MKF 30th Anniversary Flowtail Delta

(or - Kite making - Anyone can do it!)

As a Midlands Kite Flyers member as well as a KKF member, I had no plans to ever get involved in making kites. Lets face it I had only been a MKF member for a year and had only just joined the KKF. We were just getting in to the enjoyment one can get from "throwing a bit of ripstop in the air" However that all changed when the winter08 issue of the MKF magazine hit the hall floor. On opening the magazine I found plans for the MKF 30th Anniversary Flowtail. It was a wonderfully striking design and with a Spirit of Air Flowtail delta in my kite bag to refer to I decided to have a go.

Barbara, my wife, said that she would like one, "if you ever get around to making one that is", and Steve, my brother, was similarly impressed. So we decide that I would organise the purchase of enough material to make three 2 metre Flowtail deltas and we would set about making them to fly sometime around Easter.

Being our first kite making project we had no idea where to look for the bits and pieces we needed so I attacked the internet. Google threw up all kinds of interesting places but would they have what we needed? I turned to the MKF forum, looking through the anniversary kite thread I found a link to Alan Poxton's anniversary kite illustrated tutorial - it all looks so easy! (this article was to prove invaluable later). On the same thread someone posted that Keith at Chalkies (Kiteworks) had some material so he was duly contacted and had not only the red white & blue coated ripstop I needed but also some blue & red uncoated ripstop that would be ideal for the tails. An order was placed and we waited eagerly for the package to arrive.

What did we need for spars? The debate then started, Carbon or glassfibre? Everyone I asked had different ideas. Alan Poxton had used Carbon for his prototype (Bill & Matt would definitely use carbon) but when I checked out the price it seemed expensive. I looked at the Flowtail in my kite bag. It appeared to be sparred with 6mm black glassfibre rod so it was decided to follow suit. After all if the Spirit of Air flowtail flys well using it then surely the anniversary kite will do the same. Back to the internet. As a prototype engineer I had some suppliers who stocked glassfibre rod and settled on an outfit called All Propped Up who sold 6mm glassfibre in 5metre lengths at reasonable cost so another order was placed (don’t forget I was buying for 3 x 2 metre kites).

I set about scaling up the plans and drawing the various kite sail panels onto the back of an old A1 sized desk diary. Then followed my first mistake I cut out the panel templates completely forgetting any seam allowance. How much material to allow? I settled on a 10mm overlap between panels and a 25mm allowance for the spar pockets along the leading edge and the same for attaching the tails. Looking at two kites that I own, one that I have been flying regularly for the past 20 years and the Spirit flowtail it appeared that neither had any fancy seams between panels just hot cut ripstop panels overlapped and zig-zag stitched (not apparently glued). So I cut some strips of paper the correct widths and taped them to the edges of my paper templates. This actually helped as later when cutting out the ripstop I was able to mark both the outside edge of the panel (used as a guide when fitting the panels together) and the outside of the seam allowance (the line to cut to!).

Hot cutting the ripstop was the next problem to solve. Various internet articles suggested lots of different ways of doing this some more technical and expensive than others. Being the eternal cheapskate I decide to practice with a modified soldering iron. I sharpened the tip to a flat knife edge and plugged it in. Once up to temperature laying the paper template on top of the ripstop I transferred the outline to the nylon. Then using a metre long steel rule as a straight edge my first panel was hot cut with no problems. As long as you remember that you have a hot soldering iron that will melt most things that it touches (and burn fingers!!! I know from experience) it is an easier process than I feared. The biggest problem was finding a board large enough to cut on to, I settled for a piece of melamine coated chipboard (Contiboard) that had come from my sons old cabin bed, approx 5' x 4 ' it was just large enough and wasn’t to marked by the hot iron. In order to cut down on possible mistakes when manouvering a large piece of ripstop I cut the panels approx 2 inches oversize then with pieces of material that were more easy to work with cut them to size. It also allowed me to give my brother the oversized panels to allow him the fun of hot cutting so his kite could progress in tandem with ours.

With all the panels cut we were well on schedule for completion by Easter….. Until life managed to get in the way. As the spring arrived and the weather improved we wanted to fly kites rather than make them, then the holidays arrived swiftly followed by visits to grand children, bouts of 'flu etc. etc. and before we knew it the year was slipping away. We missed our Easter deadline and the kites sat on the back burner for a while.

Then my wife Barbara sprang into action dusted off the sewing machine and decided that enough was enough the kites just had to be finished. I was on coffee duty for the next few evenings as the master seamstress leapt into action. We consulted Alan Poxton's excellent step by step tutorial that proved a great help, although we didn’t do everything the way he did. Following a few late nights (Estimated 10 hours sewing per kite - mainly the tails) the first kite was finished just in time to take to the sky at the KKF One Sky One World fly-in on 11th October. The bridle position and length had been copied from the Spirit of Air flowtail and the kite flew with no adjustments needed! It stayed in the air all afternoon until the wind dropped and the rain set in.

Barbara's kite, our second, followed and was ready for its first outing just one week later. On a nice very breezy day at Hythe, Kent it also flew straight out of the box with no problems.

Steve in the meantime had become somewhat bogged down with the third kite. Having been ahead of me with one half sewn together before I started mine he found himself behind, somewhat undecided quite how to solve the leading edge spar pockets and attachment of the tails. So Barbara and I were invited for a Chinese takeaway one Friday evening to help out. We took one of our completed kites along and had a great evening discussing how we had solved the problems and suggesting alternative ways of finishing Steve's kite. The following day I received a text message to say that kite was finished ready for a fly on the Sunday. Unfortunately someone forgot to switch on the wind and the maiden flight had to wait until the next weekend.

Finally on 8th November we had all three flowtails in the air together and flying in formation! Bearing in mind they had been put together by different people they all looked extremely similar in the air. So much so that one KKF member thought that they must have been commercially available and asked where he could buy one. Praise indeed!

The technical bit for those interested.

The individual panels were overlapped by 10mm and zig-zag sewn no other fixing was used. For the centre seam the two sail halves were laid face to face on top of each other and pinned in place. The centre seam was sewn with straight stitching. The sails were opened out and the seam folded to one side and sewn again. I know that this made the seam one sided but once the centre spar is in place you dont notice it and it flys fine. The spar pockets were made by folding over the seam allowance and straight stitching the seam leaving a pocket for the spar (not forgetting to leave a gap towards the bottom to allow the spar to slide in!) The location for the leading edge connector was marked prior to sewing the pocket and two straight cuts made in the seam allowance with the hot cutter. This allowed a short section of the spar pocket to lie below the spar allowing a rubber Leading Edge connector to be fitted. The centre spar is retained in a pocket at the nose made from several layers of ripstop, it fits into a ripstop pocket at the tail end and is retained by velcro. We decided that we didn’t need a full length spar pocket as the bridles come through hot cut holes in the sail (reinforced by 4 layers of ripstop) and effectively tie the centre spar to the sail so it wont move during flight. Fitting the tails was the biggest problem resolved by putting the tails on top of the kite sail face to face facing forward and pinning them in place. The seam allowance was then folded in and the tails sewn to the kite. Once all three tails were attached they were folded back the correct way and sewn again. Quite a bit of concentration needed here as so much material is involved. It would have been easier to attach the tails using Velcro (or hook & loop as it is called nowadays) but my seamstress insisted on properly sewn seams.  The location points & length for the bridle was copied directly from my Spirit of Air Flowtail the sail reinforced by multiple layers of ripstop where the bridle goes through. My only variation was to use a pigtail attached to the bridle with a prussik knot instead of a tied loop for the tow point.

Cost (for three 2metre flowtail delta kites)

Ripstop (coated & uncoated)                                                             £ 44.50

Spars (15metres of 6mm glassfibre rod)                                          £ 24.15

Extras (endcaps, LE connectors, tape, cotton etc)                          £ 10.45

Total                                                                                                      £ 79.10

Cost per kite (not including labour!)                                                   £ 26.37 (rounded up)

So not to expensive really and I have about 2 metres of 6mm glasfibre rod left and enough red & white ripstop for my next project a 1.2 metre "Invicta" Rokkaku. More about that when its finished.

Undecided about kite building? Go for it! Rest assured you can do it because if I can make one then anyone with a modicum of sense can. It's really not as hard as it looks especially if you have a wife with sewing skills! Was it worth the effort? Definitely! (despite the KKF members rude comments about Midlands Kites!)

Mike

And then there was "Undefeated"