Member Profiles
Tell us about yourself
Introducing myself
Hello,
I've just gotten into KAP recently. I've been lurking the old forums for a little while and figured now would be a good time to join since the forums were migrated. Some of you may recognize some of the pictures below from the KAP group on Facebook.
Now, a little bit about me and how I got into KAP. I had a kind of unusual (I think?) journey. When I was a kid, my grandfather was very much into kites, model airplanes, and lots of other things. I used to fly kites with him when I was very young. As I got older, I got more interested in model airplanes. I've designed, built, and flown many myself, and even turned my passion into a career in aerospace engineering.
This year, though, I rediscovered my love of kites, and the potential to lift a camera with decent quality (much better than the tiny FPV camera on my model plane) got me interested in KAP. I started out building dowel-and-plastic kite designs from Tim Parish's website, my-best-kite.com. Then I learned how to use a sewing machine and built this 65-inch Dopero for KAP, scaled up from his 48-inch design and adapted for carbon fiber and ripstop nylon construction.
My KAP rig is also custom-built out of lite ply. It allows rotation in the pitch and yaw axes, which must be set prior to launching, and lifts a small Canon Powershot camera running CHDK. I'm still very new to this but have been getting pretty decent results lately, just going to different local places. Here are a few of my favorites.
(Hopefully I'm inserting those images correctly. I've never used Vanilla forums before. They seem maybe slightly squished when displayed on the forum? Maybe not. It's a little hard to tell. If you click them, you will see the correct aspect ratio.)
Based on some recent struggles with the Dopero in light winds (remember, it's not a full-size Dopero), I decided to build a 2.5 meter barn-door style kite, also adapted from plans on Tim Parish's site. I will post pictures here when I get it finished.
Comments
Welcome!
Great pics and a nice kite! Where are you located (the baseball diamond suggests the USA coast somewhere)?
I'm very impressed that you made a Dopero - I remember the difficulty of making my own Super Dopero based on Ralf Beutnagels' design.
Hi, yes, I'm in Maryland. Making the kite was a great experience. I definitely enjoy the DIY aspect of this hobby. I imagine a super Dopero like yours is a lot more difficult to build. Mine is small in comparison.
The truth is I rarely fly it - it takes a long time to assemble compare with my Super Fled which doesn't need much more wind to lift a light rig.
Welcome !
nice pics, good kite, good intentions....
wish you smooth wind
SMAC from Italy
welcome, montagdude!
cool photos - love the baseball fields one :-)
Thanks for the comments, guys. It's been a lot of fun, but it's not like I need to tell you that. Here is a size comparison I made between my Dopero and the new kite I am working on, with a 6-ft person for reference.
Edit: still don't know if there is a way to ensure images don't appear stretched. If someone does, please let me know. Kind of wish I could quote on here to see how others have done it, since @admin's image doesn't seem to have that problem.
