KiteRacer

Bob, You were probably referring to Brian Ivkovich from our team. I appreciate your skepticism, Mr. Moore. We used two 11" Celestron telescopes for our observations. They still work well for spotting 100m asteroids 200,000 miles from Earth so we had no issues following the train during the flight at medium magnifications. Wind speed,heading, and temperature aloft were monitored from NOAA and FAA data every 2 hours up to 30K feet.Wind speeds varied from 18-25 mph at 5K feet to 40-55 mph at 30K feet.During the flight we experienced small wind shears of 10-20 degrees at the various altitudes, generally on a heading of 090 degrees, which added to the challenge of tracking the train. The Gayla Giant Bat kite displayed at our high school was number 1 at the top of the train. The sail material experienced some wind damage along the edges, but the frame and sail panel bonding held up fine.Good luck on your attempt. Bob, I still fly kites recreationally. Great relaxation and a spiritual experience for me. I'm flying Kitty Hawk and Premier products mostly now, delta designs (still my favorite and some parafoil shapes as well). Hope all is well. Regards, Steve Lyman

Hi Bob. This is Steve Lyman. I was part of the team of Gary, Indiana high school students that set the Guinness record for kite flying altitude in 1969. The record was set using a train of 19 Gayla kites of various wingspans (3-5 feet) on several weights of Shakespeare monofilament fishing line. Gayla Industries (Houston, TX) and Shakespeare Sporting Goods Company (Columbia, SC) provided the kites and line while we manufactured our own winch and brake system to handle the factory aluminum spools of fishing line (2,000-4,000 yards per spool depending on line test weight). The record, hardly unsubstantiated, was witnessed by the local TV reporter from NBC in Chicago and a newspaper reporter from the Gary Post-Tribune. Our observations and calculations were verified by a certified mathematics teacher and submitted to the Guinness Record people (I have a copy of the 1974 edition which credits our attempt). We had to use telescopic triangulation with walkie talkie communication and a US Navy sextant between the two observation sites along the catenary plane, backed up by elastic catenary calculation (half of an inverse hyperbolic cosine function) using the total length of line deployed (verified by recording the length of line of each spool fully deployed and recording the mass of the line on the remaining partially deployed spool using precision balance scales) to calculate the final position of our top kite since there was no GPS in those days. To achieve the altitude of 35,531 feet, 56,457 feet of line was deployed during the final record attempt which lasted over 7 hours. We calculated a combined line elasticity of 7%, a very conservative elongation value for monofilament fishing line. We used a range of fishing line weights from 20-50 lb test. We had to receive written permission from the FAA ATC center in Chicago to make the attempt. From early test flights, we determined a single kite of manageable size could not beat the record held since 1919 by German meteorologists (using large box kites). We finally went with Gayla as their delta wing kites demonstrated consistently the ability to fly at high angles of attack, making the most efficient use of the line deployed (and reducing line weight). We emulated the successful German record technique of joining kites in a train to support the line weight and provide greater total system lift. Over the years, the students on our team went on with their lives and we did not notice that Guinness had removed our record from print at some point. Perhaps we should look into this with Guinness. As a footnote, several of the kites from the record attempt were eventually returned to us from places over 100 miles from our launch location and put on display in our trophy case at Wirt High School.