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About this blog

Bringing my kite builds up to date with a bit of history on each kite.

Entries in this blog

Mesh #6 Video

@Bill Clay was nice enough today to fly my mesh while I got a bit of video..Thank You Bill..  

riffclown

riffclown

Diamonds in the Sky

First Flight at the  Rogallo Festival, Nags Head NC for Touch of Blue, Scrapestry and Purple Fade... Winds less than 5MPH

riffclown

riffclown

Closing the book on 2018 kites.

I don't have pictures of them all but 26 kites were finished in 2018. No kites from tails this year. all from either RSN or Icarex. A few meshes and a couple of very unique attempts at doing something new. I'm not counting the one I considered failures that became flags. I'm blogging it here to keep from blasting out the gallery.. You seen probably most of these pictures before.  

riffclown

riffclown

Crazy Quilt.

Going off of the look of the Scrapestry, I decided to use the new batch of scraps to do an all color kite.. Some of the scraps were neutral White and Charcoal but I based the placement on the size of the scraps and not the color.  Crazy Quilt has begun..

riffclown

riffclown

Diamonds, the final cut

The Diamonds kite was finished this morning.. Final touches, bridles and framing are all done.. Ready for a test flight when conditions allow..

riffclown

riffclown

Tools of the Trade

I've been asked about what I use to do particular things for kite making.  Thought it'd be a good opportunity to share a quick overview of pretty much everything I use.  Some are more obvious than others. My kite making tools.. I use a sewing machine (obviously) 2 - 6' Long Metal rulers 2 - 3' Long Metal Rulers 1 - 18" Ruler (metal) 1 - 12" Ruler (metal) A Fiskars Rotary cutter. A Paper Cutter (Office Style) The normal assortment of Scissors (Including a heavy duty pair for

riffclown

riffclown

A silent solstice bridle check

Finished my latest Diamond Mesh Mashup and wanted to give it a good bridle check. Winds less then 5MPH and kite designed for 3-4 times that so was indeed a challenge.  Hopefully winds tomorrow will support a bit of video.. Pleased with the kite so far..

riffclown

riffclown

The Hive is Complete

This commissioned sail has been completed and is ready for initial flight tests.. this one is as close to an exact 1.5 size as I could make it and still be faithful to the diamonds techniquen. I don't usually make an exact 1.5 size and the sail isn't as tight as one would expect but a simple glide test was surprising. Bungees are left long for the moment to allow a bit of tweaking if required. This sail has the wear strips, LE Tabs, fold relief and is set up to allow French bridles and magic sti

riffclown

riffclown

Digging in the bag

So I came to a rude awakening yesterday.. Despite my best attempts, it's really hard to get all my framed quads in an easy configuration for travel.. Part of this is because I don't know how to leave ANYTHING behind..  Given that I've made a bunch of kites since my last outing to OBX, I decided to make a dig bag. I came up with a 11"x11"x44" pumpkin of a bag after visiting Joann's Fabrics this morning.. I picked up some Orange duck cloth and zippers that all combined with a tiedown strp I had ha

riffclown

riffclown

FS#9 Purple Time

So I ended up downsizing the purple to a 72" LE due to a pucker in the fabric I couldn't overcome. I'm calling this FS#9 considering the Stack should probably be considered FS #4,5,6,7 & 8..

riffclown

riffclown

Gray III

Completed Gray III today and gave it a quick bridle check.. Due to the gustiness outside, I used very short lines and flew in the swirl of the building.

riffclown

riffclown

The Pattern Emerges

Just a short <90 second clip to share how I get to see the Diamonds pattern emerge from a striped sail each time. This is when I get to truly see the stage I call the "mock up" and is the first real indicator of how the final kite will appear.. Until this point the pattern is truly just in my head.   The Layout from the initial stripes isn't a mockup. it allows me to see the color mix but not the actual placement of segments. This difference is far more prevalent whe

riffclown

riffclown

Wright and what's left

Looks like first flight for my new kites is going to have to be altered.. I won't be able to make the Wright festival this year after all.. Hopefully I'll get out for a few minutes to my regular flying field.. If so I'll try to  fly'em and get some footage there. Sometimes Life Happens  

riffclown

riffclown

Playing with Composite images

Lately I've been playing with pulling stills out of video and overlaying the frames to have a still image "show" motion.. Thought I'd share the efforts. Some of these you have seen. Some are new but from older footage.  

riffclown

riffclown

Playing With Perspective

Since the new year, I've turned my attention to materials other than tails.. Nothing wrong with the tails constructions but I wanted a new perspective.. and that perspective was perspective.. Angled shapes started out as a lazy harlequin pattern in complimentary colors. Because of the pattern it became the Jester. This was my first run at edge joining materials that were not already hemmed.   The Jester followed by a vanishing point perspective in dissimilar materials.  

riffclown

riffclown

Kite Quilt

While this will never actually be made (I DON'T Have the skills to replicate the pattern like this.) I have started sewing the scraps together to make anpanel I can use fer anything from a kite to a kite bag.. I decided to flip and mirror i into a 9 panel layout just to mock up what it WOULD look like.

riffclown

riffclown

Rogallo 2021 in the bag

It was an incredible Weekend With The RAF, WoW crew and Kitty Hawk Kites. The Rogallo festival this year had WIND, Kites, Sun, WIND, a few Sprinkles, WIND and did I mention WIND!!! Thank You @Nags Head Flyer for pulling together some World Class flier to make this a Rogallo to remember. Other Forum Members that I saw come by are @Ejay @John P @Tim P.  

riffclown

riffclown in Sponsored Event

FS#10 Yellow

This one is a bit differently sized than my typical builds.. It is a 83.5" Leading Edge. Midway between the 1.5 and 2.0 sizes.. This will either be my new night kite or the middle kite in a future progressive stack. Temporary bridles at the moment since I've never tied bridles this size. ZERO wind but still started with a toss, followed by a ground catch..  

riffclown

riffclown

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