Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Kite Plans

kiteplans.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 56 posts

Re: Kite Plans

#31

Post by seraphsf »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #4
monk_e_boy wrote: post #2

Henry Hulk, wow, haven't heard that name in years. Nice designs. No kitesurf kites though, probably the most popular kites on the market now? Maybe in the west, not sure about the east.

Don’t forget the middle. There are many excellent spots for flying kites away from the coast. One of my favorite kite shops is out of Boulder, Colorado: Into The Wind[0] I’ve only bought from them once or twice, but I used to spend hours paging through their paper catalog as a kid. I also visited their shop in Boulder as a teen — that was really fun. [0] https://intothewind.com

When I was 10, the Into the Wind catalog lit my imagination in so many ways. It was a fantasy novel crossed with a science book.

A couple years ago I wandered past their store in Boulder and was floored that there was a real, physical incarnation of that magical catalog. I took my little kids there this winter and it was like passing a spark between generations.

Re: Kite Plans

#32

Post by mcguire »

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.

Kite photography is still used at some archaeological sites for aerial photographs: some countries, particularly in the Middle East, are wary of people using drones with cameras.

One of the lectures on YouTube from the Oriental Institute had beautiful pictures of early (Old Kingdom?) Egyptian military and trading sites on the Nile in southern Egypt or possibly northern Sudan, and described the problems they had and why they used kites.

Re: Kite Plans

#33

Post by TaylorAlexander »

pushpop wrote: post #26
kingnothing wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That’s how my sites are run. No ads, no tracking. I put free 3D printed robot designs up as well as my personal writing. I do all of that stuff because I want to and I want others to have it. Ads are gross.

So I don’t know why you’ve gotten downvoted, but your comment rings true for me.

Re: Kite Plans

#34

Post by chadmaughan »

dylan604 wrote: post #25
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 "st…

I also had a lot of fun KAPing before drones. Stabilization was handled fairly easy with a Picavet (or Pendulum) suspension system. Neat and low tech.

More details here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kite_aerial_photography#Pica...

Re: Kite Plans

#35

Post by trillic »

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

I’ve a feeling that upwind performance would be lackluster. A modern Bermuda rig can be highly performant at all points of sail in a variety of conditions.

Re: Kite Plans

#36

Post by chadmaughan »

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.

Agreed. We got around this by hacking the single use CVS/Rite Aid cameras according to the below guide. Dropping one of these in the water or on some rocks didn't feel quite so devastating.

https://makezine.com/2008/02/29/how-to-cvs-video-camera-h/

Re: Kite Plans

#37

Post by TACIXAT »

I was thinking recently that kites could make great signaling mechanisms for backpackers. It would be relatively light in your pack and can get a location noticed if you got lost. I'll have to dig through this site for simple designs that are easy to keep up in the air.

Re: Kite Plans

#39

Post by simonebrunozzi »

trillic wrote: post #35
pacaro wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I’ve a feeling that upwind performance would be lackluster. A modern Bermuda rig can be highly performant at all points of sail in a variety of conditions.

Can you elaborate a bit more on the Bermuda rig? Curious.

Re: Kite Plans

#40

Post by TremendousJudge »

TACIXAT wrote: post #37

I was thinking recently that kites could make great signaling mechanisms for backpackers. It would be relatively light in your pack and can get a location noticed if you got lost. I'll have to dig through this site for simple designs that are easy to keep up in the air.

Sounds useful but in limited situations -- open fields (so no forests) and windy but not too windy
Post reply on HN