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Down in the dungeon


SHBKF

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It’s not really a kite shop but sort of looks like one.  I call mine the kite dungeon.  There is a troll living under the staircase.  In some of my early visits to kite stores, with broken kites in hand, I noticed they had large tables or counters to lay kites out on as they repaired them.  Later I saw a video of a famous kite builder framing a kite suspended from the ceiling on a cord with a clip on the end.  So I made a four by eight table out of two sheets of plywood screwed together sitting on a couple scrounged bath room vanity cabinets.  As I worked on stacks I started putting up clamps on mason’s twine attached to the ceiling joists.  I believe I have fourteen on sixteen inch centers in a pretty straight line now.  Then I started moving in shelving with boxes for the various parts & nails along the tops of the walls to hang the growing hoard of kites in their sleeves.  Once in a while other hobbies invade the space but the kites eventually chase them out.   Sometimes I wonder if I have as much fun maintaining the kites as I do flying them.  After the recent beach trip I assembled each kite I flew, cleaned it gently & carefully packed it for it’s next adventure.  Yesterday I finished increasing the Micron stack to eight & tonight I will complete the new Rev 1.5 three stack.  Now that’s a power kite.large.now_eight_Microns.jpg.6c339225e3f4large.tails_wrapped_on_tips.jpg.6aee38f2large.Rev_1.5_kites_to_stack.jpg.0da0d47

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You are serious kiter, the dungeon absolutely serious!
With the many kites on display in your dungeon, don't you have any kites diffusing out from the dungeon and entering "normal" living indoor living areas? I've been thinking like this, if you have something that is beautiful, you like and is available and you had something like a party to decorate, why not use some strategically placed kites in the ceiling, above windows and on walls? Or, if the height to the ceiling is high enough, perhaps an arched inner kite ceiling above the dinner table? Or outdoors, a three kite large flower/parasol? No, I haven't done anything like this, mainly due to the boring reason: you typically don't do this. In a way, it shouldn't be so far fetched - for an out door party I've seen a tensioned sail as a party tent/cover before. Also compared to series of out door flags arranged on a string, a set of kites would be more interesting, even for people with very vague idea about kites. Is this hardcore or silly? I'm hardly objective and can't judge, but I know what I would prefer.

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Here's an image I tried to take of all the Revs.  Sort of a kite tunnel.  Spent some time assembling them & then trying to stage the picture.  I then stood on the stairway trying to get the angle right.  The Rev collection has grown a bit since then.  I need to do a new group image.

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Last Christmas I decided to shoot an image with the tree.  This may become a tradition.

large.Solus_UC_UL.jpg

SHBKF

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I appreciate the continued kite display decorations/art of yours. Especially the X-mas kite arrangement, OK the sun-through-the-sail-trick can make a kind of shining kite, but have never thought of doing it in colour (but then Swedish X-mas trees tend to have just white illumination).
A thought I got after a while regarding your eight Microns - they could be used to make a star-like flower cone, slightly less than 2m (78inch) in diameter. Join all, lets say, left wing tips and then join all spines nose to end. ...No, I see a problem here - the front and rear side of the spine wouldn't meet. Instead rotate every second kite so that instead the right wing tip would be in the centre - now the spines should meet. ...No, a new problem - looks like the kite edges would over lap ...could the overlapping be done in a nice looking systematic way...? Perhaps this star/flower thought is not original, after all you had already realised kite decorations, while I just started to think about them.

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