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Kite Plans

kiteplans.org

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Re: Kite Plans

#21

Post by pacaro »

losvedir wrote: post #20
fouc wrote: post #10

When I think of kites, I always think of my dream of a kiteboat for long term cruising around the world.. purely kite powered, with maybe a small stabilizer sail if necessary.

That's interesting. What would be the advantages of that over an ordinary sailboat?

My understanding is that there are a variety of advantages: the kite flies in cleaner air; the thrust from the kite is applied at one point, with less heeling moment than from a sail; the design of the boat is not constrained by the structural requirement of a mast

IIRC A kite powered boat called Jacobs Ladder held various sailing speed records at one point

Re: Kite Plans

#22

Post by Toadsoup »

jfoutz wrote: post #11
Toadsoup wrote: post #5

Edit: I can accept that kite plans can be on topic for HN. I also don't mean to stifle anyone's curiosity about kites or kite building. I suppose I expected something more akin to "Kite Plans, Experiments, Observations, and Results that SoAndSo ran" or "Specific Kite Plan and Notes" to be linked on HN. If you're new to kites, good news, it's a lot more fun than it should be. --- Original Post: I am confused, why this…

It's neat! > Am I missing something? Yeah. you've been around here for a while, so i suspect you know the answer. But hey, maybe this will help. The first part is the boring answer > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. [1] So anyhow, g…

Thanks, This was a super useful reply.

Re: Kite Plans

#23

Post by paulie_a »

conroydave wrote: post #17

i always feel slightly bad for websites like this that HN brings hugs to death, even though ad supported, its normal users are unable to access their content

Why? It's not like this will be permanent, a few hours probably. And many sites exist without ads. What's there to support? A few dollars a month in fees?

Re: Kite Plans

#24

Post by kingnothing »

paulie_a wrote: post #23
conroydave wrote: post #17

i always feel slightly bad for websites like this that HN brings hugs to death, even though ad supported, its normal users are unable to access their content

Why? It's not like this will be permanent, a few hours probably. And many sites exist without ads. What's there to support? A few dollars a month in fees?

The large effort to actually build and curate the content.

Re: Kite Plans

#25

Post by dylan604 »

minikites wrote: post #15

Before drones were widely available, I attached an inexpensive camera to a kite to take some aerial photographs. I'm a little surprised that wasn't more common, given how popular drones are now.

The stability of that kind of platform is a severely limiting factor. The 3-axis gimbal had a lot to do with making aerial photography a thing as much as the drone itself. I was part of a group where we launched a helium balloon to ~90,000' with 2 GoPros attached. The footage is so unstable in much the same way that I imagine being attached to a kite would be. The weight of the camera is at the end of a length of "string" which essentially makes it a pendulum. It just swings and swings and swings. Oh, and it also spins as it twists up the tension in the string, and then releases to spin back the other way. Just about the time all of the swinging and spinning relaxes, the balloon reaches max altitude and bursts.

Re: Kite Plans

#26

Post by pushpop »

kingnothing wrote: post #24
paulie_a wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? It's not like this will be permanent, a few hours probably. And many sites exist without ads. What's there to support? A few dollars a month in fees?

The large effort to actually build and curate the content.

For personal sites like that, curators often do it for the love of the subject rather than a financial reward. Hence why some personal sites are hosted without any adverts.

Edit: I see I’m getting downvoted a lot for this comment. I appreciate creating content for the love of it might seem like an alien concept to many HNers but not everyone is driven by the motivation of turning every hobby into a start up. In fact once upon a time, in an era before Facebook and Google, the majority of an average persons surfing time was spent on non-commercial personal web sites.

Re: Kite Plans

#27

Post by hahamrfunnyguy »

Kite building is a hobby I've always wanted to get into.A buddy of mine has build a few of the NASA-style Regallo kites. He uses them with his icebuggys. Apparently, they're not too difficult to make and icebuggys are a blast to pilot.

Re: Kite Plans

#28

Post by shaftway »

kijin wrote: post #19
minikites wrote: post #15

Before drones were widely available, I attached an inexpensive camera to a kite to take some aerial photographs. I'm a little surprised that wasn't more common, given how popular drones are now.

Perhaps the limiting factor was the lack of inexpensive cameras, not the lack of drones. There was only a short window of time between when remotely controllable lightweight cameras became cheap enough for people to not worry about crashing them into rocks, on the one hand, and when drones became widely available, on the other.

Not that narrow. I remember in the late 80's / early 90's Estes had a model rocket that would pop a picture (onto film) from the nosecone when the chute charge went off. I have no idea what the quality was like (my parents refused to buy me one).

Re: Kite Plans

#29

Post by moftz »

RobotCaleb wrote: post #7
Toadsoup wrote: post #5

Edit: I can accept that kite plans can be on topic for HN. I also don't mean to stifle anyone's curiosity about kites or kite building. I suppose I expected something more akin to "Kite Plans, Experiments, Observations, and Results that SoAndSo ran" or "Specific Kite Plan and Notes" to be linked on HN. If you're new to kites, good news, it's a lot more fun than it should be. --- Original Post: I am confused, why this…

I'm curious what you consider on-topic.

"Bitcoin Miner Docker Image Written in Rust Running on a Model 3"

Re: Kite Plans

#30

Post by mcguire »

pacaro wrote: post #21
losvedir wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting. What would be the advantages of that over an ordinary sailboat?

My understanding is that there are a variety of advantages: the kite flies in cleaner air; the thrust from the kite is applied at one point, with less heeling moment than from a sail; the design of the boat is not constrained by the structural requirement of a mast IIRC A kite powered boat called Jacobs Ladder held various sailing speed records at one point

Jacob's Ladder: http://www.panduj.plus.com/jladder/jl.htm
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