian Liv.

First Butterfly out is the slightly salted Danish Lurpak, 7g

The Butterfly is a kite which I am a bit surprised that no-one has made before. It is an obvious pun! The small butter containers you get on aeroplanes and restaurants: just make the lid fly and there is a Butterfly!

                                     Note that there is a genuine butter-fly in the picture 

I had had the idea for many years, but it it wasn’t until a trip to China where I found the quality bamboo in the correct dimension that I could start making it.

This is what I posted on Facebook in January 2016:

Sometimes I get the feeling that I actually have aquired some understanding and know how to apply it. Today was such a time.

I need a frame for a new project: a rectangular kite, portrait orientation with rounded corners. Single point bridle and preferably a little bit flexible wings.

So starting off from my A-kross frame and with inspiration from Li RuoXin’s small kites I bent some bamboo last night and put it on a trash skin.

I thought the wind of today would not be strong enough (1 – 2 m/s), but lo and behold: the kite took off into the air and flew *steady* on the towing point I had chosen!

Finally I found a frame that when I had made 10 kites, 8 of them would fly directly and at least one more would fly after some tweaking. This was good enough, so I settled for this one.

I call the frame Square Swede, and it has a kick-up front.

And it was time to add the graphic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a discussion on Facebook about the size of a kite and how it should be measured; if tail should be included or not etc.

I decided to make a kite that was an exact measurement, and to make this a challenge it should be single point and, of course, tail free.

The shape should be a small square with a side of 30.48 cm, i.e. a foot.

I  made many experiments using Nylon Paper and different frames in bamboo, and it didn’t take long till I found a frame that worked. However, when I made 10 of the same only 2 of them would fly; that was too low a yield, so I kept on experimenting.

Fly 50 is an A-Kross train I built for my 50th anniversary. I had got hold of a lot of blue and yellow ripstop banners from IKEA from their 50th anniversary 1993: they were hanging all around in the shop. We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap got the banners under promise not to use the logo, but since the bottom part had this beautiful written number I could not resist using it when the right time came.

The train is of course 50 kites long. We got banners with 30 and 60 cm width; just less than 50 of 30 cm width, so I had to fill up the last three positions with Della Portas of 60 cm width.

The kite has been re-used at other’s anniversary, like in Thailand and for Sarawak. Unfortunately, in Singapore the train was cut and half the train went to sea. I scrapped the rest and kept only two cells.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

I had finished the first prototype late one evening: it was already dark, but there was a light breeze on my beach and I was anxious to see if this kite really could fly.

And it did! Not perfectly but well enough for me to tell me my thinking had not been all that bad.

Already in my second year of kite making I started to experiment with a single point wing. (I had this crush on single point and high aspect ratio quite early in my kite life). I had made one wing of IKEA bamboo and some porous material for garden use that did fly, but dived once in a while.

I had this idea of a self stabilizing wing, so I thought I knew how the wings should be made but I realized that I had not the skill to do that.

The sail ‘battens’ must be in fixed angles, both horizontally and sideways, and I thought that the only way to achieve this would be to drill through the spreader tube with a high precision. Which I knew I couldn’t do.

Furthermore I could not figure out how to make the centre section. Not until Henrik Fristrup Jensen showed me his wing kite in a hotel room in Beichuan, China, in March 2017.

Somehow I managed to find a drawing (on paper) of the wing shape I had in mind in 1993, worked with it a bit and started making the kite. I did the drilling that I thought I couldn’t do, and sure enough: the precision was not high!

Working ad hoc I made many mistakes and it didn’t turn out the way I wanted so I was doubtful that it would fly, but nevertheless I tested it and it actually flew! Not perfectly, but on a good angle and certainly well enough to prove that my original idea was correct. A good start for prototype 2.

 

I wanted to see how much of a light-wind kite the Ronbus could be, so I checked my stock of Icarex: I had two colours that would suffice; grey and yellow.

With P90 Skyshark tubes this Ronbus is a real good light-wind kite!

My good friend Ron Spaulding is always flying a big white diamond kite when there is very little wind. Over time he makes improvements, and recently he changed to single point with a bent spine, but was not quite happy with the location of the towing point. I asked him if I could tweak the kite, and he kindly gave me the permission.

                                             Ron with his diamond kite

Ron had got the plan from Peter Rieleit years ago and already tweaked it a bit: Peter Rieleit night fly diamond 2010

I did the things I know work: kick-up front and in-sail dihedral. And it worked beautifully! A soaring kite for really light winds.

And since the geometric name of this shape of a diamond is Rhombus I gave my version the name Ronbus

(It could also be called Double Diamond.)

 

The train has a dancing movement in the air and a friend called the movement “shimmy”. There was a dance in in the 1920s that was called Shimmy; the dance was often considered to be obscene and was frequently banned from dance halls during the 1920s:

Check at YouTube: The Shimmy.  The video will open in a new tab.

Anyway,  I found this to be a good name for the train: Nyoman Shimmy.

However, there was one problem: The line kept getting cut, entirely by itself (or by the kite). Even a kevlar line would be cut!

It took quite a while before I got around to make a complete train: I had the ripstop but lacked material for spars.

A year and a half later I had what I needed: ripstop in five colors and the fiberglass rods.

However, when I cut out the ripstop I cut too much. I had planned to make 60 kites but had cut out for 80 so run short of fiberglass in the end.

With five colours and using different colour for top and bottom there would be 20 colour combinations. Now, a challenge was to organize the order of the kites on the train so the same colour did not appear in any two neighboring kites, not even when joining two segments of 20 kites.

The first Nyoman train, made of IKEA ripstop and bamboo.

On July 26, 2016 I had an old friend, actually my first Balinese friend, visiting me at Draknästet: pak Nyoman Adnyana whom I met already on my first trip to Indonesia in 1995.

In the evening, after he had left, I felt like having a go with a recent idea: A tail-free, single point diamond kite with a straight cross spar and that you can put in a train. To have it tail-free and with a straight cross spar (i.e. no bend or dihedral) implies there was a need for an in-sail dihedral.

The first attempt wouldn’t fly at all, but already the second design was very promising, and before I went to bed I had flown the first kite in complete darkness at a wind speed of 6 m/s. To honour my visitor earlier in the day I decided to call it Nyoman [Nee-oh-man].

The first Nyoman, #5 of the prototypes.

How to make the in-sail dihedral:

I kept testing and tuning to find the optimal sizes and balancing point, sometimes with help of neighbour kids.

Emborg is a second butterfly from Denmark. It is meta-butterfly in that there are two butterflies depicted on it!

New Zealand Anchor, 10g

The Anchor butter from New Zealand comes in many variations: Salted 7 g, Salted 10 g, Salted Chinese and even Unsalted.

Australian Liv, 10 g

Second out was the slightly heavier Australian Liv.

First Butterfly out is the slightly salted Danish Lurpak, 7g

The Butterfly is a kite which I am a bit surprised that no-one has made before. It is an obvious pun! The small butter containers you get on aeroplanes and restaurants: just make the lid fly and there is a Butterfly!

                                     Note that there is a genuine butter-fly in the picture 

I had had the idea for many years, but it it wasn’t until a trip to China where I found the quality bamboo in the correct dimension that I could start making it.

This is what I posted on Facebook in January 2016:

Sometimes I get the feeling that I actually have aquired some understanding and know how to apply it. Today was such a time.

I need a frame for a new project: a rectangular kite, portrait orientation with rounded corners. Single point bridle and preferably a little bit flexible wings.

So starting off from my A-kross frame and with inspiration from Li RuoXin’s small kites I bent some bamboo last night and put it on a trash skin.

I thought the wind of today would not be strong enough (1 – 2 m/s), but lo and behold: the kite took off into the air and flew *steady* on the towing point I had chosen!

Finally I found a frame that when I had made 10 kites, 8 of them would fly directly and at least one more would fly after some tweaking. This was good enough, so I settled for this one.

I call the frame Square Swede, and it has a kick-up front.

And it was time to add the graphic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a discussion on Facebook about the size of a kite and how it should be measured; if tail should be included or not etc.

I decided to make a kite that was an exact measurement, and to make this a challenge it should be single point and, of course, tail free.

The shape should be a small square with a side of 30.48 cm, i.e. a foot.

I  made many experiments using Nylon Paper and different frames in bamboo, and it didn’t take long till I found a frame that worked. However, when I made 10 of the same only 2 of them would fly; that was too low a yield, so I kept on experimenting.

Fly 50 is an A-Kross train I built for my 50th anniversary. I had got hold of a lot of blue and yellow ripstop banners from IKEA from their 50th anniversary 1993: they were hanging all around in the shop. We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap got the banners under promise not to use the logo, but since the bottom part had this beautiful written number I could not resist using it when the right time came.

The train is of course 50 kites long. We got banners with 30 and 60 cm width; just less than 50 of 30 cm width, so I had to fill up the last three positions with Della Portas of 60 cm width.

The kite has been re-used at other’s anniversary, like in Thailand and for Sarawak. Unfortunately, in Singapore the train was cut and half the train went to sea. I scrapped the rest and kept only two cells.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

What I had feared proved to be true: drilling straight through the carbon tube weakened the tube and made it inclined to break. By chance I had an aluminum tube that fitted exactly on Skyshark P300, so I cut that alu-tube in short pieces to use as reinforcement around the drilled holes.

After a full day’s search in Denpasar, Bali, I managed to find a workshop where they said they could drill those holes with the required accuracy.

Well, the accuracy turned out to not be 100%, but a considerable improvement compared to my drilling.

I made prototype 2 which was not too bad, but seemed to need changes to the body shape.

 

 

I had finished the first prototype late one evening: it was already dark, but there was a light breeze on my beach and I was anxious to see if this kite really could fly.

And it did! Not perfectly but well enough for me to tell me my thinking had not been all that bad.

Already in my second year of kite making I started to experiment with a single point wing. (I had this crush on single point and high aspect ratio quite early in my kite life). I had made one wing of IKEA bamboo and some porous material for garden use that did fly, but dived once in a while.

I had this idea of a self stabilizing wing, so I thought I knew how the wings should be made but I realized that I had not the skill to do that.

The sail ‘battens’ must be in fixed angles, both horizontally and sideways, and I thought that the only way to achieve this would be to drill through the spreader tube with a high precision. Which I knew I couldn’t do.

Furthermore I could not figure out how to make the centre section. Not until Henrik Fristrup Jensen showed me his wing kite in a hotel room in Beichuan, China, in March 2017.

Somehow I managed to find a drawing (on paper) of the wing shape I had in mind in 1993, worked with it a bit and started making the kite. I did the drilling that I thought I couldn’t do, and sure enough: the precision was not high!

Working ad hoc I made many mistakes and it didn’t turn out the way I wanted so I was doubtful that it would fly, but nevertheless I tested it and it actually flew! Not perfectly, but on a good angle and certainly well enough to prove that my original idea was correct. A good start for prototype 2.

 

I wanted to see how much of a light-wind kite the Ronbus could be, so I checked my stock of Icarex: I had two colours that would suffice; grey and yellow.

With P90 Skyshark tubes this Ronbus is a real good light-wind kite!

My good friend Ron Spaulding is always flying a big white diamond kite when there is very little wind. Over time he makes improvements, and recently he changed to single point with a bent spine, but was not quite happy with the location of the towing point. I asked him if I could tweak the kite, and he kindly gave me the permission.

                                             Ron with his diamond kite

Ron had got the plan from Peter Rieleit years ago and already tweaked it a bit: Peter Rieleit night fly diamond 2010

I did the things I know work: kick-up front and in-sail dihedral. And it worked beautifully! A soaring kite for really light winds.

And since the geometric name of this shape of a diamond is Rhombus I gave my version the name Ronbus

(It could also be called Double Diamond.)

 

The train has a dancing movement in the air and a friend called the movement “shimmy”. There was a dance in in the 1920s that was called Shimmy; the dance was often considered to be obscene and was frequently banned from dance halls during the 1920s:

Check at YouTube: The Shimmy.  The video will open in a new tab.

Anyway,  I found this to be a good name for the train: Nyoman Shimmy.

However, there was one problem: The line kept getting cut, entirely by itself (or by the kite). Even a kevlar line would be cut!

It took quite a while before I got around to make a complete train: I had the ripstop but lacked material for spars.

A year and a half later I had what I needed: ripstop in five colors and the fiberglass rods.

However, when I cut out the ripstop I cut too much. I had planned to make 60 kites but had cut out for 80 so run short of fiberglass in the end.

With five colours and using different colour for top and bottom there would be 20 colour combinations. Now, a challenge was to organize the order of the kites on the train so the same colour did not appear in any two neighboring kites, not even when joining two segments of 20 kites.

The first Nyoman train, made of IKEA ripstop and bamboo.

On July 26, 2016 I had an old friend, actually my first Balinese friend, visiting me at Draknästet: pak Nyoman Adnyana whom I met already on my first trip to Indonesia in 1995.

In the evening, after he had left, I felt like having a go with a recent idea: A tail-free, single point diamond kite with a straight cross spar and that you can put in a train. To have it tail-free and with a straight cross spar (i.e. no bend or dihedral) implies there was a need for an in-sail dihedral.

The first attempt wouldn’t fly at all, but already the second design was very promising, and before I went to bed I had flown the first kite in complete darkness at a wind speed of 6 m/s. To honour my visitor earlier in the day I decided to call it Nyoman [Nee-oh-man].

The first Nyoman, #5 of the prototypes.

How to make the in-sail dihedral:

I kept testing and tuning to find the optimal sizes and balancing point, sometimes with help of neighbour kids.

Emborg is a second butterfly from Denmark. It is meta-butterfly in that there are two butterflies depicted on it!

New Zealand Anchor, 10g

The Anchor butter from New Zealand comes in many variations: Salted 7 g, Salted 10 g, Salted Chinese and even Unsalted.

Australian Liv, 10 g

Second out was the slightly heavier Australian Liv.

First Butterfly out is the slightly salted Danish Lurpak, 7g

The Butterfly is a kite which I am a bit surprised that no-one has made before. It is an obvious pun! The small butter containers you get on aeroplanes and restaurants: just make the lid fly and there is a Butterfly!

                                     Note that there is a genuine butter-fly in the picture 

I had had the idea for many years, but it it wasn’t until a trip to China where I found the quality bamboo in the correct dimension that I could start making it.

This is what I posted on Facebook in January 2016:

Sometimes I get the feeling that I actually have aquired some understanding and know how to apply it. Today was such a time.

I need a frame for a new project: a rectangular kite, portrait orientation with rounded corners. Single point bridle and preferably a little bit flexible wings.

So starting off from my A-kross frame and with inspiration from Li RuoXin’s small kites I bent some bamboo last night and put it on a trash skin.

I thought the wind of today would not be strong enough (1 – 2 m/s), but lo and behold: the kite took off into the air and flew *steady* on the towing point I had chosen!

Finally I found a frame that when I had made 10 kites, 8 of them would fly directly and at least one more would fly after some tweaking. This was good enough, so I settled for this one.

I call the frame Square Swede, and it has a kick-up front.

And it was time to add the graphic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a discussion on Facebook about the size of a kite and how it should be measured; if tail should be included or not etc.

I decided to make a kite that was an exact measurement, and to make this a challenge it should be single point and, of course, tail free.

The shape should be a small square with a side of 30.48 cm, i.e. a foot.

I  made many experiments using Nylon Paper and different frames in bamboo, and it didn’t take long till I found a frame that worked. However, when I made 10 of the same only 2 of them would fly; that was too low a yield, so I kept on experimenting.

Fly 50 is an A-Kross train I built for my 50th anniversary. I had got hold of a lot of blue and yellow ripstop banners from IKEA from their 50th anniversary 1993: they were hanging all around in the shop. We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap got the banners under promise not to use the logo, but since the bottom part had this beautiful written number I could not resist using it when the right time came.

The train is of course 50 kites long. We got banners with 30 and 60 cm width; just less than 50 of 30 cm width, so I had to fill up the last three positions with Della Portas of 60 cm width.

The kite has been re-used at other’s anniversary, like in Thailand and for Sarawak. Unfortunately, in Singapore the train was cut and half the train went to sea. I scrapped the rest and kept only two cells.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

Prototype 3 flew so well so I decided it was time to give a name. I gave the kite the name akka (with a lower case initial a not to disturb the balance) like the wild leader goose in The Wonderful Adventures of Nils Holgersson.

What I had feared proved to be true: drilling straight through the carbon tube weakened the tube and made it inclined to break. By chance I had an aluminum tube that fitted exactly on Skyshark P300, so I cut that alu-tube in short pieces to use as reinforcement around the drilled holes.

After a full day’s search in Denpasar, Bali, I managed to find a workshop where they said they could drill those holes with the required accuracy.

Well, the accuracy turned out to not be 100%, but a considerable improvement compared to my drilling.

I made prototype 2 which was not too bad, but seemed to need changes to the body shape.

 

 

I had finished the first prototype late one evening: it was already dark, but there was a light breeze on my beach and I was anxious to see if this kite really could fly.

And it did! Not perfectly but well enough for me to tell me my thinking had not been all that bad.

Already in my second year of kite making I started to experiment with a single point wing. (I had this crush on single point and high aspect ratio quite early in my kite life). I had made one wing of IKEA bamboo and some porous material for garden use that did fly, but dived once in a while.

I had this idea of a self stabilizing wing, so I thought I knew how the wings should be made but I realized that I had not the skill to do that.

The sail ‘battens’ must be in fixed angles, both horizontally and sideways, and I thought that the only way to achieve this would be to drill through the spreader tube with a high precision. Which I knew I couldn’t do.

Furthermore I could not figure out how to make the centre section. Not until Henrik Fristrup Jensen showed me his wing kite in a hotel room in Beichuan, China, in March 2017.

Somehow I managed to find a drawing (on paper) of the wing shape I had in mind in 1993, worked with it a bit and started making the kite. I did the drilling that I thought I couldn’t do, and sure enough: the precision was not high!

Working ad hoc I made many mistakes and it didn’t turn out the way I wanted so I was doubtful that it would fly, but nevertheless I tested it and it actually flew! Not perfectly, but on a good angle and certainly well enough to prove that my original idea was correct. A good start for prototype 2.

 

I wanted to see how much of a light-wind kite the Ronbus could be, so I checked my stock of Icarex: I had two colours that would suffice; grey and yellow.

With P90 Skyshark tubes this Ronbus is a real good light-wind kite!

My good friend Ron Spaulding is always flying a big white diamond kite when there is very little wind. Over time he makes improvements, and recently he changed to single point with a bent spine, but was not quite happy with the location of the towing point. I asked him if I could tweak the kite, and he kindly gave me the permission.

                                             Ron with his diamond kite

Ron had got the plan from Peter Rieleit years ago and already tweaked it a bit: Peter Rieleit night fly diamond 2010

I did the things I know work: kick-up front and in-sail dihedral. And it worked beautifully! A soaring kite for really light winds.

And since the geometric name of this shape of a diamond is Rhombus I gave my version the name Ronbus

(It could also be called Double Diamond.)

 

The train has a dancing movement in the air and a friend called the movement “shimmy”. There was a dance in in the 1920s that was called Shimmy; the dance was often considered to be obscene and was frequently banned from dance halls during the 1920s:

Check at YouTube: The Shimmy.  The video will open in a new tab.

Anyway,  I found this to be a good name for the train: Nyoman Shimmy.

However, there was one problem: The line kept getting cut, entirely by itself (or by the kite). Even a kevlar line would be cut!

It took quite a while before I got around to make a complete train: I had the ripstop but lacked material for spars.

A year and a half later I had what I needed: ripstop in five colors and the fiberglass rods.

However, when I cut out the ripstop I cut too much. I had planned to make 60 kites but had cut out for 80 so run short of fiberglass in the end.

With five colours and using different colour for top and bottom there would be 20 colour combinations. Now, a challenge was to organize the order of the kites on the train so the same colour did not appear in any two neighboring kites, not even when joining two segments of 20 kites.

The first Nyoman train, made of IKEA ripstop and bamboo.

On July 26, 2016 I had an old friend, actually my first Balinese friend, visiting me at Draknästet: pak Nyoman Adnyana whom I met already on my first trip to Indonesia in 1995.

In the evening, after he had left, I felt like having a go with a recent idea: A tail-free, single point diamond kite with a straight cross spar and that you can put in a train. To have it tail-free and with a straight cross spar (i.e. no bend or dihedral) implies there was a need for an in-sail dihedral.

The first attempt wouldn’t fly at all, but already the second design was very promising, and before I went to bed I had flown the first kite in complete darkness at a wind speed of 6 m/s. To honour my visitor earlier in the day I decided to call it Nyoman [Nee-oh-man].

The first Nyoman, #5 of the prototypes.

How to make the in-sail dihedral:

I kept testing and tuning to find the optimal sizes and balancing point, sometimes with help of neighbour kids.

Emborg is a second butterfly from Denmark. It is meta-butterfly in that there are two butterflies depicted on it!

New Zealand Anchor, 10g

The Anchor butter from New Zealand comes in many variations: Salted 7 g, Salted 10 g, Salted Chinese and even Unsalted.

Australian Liv, 10 g

Second out was the slightly heavier Australian Liv.

First Butterfly out is the slightly salted Danish Lurpak, 7g

The Butterfly is a kite which I am a bit surprised that no-one has made before. It is an obvious pun! The small butter containers you get on aeroplanes and restaurants: just make the lid fly and there is a Butterfly!

                                     Note that there is a genuine butter-fly in the picture 

I had had the idea for many years, but it it wasn’t until a trip to China where I found the quality bamboo in the correct dimension that I could start making it.

This is what I posted on Facebook in January 2016:

Sometimes I get the feeling that I actually have aquired some understanding and know how to apply it. Today was such a time.

I need a frame for a new project: a rectangular kite, portrait orientation with rounded corners. Single point bridle and preferably a little bit flexible wings.

So starting off from my A-kross frame and with inspiration from Li RuoXin’s small kites I bent some bamboo last night and put it on a trash skin.

I thought the wind of today would not be strong enough (1 – 2 m/s), but lo and behold: the kite took off into the air and flew *steady* on the towing point I had chosen!

Finally I found a frame that when I had made 10 kites, 8 of them would fly directly and at least one more would fly after some tweaking. This was good enough, so I settled for this one.

I call the frame Square Swede, and it has a kick-up front.

And it was time to add the graphic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a discussion on Facebook about the size of a kite and how it should be measured; if tail should be included or not etc.

I decided to make a kite that was an exact measurement, and to make this a challenge it should be single point and, of course, tail free.

The shape should be a small square with a side of 30.48 cm, i.e. a foot.

I  made many experiments using Nylon Paper and different frames in bamboo, and it didn’t take long till I found a frame that worked. However, when I made 10 of the same only 2 of them would fly; that was too low a yield, so I kept on experimenting.

Fly 50 is an A-Kross train I built for my 50th anniversary. I had got hold of a lot of blue and yellow ripstop banners from IKEA from their 50th anniversary 1993: they were hanging all around in the shop. We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap got the banners under promise not to use the logo, but since the bottom part had this beautiful written number I could not resist using it when the right time came.

The train is of course 50 kites long. We got banners with 30 and 60 cm width; just less than 50 of 30 cm width, so I had to fill up the last three positions with Della Portas of 60 cm width.

The kite has been re-used at other’s anniversary, like in Thailand and for Sarawak. Unfortunately, in Singapore the train was cut and half the train went to sea. I scrapped the rest and kept only two cells.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.

The flight of akka (c) was quite good, but still needed tuning. For the next edition I had the workshop drilling again, but the accuracy was less this time so I needed an alternative.

Fortunately, good friend offered to make the necessary connectors in 3D print, and that is the current status.

Flight of akka (d)

 

Prototype 3 flew so well so I decided it was time to give a name. I gave the kite the name akka (with a lower case initial a not to disturb the balance) like the wild leader goose in The Wonderful Adventures of Nils Holgersson.

What I had feared proved to be true: drilling straight through the carbon tube weakened the tube and made it inclined to break. By chance I had an aluminum tube that fitted exactly on Skyshark P300, so I cut that alu-tube in short pieces to use as reinforcement around the drilled holes.

After a full day’s search in Denpasar, Bali, I managed to find a workshop where they said they could drill those holes with the required accuracy.

Well, the accuracy turned out to not be 100%, but a considerable improvement compared to my drilling.

I made prototype 2 which was not too bad, but seemed to need changes to the body shape.

 

 

I had finished the first prototype late one evening: it was already dark, but there was a light breeze on my beach and I was anxious to see if this kite really could fly.

And it did! Not perfectly but well enough for me to tell me my thinking had not been all that bad.

Already in my second year of kite making I started to experiment with a single point wing. (I had this crush on single point and high aspect ratio quite early in my kite life). I had made one wing of IKEA bamboo and some porous material for garden use that did fly, but dived once in a while.

I had this idea of a self stabilizing wing, so I thought I knew how the wings should be made but I realized that I had not the skill to do that.

The sail ‘battens’ must be in fixed angles, both horizontally and sideways, and I thought that the only way to achieve this would be to drill through the spreader tube with a high precision. Which I knew I couldn’t do.

Furthermore I could not figure out how to make the centre section. Not until Henrik Fristrup Jensen showed me his wing kite in a hotel room in Beichuan, China, in March 2017.

Somehow I managed to find a drawing (on paper) of the wing shape I had in mind in 1993, worked with it a bit and started making the kite. I did the drilling that I thought I couldn’t do, and sure enough: the precision was not high!

Working ad hoc I made many mistakes and it didn’t turn out the way I wanted so I was doubtful that it would fly, but nevertheless I tested it and it actually flew! Not perfectly, but on a good angle and certainly well enough to prove that my original idea was correct. A good start for prototype 2.

 

I wanted to see how much of a light-wind kite the Ronbus could be, so I checked my stock of Icarex: I had two colours that would suffice; grey and yellow.

With P90 Skyshark tubes this Ronbus is a real good light-wind kite!

My good friend Ron Spaulding is always flying a big white diamond kite when there is very little wind. Over time he makes improvements, and recently he changed to single point with a bent spine, but was not quite happy with the location of the towing point. I asked him if I could tweak the kite, and he kindly gave me the permission.

                                             Ron with his diamond kite

Ron had got the plan from Peter Rieleit years ago and already tweaked it a bit: Peter Rieleit night fly diamond 2010

I did the things I know work: kick-up front and in-sail dihedral. And it worked beautifully! A soaring kite for really light winds.

And since the geometric name of this shape of a diamond is Rhombus I gave my version the name Ronbus

(It could also be called Double Diamond.)

 

The train has a dancing movement in the air and a friend called the movement “shimmy”. There was a dance in in the 1920s that was called Shimmy; the dance was often considered to be obscene and was frequently banned from dance halls during the 1920s:

Check at YouTube: The Shimmy.  The video will open in a new tab.

Anyway,  I found this to be a good name for the train: Nyoman Shimmy.

However, there was one problem: The line kept getting cut, entirely by itself (or by the kite). Even a kevlar line would be cut!

It took quite a while before I got around to make a complete train: I had the ripstop but lacked material for spars.

A year and a half later I had what I needed: ripstop in five colors and the fiberglass rods.

However, when I cut out the ripstop I cut too much. I had planned to make 60 kites but had cut out for 80 so run short of fiberglass in the end.

With five colours and using different colour for top and bottom there would be 20 colour combinations. Now, a challenge was to organize the order of the kites on the train so the same colour did not appear in any two neighboring kites, not even when joining two segments of 20 kites.

The first Nyoman train, made of IKEA ripstop and bamboo.

On July 26, 2016 I had an old friend, actually my first Balinese friend, visiting me at Draknästet: pak Nyoman Adnyana whom I met already on my first trip to Indonesia in 1995.

In the evening, after he had left, I felt like having a go with a recent idea: A tail-free, single point diamond kite with a straight cross spar and that you can put in a train. To have it tail-free and with a straight cross spar (i.e. no bend or dihedral) implies there was a need for an in-sail dihedral.

The first attempt wouldn’t fly at all, but already the second design was very promising, and before I went to bed I had flown the first kite in complete darkness at a wind speed of 6 m/s. To honour my visitor earlier in the day I decided to call it Nyoman [Nee-oh-man].

The first Nyoman, #5 of the prototypes.

How to make the in-sail dihedral:

I kept testing and tuning to find the optimal sizes and balancing point, sometimes with help of neighbour kids.

Emborg is a second butterfly from Denmark. It is meta-butterfly in that there are two butterflies depicted on it!

New Zealand Anchor, 10g

The Anchor butter from New Zealand comes in many variations: Salted 7 g, Salted 10 g, Salted Chinese and even Unsalted.

Australian Liv, 10 g

Second out was the slightly heavier Australian Liv.

First Butterfly out is the slightly salted Danish Lurpak, 7g

The Butterfly is a kite which I am a bit surprised that no-one has made before. It is an obvious pun! The small butter containers you get on aeroplanes and restaurants: just make the lid fly and there is a Butterfly!

                                     Note that there is a genuine butter-fly in the picture 

I had had the idea for many years, but it it wasn’t until a trip to China where I found the quality bamboo in the correct dimension that I could start making it.

This is what I posted on Facebook in January 2016:

Sometimes I get the feeling that I actually have aquired some understanding and know how to apply it. Today was such a time.

I need a frame for a new project: a rectangular kite, portrait orientation with rounded corners. Single point bridle and preferably a little bit flexible wings.

So starting off from my A-kross frame and with inspiration from Li RuoXin’s small kites I bent some bamboo last night and put it on a trash skin.

I thought the wind of today would not be strong enough (1 – 2 m/s), but lo and behold: the kite took off into the air and flew *steady* on the towing point I had chosen!

Finally I found a frame that when I had made 10 kites, 8 of them would fly directly and at least one more would fly after some tweaking. This was good enough, so I settled for this one.

I call the frame Square Swede, and it has a kick-up front.

And it was time to add the graphic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a discussion on Facebook about the size of a kite and how it should be measured; if tail should be included or not etc.

I decided to make a kite that was an exact measurement, and to make this a challenge it should be single point and, of course, tail free.

The shape should be a small square with a side of 30.48 cm, i.e. a foot.

I  made many experiments using Nylon Paper and different frames in bamboo, and it didn’t take long till I found a frame that worked. However, when I made 10 of the same only 2 of them would fly; that was too low a yield, so I kept on experimenting.

Fly 50 is an A-Kross train I built for my 50th anniversary. I had got hold of a lot of blue and yellow ripstop banners from IKEA from their 50th anniversary 1993: they were hanging all around in the shop. We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap got the banners under promise not to use the logo, but since the bottom part had this beautiful written number I could not resist using it when the right time came.

The train is of course 50 kites long. We got banners with 30 and 60 cm width; just less than 50 of 30 cm width, so I had to fill up the last three positions with Della Portas of 60 cm width.

The kite has been re-used at other’s anniversary, like in Thailand and for Sarawak. Unfortunately, in Singapore the train was cut and half the train went to sea. I scrapped the rest and kept only two cells.

Red Train

A-Kross frame train with red celluloid.

In order to make the edges less prone to tear I put adhesive tape along the edges.

 

Coleur X

In Dieppe 1996 the theme for the kite competition was Colour and Transparency. 

I made an A-Kross train of clear celluloid and with the bamboo frames painted in different colors: the colours of the rainbow; I think five by five.

The judges were not impressed (they had another interpretation of  ‘transparency’ and probably didn’t notice the colouring scheme), although the editor of  the French kite magazine Kite Passion was: he published the plan for it in Autumn 1997.

The building plan can be found here: http://windman.se/kite-plans/

Picture from local newspaper Västmanlands Läns Tidning.

Tails abundance!

With an intricate bridle system and extended tails half of the train (39 cards) was test flewn on a local kite festival before going to Cervia.

This is what I managed to simplify into the A-Kross frame system: A  train of rectangular kites on a single line and without tails. I felt quite proud.

The Tarot Train

We in Sala Drak & Tangosällskap built this Della Porta train of Tarot card images painted on Tyvek.

Photo courtesy of Mats Wikman

Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of my own of this kite. This picture is from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda, same paper that provided the placards.

The A-Kross Frame Train

My very first original design, made two years after I became a kite addict.

In 1992, before I had even touched a kite in my life, I was invited by Sala Drak & Tangosällskap (a group of friends from my small hometown) to join them to Cervia. I thought -Why not? As preparation we built a train of a deck of Tarot cards. The cells were Della Porta and we got a recommendation from a Danish “kite expert” on how to bridle: Apart from the two top lines going from top corner to top corner there should be two lines from the centre of each kite going to the top corners of the kite in front. At the Cervia beach we could not make it fly: each launch trial under the burning sun resulted in a mess of long tails and bridle lines that took half an hour the clear up. Only after borrowing a strong lifter kite we got the train up.

On my way back home I was contemplating on this; there must be a more simple way to make a train of rectangular kites: just one line and no tails.

In 1994 I successfully designed the A-Kross frame and used actual placards from the local newspaper Sala Allehanda as sail. This kite won the Gold Medal at Drakfesten på Gärdet (the kite festival in Stockholm organized by Konstfack Art School) the same year, and this prize is still my most treasured prize.

A very nice memory is from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, 1995. I was flying the SA train when a grey haired Japanese gentleman came up to me and said: “Your kite looks like mine but yours have no tail!” That was legendary Eiji Ohasi and we became good friends.