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Sat Sep 30 16:38:39 CEST 2017 GF, forecasted 3-4m/s Fazer XL and XXL stacked on 35m 180kg lines Two 23m (75 ft) prism tube tails To carry stuff After the soon 3 months on QLKing I decided to end that test/project and return to DLKs (and "at the same time" continue with QLKs). During the QLK time I got kind of "transportation spoiled". I only had two kites to carry around: B-series 1.5 std and full vent. The full vent venting holes are patched with removable thin sheets of cellophane attached with (centimeter wide strips of) tape.* Included in the package was two, three and four wrap spars, so these two kites could handle (well could be used by me to practice at least) all the wind conditions that I met during this period. The two quite small QLK kite sleeves were tied together using the strings already on the sleeves (the strings normally used to close the bags i.e.) and hung comfortably over the shoulder and backpack during transport - it wasn't even necessary with a kite bag. Today however the ski bag was the available option to carry the Fazers, the tails and the QLKs and a few line sets. Suddenly a 5.5 kg (12 lb) ski bag was hanging on the shoulder again. * The second iteration of cellophane/tape patching would be to make the tape strips towards the LE somewhat wider. The reason for this is that sometimes I need to press it at the start of the session and possibly one more time to make it stick well. Hopefully the wider tape closer to the LE would improve things. The tape used here is intended for large sheets of polyethene/polyethylene used here because the glue has never left any residues for me. Preparation, making and repair This the first time I pilot a stack or see any stacks of more lines than one. Some info on how I made it can be found in in http://kitelife.com/forum/gallery/image/6234-stack-work-in-progress/ : The stack was made earlier during the summer. The kites themselves have also been resting for more than half a year. Part of the reason has been broken stand offs that had snapped/cracked. The reason why only the Fazer stand offs are the only ones that snap for me is due to the often long line lengths making it difficult to see if a line is wrapped around a wing. You also typically pull harder when starting, meaning that if the line happen to be around the wing the stand off is more likely to break. This Fazer XL stand off was damaged during a start resulting in delamination and snapping fibre (bundles). Could tape keep the fibre bundles together and work as a mold during the repair? Nope, the tape mold approach didn't work out well. The resulting surface was very rough - best seen in the shadow edge. And, I really dislike sanding down glass fibre - itchy, itchy, itchy! The Fazer XXL's stand off was instead repaired using heat shrink tubing. Here the heat shrink tube and epoxy repair had to be split into a two step process, because the cracks were long and the tubing could not be slid over the ends of the standoff. Look closely and you can see that the first step is already finished. No sanding required when heat shrink tubing was used. The pin was not absolutely straight afterwards. Using some kind of a alignment jig would likely have produced a straighter result. To the right you can see the hot air gun used to shrink the tube. The dog in the background might look cute, but is really internally about to explode: "The BALL, the BALL - STUPID!!! Can't you see the BALL stuuupiiid??!!". She might not be of much use when it comes to get work done in outdoors (making you feel bad for not playing with her constantly), but at least fanatically returns any tennis ball shot if you work on your serves in the garden. When playing with (stealing from) the German shepherd she wins by outmaneuvering, even though the German shepherd runs faster when running in straight line on a field. A very never ending playful dog! I decided to try to repair the stand off rods themselves instead of making new ones. I believe that there are several benefits in getting better with epoxy and fibre repairs (or other plastic fibre composites?): if spares/spars break at the wrong time and you don't have spares you have a way out, the feeling "I did this" instead of buying, if your kite ever would require no longer available rods, doing composite repairs could offer a way out. I also consider (/an idea could be) to increase the strength in LE of DLKs just to make it more robust when tip stabbing etc. or if I ever would come to the kite surgery of making a frame lighter. Spars are often uniform throught out the length, while the loads are not. You can have an extra high load in LE connectors or just below the LLE/LS-connector e.g. When it comes to keeping the fibres (somewhat) together, squeezing out excess epoxy, speeding up the curing of the epoxi and minimizing the after work, heat shrink tubing rules and tape "sucks" (to my somewhat limited experience). A requirement is that there is enough room so that you can slide the heat shrink tubing on and it shrinks enough. Tape however is good for masking - covering places where you don't want any epoxy. A common type of heat shrink tubing shrinks to half of its original size (1:2). You can however get hold of (in shops like (Farnell, RS components, ELFA, etc...) sorts that does 1:4 and 1:6 shrinkage at various temperatures. Out on the field The stack. The wind was a bit on the lower side for the somewhat heavy Fazers. I had to work a bit to keep them in the air. After briefly testing the XXL just to verify that I remembered the DLK (Fazer) control well enough (after the DLK pause) I assembled and connected the XL to the XXL. The result was surprising - it just worked out of the box! I didn't feel that it was necessary to do any tweaking. On the other hand one of the to sources of how to do the stack lines was KL so the bridle should be just fine. In the stack the XXL nose was tilted backwards about a centimeter relative to the XL. The stack line connectors on the Fazer XL were prepared for further adjustments, but it didn't seem necessary. The XL had a slight tendency to wobble a bit during most starts, but was quite well behaved otherwise - unless you are "asking for it". Perhaps not so strange oversteer has always been a "hallmark" of the (my?) XL. It is not such a bad thing once I learned to handle it. During windier days I'd say the XL got the temperament of a leaping calf that suddenly can grab you and make you end up three steps downwind. Only one time during this session I was a bit surprised when the stack fell out of the sky after a snap stall. Unless provoked, the kites flew synced, albeit the XL got some oversteer. The main goal of the day was to get the stack working and if it did, try it with the tails. In the a bit low wind and new circumstances I limited the flying to figure flying (how much more than that can you do with a stack b.t.w.?). Only a few times I had the privilege of being dragged by the stack. The most trick like I accomplished was a cart wheel, which demanded a bit more persuasion than usual to work with the stack of different sized kites. Side slides were also possible. Well another thing, but I don't know if you can call it trick-like, was when running quickly backwards to stabilize the stack in the low wind during a start, which caused me to fall backwards like some fall in a Laurel and Hardy movie: Even though I somersaulted backwards on the ground over one of the shoulders it didn't hurt. I guess the pull from the kite limited the speed of the fall. Unfortunately I don't have any photos of the stack in flight. The tails were attached to the bridle of the XXL where the LS meet the LE. Visually it would have given the same effect if the tails were attached to the wingtips of the XL. The perspective I had of the kite almost made it look like one kite except if the XL was oversteering/wobbling. Otherwise the size of the stack, long lines, double tails and slow flight gave it kind of dignified look. The effect of the double tail when doing tight loops was however a bit of a disappointment (slow turns of forward travel looked great though). The inner wing tip and tail hardly moved. Moving the tails inwards to somewhere closer to the stand offs could be one way to make the tight loops look better. Another way to make the loops look better could be to attach one tail to each spine (should at least be interesting to see from the side). Perhaps tight loops with the current position also looks better from the side, but piloting the kite meant that I hadn't that view. The position of the tails can be adjusted to make the tight loops look better. Forward flight looked good (as seen from the pilots view). Future The Fazers are quite robust (heavy). One project I consider (i.e. I like the idea but it is not very likely to be implemented) is to make an extra set lower spreaders to use in lighter winds. The diameter of the current ones are 10 mm for the XL and 12 mm for the XXL. Preferably, if it would be good if it would be possible to get hold of thin walled tubes of the same or larger diameter so that the stiffness of the tubes didn't go down too much. What I really would like to do when I "grow up" as a kiter (if you can ever do that with kites) is learn how to handle my sewing machine well and for some reason get an enormous amount of spare time. Then I'd do a kite based on a truss construction ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truss , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_Bridge ) instead of single spars. A starter project could be weight reduced spreaders for the Fazers. The weight of the Fazer XL spreaders, 1 TS +2 LS, (according to a very old scale) are 190g for the Fazer XL (680g for the whole kite incl. the stack bridle connectors, total weight according to the Fazer XL datasheet is 615g) and the spreaders of the Fazer XXL are 410g (1305g or 46oz for the whole kite including stack lines and end caps, literally "~xxx g" in the Fazer XXL datasheet). A truss shaped spreader could have a smaller cross section area, while the larger total diameter prevents them from flexing out sideways during compressive load. The, still dreaming, project after that would be the all truss and all mylar sail kites. On the other hand (still sticking to large kites) acquiring another large kite (like Topas 3.0 or Hot Stripe XL?) could get the diameter of the spars down and hopefully the kite up more easily in low winds. No I haven't done much research here - sometimes you just want a kite. No I don't think that I'll fly this stack very often. I miss the tricking possibilities to much. My plan is to get somewhat more acquainted with the control and also to see how much wind I can handle. For next years kite festival the stack is a possible contribution, provided I can find a good place with good winds a bit from the centre of the festival and with not to many people around. Although there have been no good multi line kites during at the festival the two last years (which equals to the times I have been there) I like to increase the competitiveness (yes there are a few prices) by always offering something new and most likely put a tail on it. Does this approach have a light scent of crowd-pleasing? During the last festival I handled it in the following way: Before the price ceremony I flew dual DLKs with tails and after the ceremony I did DLK (one kite) tricking to also demonstrate that aspect of kiting as well. If there would be room for the Fazer stack at the next festival I'd say that the odds look good - the bystander interaction today consisted of three chats, while the usual number could be a chat perhaps every third time. When walking of the field after the 4h stacked session it instead felt like after long day of outdoor (garden/house) work. It was early to bed that night. A slight muscle soreness remained for a few days after as a receipt of that kiting can offer good physical exercise.

So i have a custom set of 7 rev ii kites stacked all of them have pink leading edge the stack goes from light pink to black all solid color kites are in a custom bag . Does anyone have any interest there are 7 in the stack . Will post pictures later .

I recently acquired a stack of TRLBY kites that needs a little bit of work. I'm sure much of it is fine, but I'd like to take this opportunity to learn more about stacks anyways so I have a handful of questions to the experienced flyers of stacks. What kind of line should I use to make link-lines? Dacron? What kind of knots (and configuration) should I use for the lines? Clips or not? The TRLBY setup typically uses these paper clip type things to attach the bridle to the spars. Should those be used in stacking setups, or should I make little leaders that I larkshead lines to? What is easiest if I want to be able to change the stack size and/or fly the kite as a single quickly/easily? What weight of line for link-lines for various stack sizes/wind conditions? How long should the link lines be for TRLBY stacks? I've read 18". Anything special about length of the first/last set of link lines? Are all others equal? I think I read somewhere that you want to do something special with the link lines for the last kite, but I don't remember if it was longer altogether, or just one that points the kite a little differently than the rest of the stack. Any good links (preferably with pictures) of a "phantom" and how it works for larger stacks? How large of a stack can I fly without worrying about one? Should I have stronger lines at different points of the stack? I.e. 250# closest the lines, working down to 100# closest to the kite line? I actually have stacking lines that came with the kites, but they're pretty uneven, some had knots pull out, and they use the TRLBY clips, but many are rusty. Does anybody know where to get the paper-clip looking clips, as well as the little key-ring type clips used on TRLBY kites in bulk to make link lines?

Hey Y'all, it's time to let some go. We have twins due in September and not enough house for them and all my hobbies. I guess I'll give priority to the babies. Anyhow, these look like the ones that don't make the cut. Prism Tensor 3.1 has been flown once. Has dye marks on the back of the sail, apparently from the lines, but is 100% functional. $250 SOLD Prism Micron 5 Stack x2) As far as I can tell the sails are identical. One set has ripstop tails, the other has plastic tails. $175 each. $300 for the pair Gomberg Super Sled (Yellow/Black), pennant tail, 2 transition tails, ITW 11' Squid, 200'x200# line and sand anchor, 2 spiral worms. $150 Prism Stylus 2.8) I don't remember if I've ever had this one up in the air. No lines $75 HQ DeltaHawk, I've not flown this DeltaHawk yet. I was planning on stacking it with the other, but it never happened. No lines. $20 shipped with anything from above. Non-Smoking home, prices include CONUS shipping. I can take further pictures of anything that you are interested in and may even have time tonight to spread out them out.

The sails on my Trlby 4 stack have finally reached retirement age. I have plenty of ripstop but I need a pattern for the Trlby sails and I have not been able to get a hold of a ripstop Trlby to copy. In my travels I have collected 8 more frames, including 3 heavy duty main spars. Today, I found 8 more singles online and bought em immediately. I should have everything needed for a 20 kite Trlby stack! I know this thing is going to be under some heavy duty stress so any help on what gauge the kite to kite links should be would be awesome. I have a belt rig made by Kiteman Jack for running big stacks so I just wanna make sure the kite setup is beefy enough. I hope to post updates when I start making the sails.

The B2 stack chat got me craving another multiples creation. So as stated...a Progressive was thrown together. B2 (2 wrap) B (3 wrap) Rev 1 (4 wrap) at around a 4' spread. I test flew on some 50#x50' Shanti Skybond in a light breeze and all felt good... The next day brought on some highly variable wind..up a down..all around.. but it gave me the chance to get some long lines out and let the 3some breathe. I flew 90#lpg x80' for a few. The gust were pretty strong and I have broken 90# several times with stacks. So I switched..200#lpgx100'. Here are the results... Of course the wind dies when you hit record. .. 7 minutes of raw..no editing...just a debut run. Things went well. Rev 1 needs some new shock cord to bring reactions up some...but all in all...great first roll. Progressive Fun:

Hi All, I am interested in Stacking some Indoor Gliders. Particularly the iFlite Vented. I had a quick attempt this morning and found they required constant pressure to keep in line. As soon as I Let them glide out, the front one would tip and get pulled on its side, or flip over. I had a connection from the Back Kites tow point through the front kites vent, and onto the front tow connection point. I would like to hear from other glider stackers, what they have tried and learnt.

A little news clip from Friday. Mr. Boyton stopped in town. Jacksonville, Florida and we did some kiting. Started out geared as a K.A.P. run but the wind was non cooperative....so Rev play indeed This is right next to Everbank Field..Home of the Jaguars...also right on the banks of the St. Johns River... Downtown Jacksonville