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Free flight is the art of making very light model planes & flying them. At the moment I manage to fly kites on occasion, no place to fly free flight models :-(. Ahh well. In front of our house whe have a lovely large clear green. Perfect kite flying territory. We've also noticed that if we go out flying a kite ... then others get braver and follow. Yayy. If we ever manage to get a club together it might be fun.

Our kites:

• Stunter - Knoopkite - two lines - bought this while on holiday in Luxembourg after canoeing down a river. While we were waiting - shoeless & damp in the rain for a bus! :) Flown in Holland during some terrible days, with too little wind in the summer usually. Playing with the bridle was educational ... as was trying to fly it in low winds. The wind here in Ireland is much better ... this one zooms around the sky.
• Triplane WWI model kite. Got this in Boston June 1997. flys really well with little wind, inclined to jerk left---right---l;eft---right though. Can build up and get very unstable. (only one line bridle on it at the moment. Poor thing has been bashed a little, ... flown straight into ground at times ... repaired a bit. Last repair Jan 2000. Now displayed on our stairs :) Lovely kite. Can launch with 0 length line at hand and slowly leave out from there.
• Brookite diamond with tail and sled leader for stability. Lovely kite again. I can manage to fly it when the wind is very low. Also in highish winds. Can run around against the wind when the wind is low enough and fly it home. This is Hugh's kite from limerick. Brought it up Nov 1999.
• Fionnuala got a kite for S3 Kris Kindle. Light spars bending back dihedral whaddyacall it for stability. Wide diamond with mouse & .... Poor thing not flown yet. Would be good in light winds I think.
• Brookite mini diamond kite for Christmas 1999 from Fionnuala. flown with too much wind sometimes ... It does really fast anticlockwise circles close to the ground. Looks good with its long tail ... have attached sticks to the tail to slow it down and keep it heading UP. This works really well and the kite dances around the sky. Can parachute the sticks down. More stable in lighter winds .... lost bendy cross spar now but replaces with light stick from garden.
• handy small sled/para that rolls up and stuffs into a baggy and is real easy to fly.
• Big jellyfish rotating drogue yoke. Now I need a bigish kite + wind to attach it to. Fun just holding it in wind. Attached it to stunter a couple of times which is interesting :) stunter attains flight characteristics of a slug.

I did loads of messing and I really like kites but I'm only at the stage of wanting to do more and I hadn't even flown a kite for a whole year a short enough while back. Fionnuala brought some ripstop nylon back from Edinburgh a coupla years back and I used the sewing machine this year so hopefully I'll combine the two and end up with something interesting (and not fingers sewn to table!!!).

For now the rest of this is just a collection of links:

Kites

Power upskiers and other BIG power kites. kitelist Ryans wreckreation powerkiting Power Kite Site o mi look at all those links egroups kitesurf
WOAH! Kite Safety Phil very high

kites & origami polyhedra kite

Richard Nourse kites+stuff in UK poolekites
Kite Fantastic http://www.anti-gravity.demon.co.uk/kites.html windthings Scotland kite club Greens Kites
ODP/ Regional/ UK/ Recreation/ Kites
Regional/ Europe/ Ireland/ Sports/ Outdoors
Recreation/ Outdoors/ Kites/

Anti-Gravity Air Sports and Street Sports Les cerfs-volants Mullin kites Brookite micro

Hkulk of "the Swallows" what is kiting IO kite from advance

?¦ Kite Zoo ?¦ Kite Flyer's Site ?¦ Peter Peters' Kite Site ?¦ Definitive Kite Site ?¦ Micro-Kite ?¦ Japanese Kite collection ?¦ Japanese master | jka | Kite plan list ?¦ Kight Lights ?¦

paper planes, mcshane's planes/ Old Faithful