KITE-BUILDING WITHOUT A SEWING MACHINE

My Dunton-Taylor tunnel delta pulling line in a very gentle breeze February 9, 2021

This little "blog" is most of all a little memory bank for myself. Here I'm going to store good memories and tricks of the kite-building hobby that I have learned by trial and error, but even more by reading a lot of great books about kite-building and an endless lot of available info available online.

I have recently rediscovered the great joy of drawing. Now paper and pencils have been replaced with an iPad with an Apple pen. With this at hand I love playing around with ideas for new kite designs, test colors, translucency etc. The successful ones of these designs will be shared here on the blog. 

I give these designs away for free. Private or commercial use, I don't really care. Do whatever you will with them. They will be public domain. What is important is that you create and fly a kite.

So one day when my memory starts to fail me and I don't remember how to do a particular thing - or just need to enjoy happy memories.

I suspect it will have more pages on particular tricks than just plain memories, although going back to see how I learned this or that, and look at the pictures of kites from the past, surely will give me lots of happy moments as my photo archive index is already doing (although I've never really finished it).

If you like bird and landscape photography, you're hereby invited to take a look.

Since I'm not building kites the traditional way with ripstop and sewing machines, it is my hope that some of my tricks may be of use to other people starting up to make their own plastic kites.

My two kite building start-ups!

My "not-really-suited-for-kiting" kiting area

My PUBLIC DOMAIN kite designs - in reverse order with latest additions first.

My kite builds - so far... - in reverse order with the latest additions first.

TIPS FOR KITE BUILDING, MY WAY:

My way doesn't mean I have "invented" everything I write about - far from it. I may have re-invented a few things, but most of the stuff is things I've learned in books and online. I may use some techniques in other ways than they originally were intended for. 

You have been warned! ;-)

The worlds simplest and fastest kite to finish?

The easiest way to start: The MBK SLED kite

DAN LEIGH DELTA kite not finished yet.

This post is a work in progress. More kites will be added.

Punta de Sardina Lighthouse

The Punta de Sardina lighthouse is about as far as you can get to the North-West of Gran Canaria (Spain). I visited the place just to be able to say that I've been there. If that is your reason too for being interested in this place, by all means, do go. I doubt that I will ever return.
There is hardly any other reason for going there. There's the lighthouse, some sand and stone covered slopes, some cliffs on the waterfront and not much else. Have a look around in the image below and you will see that I'm right.
The cars there indicate that the locals come there to fish.

Cueva de la Furnía

To get here you have to take the GC-2 in the direction of Gáldar. Take Exit 25, just south of the town of Gáldar. At the first roundabout, drive straight thru and follow GC-202 to Sardina (see map below).
I'm not sure there is any parking nearby. The roads are very narrow.

Garden visitors 2011-2017

This is a chronologic list with photos of all 40 bird species having visited our garden on Kongsgårdmoen (Kongsberg, Norway) since we moved in, August 2011.Every single photo below has been taken in my garden.

The Cuatro Puertas caves

This is a first test of sharing Google Street View images in a better way than the Google Map allows you to do. I will write a proper text about this particular site if this works well.
Before publishing it seems the arrows leading you to the image doesn't always point in the right direction. Sometimes there are more arrows than I intended it to be :-(

The Greenfinch

European Greenfinches (Grønnfink /Carduelis chloris) were among the first birds to visit the feeding station I started in our then new home on Kongsgårdmoen (Kongsberg, Norway) in 2011.
All the photos below were shot in my garden.

Adult male in late afternoon sunlight:

Canon 60D, Sigma 150-500mm - 1/320, f/8, ISO1600, 500mm - June 28, 2012

The Chaffinch

I'll start with a male Common Chaffinch (Bokfink / Fringilla coelebs) in a beautiful nuptial plumage. The photo was taken in Funkelia (Kongsberg, Norway).

Canon 550D, Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 - 1/640, f/5.6, ISO1600, 300mm - June 7, 2011