Well, the virus has caught up with us. The beaches have been shut down. The State Park is closed. There isn’t another good place to fly here. All of the school play fields and the soccer fields are surrounded by buildings and trees. Until I can find another suitable place, I must find an alternative. And that alternative is kite building.
So I have two projects on the table. Although I really don’t need more projects as there are a couple of unfinished projects and about half a dozen repairs already on the table. I guess I just enjoy appliqué over repair and frame construction.
So I’ve got to get the new patterns on paper in the actual size I need. That, in itself, was a project. First I had to get the designs off my computer and onto an SD card. That was easy. Next I had to get them traced onto large sheets of paper. Well, I don’t have paper large enough so I had to piece segments of paper together. After taking a picture down, I taped the paper to the now blank wall.
Then I set up my LED projector, plug in the data card containing the image files, and display them onto the paper. This takes up some time as I’m moving the projector back and forth until the image is displayed the required size. It was quite the balancing act.
Finally I could trace the designs onto the paper. Now I’m ready to cut fabric and plan out the appliqué sequences. Looks like I’ll be on my knees as the plans are bigger than my table. Thank goodness the living room has carpeting and I have a couple large cutting mats.
One of the two projects is an online workshop at the Kitebuilders Forum, http://www.kitebuilder.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=42. It is Project 10.0 – Jumbo Hata.
The other is a older kite style that I found in an old kite book, Kite Flight by Jack Botermans and Alice Weve. It’s called the Russian Giant. This book was published in 1986 and the framing instructions call for dowels. I’m going to try and adapt it to either carbon or fiberglass rods. We’ll see how that goes.
Wish me luck.
Fair Winds All
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