MyBestKiteGuy

Mmm the very first kite was probably a home made effort using twigs (!), heavy plastic and twine to lash together a crude diamond. I made a number of these, which flew at very modest (make that 'poor') line angles. But, I was just a kid and had fun flying them with the help of a fishing reel. Oh yes, the monofilament was probably shockingly heavy as well! Have memories of standing on a dusty outback road (middle of the N.T., Australia) near sunset, with one of these kites struggling to stay airborne way in the distance... As for first shop-bought kite... Must have been the Indian bamboo and tissue diamond I bought in 1974. It lasted until Cyclone Tracy wiped Darwin off the map on Christmas Day! The horizontal spar was curved, but it wasn't a fighter since it was tailed and stable. I remember being extremely impressed with how steeply it flew. A real pleasure at the time, for my 14 year old soul! Still into kite-making after a very long break. Having a lot of fun with ultra-basic materials and techniques, and involving others via the website.

Hi everyone, This post is basically to introduce myself. Single line kites are my thing, hence I hope this sub-forum is the appropriate place to start.. Tim's the name, and after browsing around here there seems to be ample opportunities to share a bit about what I'm doing, and also to hear from others when I need a bit of input. I'm running a website (my-best-kite.com, hence my display name) which is actually pretty broad in scope - the content touches on just about any kind of kite. It documents how my family and I are getting back into kiting after a loooong break - like, since childhood! The site also supplements our family income, but I won't go into that here (it's a kite forum after all). Since starting the site just over a year ago, I re-discovered a passion for making and flying single-liners! That's really the focus of the site now. Currently, on the building side, I'm making and flying flat or bowed kites from bamboo skewers and plastic sheet. Kids' stuff? Not really, since most designs are probably a bit much for any young child to cope with, on their own. Knots, glueing, bowed spars etc. I'm working on completing a series of 8 designs, that is, 8 using single-skewer spars and the same 8 in double-size. That is, using spars that are made from 2 bamboo skewers + a short reinforcer or 2. The idea is to have something for adults who want to make an interesting and decent-performing single line kite - without getting into the whole kite-makers thing with special tools, expensive materials etc! Later, the aim is to move the same 8 designs up into dowel spars of 1m and even 2m lengths. This might actually be of more popular interest, since these kites will look 'normal size' or a bit bigger, to most non-kiters out there. Should be a heap of fun too! My kites aren't 'pretty' but it sure has been interesting exploring the strengths and weaknesses of the various classic designs. Despite their small size (29cm spans) some of the 1-skewer kites achieve very good line angles, particularly when flown on 3kg monofilament! There's plenty of photos, even some video, on http://www.my-best-kite.com That's it from me for now, might pop back a while later with a query or 2... Tim P.