Because the two of us do have quite a bit of icarex crying out for wind, why not make a few kites?
So we discussed a bit back and forth about designs. Did we want to go for a simple design or a more advanced one, and what colours to use. Anders drew au a few ones and after some discussion we ended up with this one…
Green Purple Yellow Blue Orange Red
As you can see, the center part of the sail (design) will be the same for all kites, a patterns of black, dark grey, light grey and white panels. The outer part of the sail will have dark and light variations of red or blue or yellow or purple or green or orange. (Mine will be in yellow because I’m the yellow pilot! 😉 )
Then Anders started to work on a prototype. First he made the required templates for this design.
And after the templates are done Anders can start cutting the panels accordingly. Anders – being the Blue Pilot – is off course making the prototype using light blue and navy icarex.
Taping together the panels for sewing All taped down
Even though the kite is supposed to be up in the air and the stitching too far away to be visible, it’s a nice touch to focus on the details. Anders is a master kitemaker so all the nitty gritty looks fine!
Details #1 Details #2 Details #3
Now most of the sewing is done and the result looks mighty fine, don’t you think?
Starting to look like a kite! Sewing the mesh …and the LE pocket!
So as you can see from this blog post the prototype is starting to look like a real QLK! As far as I know what missing is to frame and bridle it. Then it’s ready for flying.
So stay tuned for more on the prototyping because I know Anders well. He won’t waste time to get this kite ready to fly and everything will be covered here at AERIALIS Kites!
Update Nov. 21st 2018
Updated Nov. 26th
Yeeehaw! The kite is bridled and ready to fly!
3 Responses
The wing gives a sleek/delicate/narrow impression and looks a bit high aspect ratio than “usual”. Is this just an illusion from the outer LE being concave or is it instead so that the downspars are shorter than (each of the three?) LE spars or is it so that they are angled and not normal to the LE? Adding any anti wear/stretch strips along the downspars?
Looking forward to hear more about the building process and properties of the resulting kite!
I think we have to rely on Anders to answer your questions! 🙂
But AFAIC this is surely a SHARP looking kite! 😀
Ahh, the update of the blog post gave the answer – downspars at an angle it seems.
Another thought, if there would be a semi vent, full vent, etc… would the outer panels be replaced by the mesh or would just some interior part of the outer panels be replaced by the mesh? If they would be fully replaced by mesh, the “kite owner colour coding” would disappear unfortunately (unless it would be the grey panel that would be replaced i.e.).