BayAreaKiteboarding.com

That's so awesome.

I've wondered about the feasibility and cost of homebrewing any existing kite design. Kites are kinda open source, everything about how they're built is right there in front of your eyes.

NICE!!

Are you using surfplan to do the design and layout?


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Yes, I'm using Surfplan. David Aberdeen was very helpful when I posted a question in the Yahoo user group inflato design. I also found Gigi's posts in kiteforum very helpful as well. Too bad Gigi shut down his web site open source where he used to post files for some of his more common kite designs.

Building C kites is relatively easy as there are a lot of ready made cad files available that has been tested and flown. Not so much with bow kites, designing them, including the bridles, I find a little bit tricky. I will post my cad files and pdf formats as soon as I have a viable version that works and people can actually fly it. If somebody is interested in pitching in and helping me with my projects, it will make things go faster. Please let me know.

I also tried some free physics aeronautics software models that run in Ubuntu, but I find it a little bit cumbersome because of the nerd style command line interface. I do find the required in depth knowledge of differential equation refreshing because it reminded me of college back in the days when we had to solve everything on paper.

With Surfplan, it is relatively easy to duplicate or get close to re-creating kites that are no longer in production.

Procuring parts and sewing them together is totally a different skill set requirement.
The toughest part I found is procuring parts. I still have not found a shop that can sell me ripstop dacron and polyester teijin ripstop. I have to settle for woven nylon dacron and spinnaker nylon ripstop.

MehYam wrote:That's so awesome.
I've wondered about the feasibility and cost of homebrewing any existing kite design. Kites are kinda open source, everything about how they're built is right there in front of your eyes.

Here's a couple of CFD codes that might be interesting:

http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/falcon
http://www.openfoam.com

But getting useful numbers for a kite is much tougher than a fixed wing - the aero forces distort the shape which then effect the aero forces. Someday I hope to mess around with this problem...

Also steering line attachment points a bit further forward perhaps? Or experiment with making them bridled to a V to support the tip segment differently?

Hey RR,

I'd be down to help you if I can. I'm actually pretty solid on a sewing machine among other skills.

Let me know what ya need. Maybe we I can help.




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Cool, I will let you know. Right now, I need to make some changes on the 4 meter kite and see if I can fix the issue that I have. I did feel that the kite is a bit more powerful for its size, so maybe my next build will be a 11 or 12 meter instead of a 13.

I will post the designs for the small kite and a modified design for the 12 meter kite once I have a viable model for you and other people who are interested to check.

Too bad I no longer live in Santa Cruz, collaboration would probably be easier.

sc-surfer wrote:Hey RR,
I'd be down to help you if I can. I'm actually pretty solid on a sewing machine among other skills.
Let me know what ya need. Maybe we I can help.
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Hey Rey,

Did you ever race 'cross. Your name seems familiar like we may have met.

Monte


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I think we may be witnessing the birth of an 11 that pulls like a 13 but depowers like a 9 especially if Monte is getting involved