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Thinking about buiding a Rok?


DTill
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I have 4 yards of blue polyester ripstop from flymart and a yard each of white, black, grey and red texalon from flymart. Started cutting and piecing together some of the texalon, but the weave fibers are very wavy and the fabric has lots of memory. I cut a bunch of hexagons and 60°diamond pieces to do a M.C. Esherish transitions / tumbling blocks pattern out of the texalon. But it seems that the fabric has lots of memory and a kite built this way wouldn't fly worth a damn. Thinking about building a 2m Rok with the polyester as a 6 peice main sail and appliacing the pattern on top with the texalon. Big question is whether I should build in the traditional method of webbing and velcro for pockets or do it quad style and use bungis and caps? I won't  fly this is as fighter, only to lift the 12ft. spiky ball I want to buy.

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Webbing, velcro and pockets work darn well, things stretch, get wet or get deformed in flight, you can yank it back into shape( tighter or loose as needed).  Breaking down is not complicated.

Buttons, placed into the prussik knot slider, make shaping the sail easy

place corner anchor points to affix the bridle (so it could be changed-out quickly, for something lighter or heavier/stronger) just a loop you can larks-head onto each point is sufficient.  Plan for impact, where does it want to break, or "punch thru" those carefully crafted pockets, tear-outs, or high wear areas need to be addressed? 

A friend makes the first new design out of wooden dowels and Fedex envelopes, so he can see and leave the field with examples of the stress points.

Consider a "Cascade bridle" if you want a larger wind range, some legs will be slack and some will be tight, regardless of the angle of attack.  You don't plan to fight (huge weakness, all those legs, what a target they'd make!)

Thread wrap the highest stress areas, (joints and fittings) heck paint the frame white first so it doesn't distract from your graphic plans!

Assume someday you'll add LEDs to backlight the kite and night fly.  Place that reinforcement piece now instead of having to rebuild it later.

Spike Ball could have a strobe inside it, reflecting into the depths of the spin provided.

don't mix fabrics (nylon, Icarex and polyester) and don't forget which side is which during construction, grain, stretch.  Consider a half pattern template with the spine as the fold.

 

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