Well today the wind was about 30 Km/H gusting to 40 km/h and I foolishly decided to try and fly my double star… woooo hoooo what a ride.

The first challenge was putting the kite together on a soggy field with howling wind and -10c temps. That didn’t stop us though. I hadn’t bridled the kite yet so I did that in the field as well, very cold fingers after that :).

It was a little too cold to adjust all of the tips so I decided to give it a go anyway.. and it Flew… It launched with the roar of a jet plane and was stapled to the sky. When the wind would shift it would sweep a little but nothing a little slack in the line didn’t fix. Very happy!!!!

What a great feeling…

The wind was really blowing hard and I had visions of the 10 mm Carbon rods snapping like twigs…Lot’s of pull on this kite. So I handed the kite off to my friend, and walked the kite down.

Here are is a photo taken by my friend Ian. The sky is grey today but I brightened the photo up the best I could..

Finally the Double Star is complete. I finished off the last of the bottom section late this evening. This kite is really impressive when it’s fully assembled, a full 10 foot diameter!. I haven’t adjusted the tip tension much but it seems that the MKS fittings from Kitebuilder.com will work out fine.

Here are the first pictures of the kite completely assembled. I have to add the bridle and it will be ready to fly! :)

More photos here..

–Bill

I have now attached the “D” Panels to the first half of the Double Star. I reinforced the tips with 3″ of Dacron and then used gross-grain tabs for the tension line attachment points. Read the rest of this entry »

After a 1 month hiatus due to work (I can’t beleive how much work interferes with valuable kite building time, geeesshhh :P) I got back to working on my double star… Read the rest of this entry »

The Double Star is going well, assembling the “A” panels to form the tunnel for the center spar was a bit of a challenge. When I build the second half of the kite I am sure I will do a better job. Read the rest of this entry »

A really hot kite came up on the kitebuilder.com forums back in March of 2004. The kite is called the double star built by Ferruh Baysu. The kite is about 10 feet across and about 5 feet tall. Read the rest of this entry »