.
Why did I buy my kite?
I'd always wanted to buy my
own stunt kite to play with, and I'd seen a tempting kite store near
me that looked like it might have some interesting stuff.
One afternoon in ~May 1996 Rob was busy all afternoon distracting Chuck so that he could
get him to Chuck's bachelor party that night, so I was bored, and free
all evening. What better way to waste time than buying and flying a new
stunt kite? So I went over to World Wind Kites,
and shortly thereafter I was the proud owner of a pretty
new kind of quad-line stunt kite called a Synergy Deca 1 (like the purple
one in the picture).
What's a stunt kite?
Well, your regular kite has
just one line, and it just kinda sits there in the sky. If you pull
on the line it will tend to move "forward" (further in the direction
of the front of the kite), but will then fall back to some happy
angle, depending on the stength of the wind and the type of kite.
A dual-line stunt kite has two lines - one attached to the left side of the kite and one attached to the right. The strings are attached to handles that you hold in either hand, and you pull on the handles to direct the kite. If you just stand there with the kite in a normal position and don't move your hands, the kite will reach an equilibrium and hang in place, just like a normal kite. But if you pull one of the handles, the kite will turn and make a wide circle, allowing you to make circles, figure eights, whatever. Pulling on the right string makes the kite turn clockwise, pulling on the left make it turn counterclockwise. The movement is rather like a car - you keep moving forward and turning, and different kites will have different turning radii.
What's different about a quad-line stunt kite?
The
quad-line has four lines, attached to each of the four corners of
the kite. You still hold just two handles, but now each handle has
one string attached to the top, and another string attached to the bottom.
You can still pull your hands as a unit, like on a dual-line, but now you
can also tilt your hands forward or backward (by forward I mean moving
the top string forward). With the kite in a normal position, you can
tilt both handles forward and the kite will go down, or tilt both handles
back and the kite will move up.
The tricky stuff comes when you stop moving the handles in tandem. If you tilt your left hand forward and your right hand back (and do some other tricky things) the kite will rotate counter-clockwise in place. Combine this with being able to move up and down, and you can do much cooler things with the kite - fly it upside down, rotate, fun stuff.
What's special about a Synergy Deca?
The coolest thing
is that it's very difficult to land the kite in a position where you
can't take off again. If you've ever flow a stunt kite, you'll appreciate
not having to constantly plant your handles, walk over to the kite, set it
up for takeoff again, and walk back before you can fly it again. And instead
of having a stiff framework of spars, it has a flexible framework of spars
and strings (that work much like bones and tendons) that make it very
flexible yet difficult to break.
Another cool thing is that you can put the kite upside down facing into the wind, and it won't get blown away. When the kite is "parked" like this, the wind blows on it, just pushing it further toward the ground. Neat, eh? No running down the beach after your kite when you turn your back on it for a moment! Here's a picture of a Deca 6 parked
What's it really look like?
The best set of photos I've seen are in Jan's Kite Site - Kite Gallery - Synergy Deca. She even has a several movies of them in flight.
The photo
above shows
the kite from the viewpoint of an observer facing the person flying
the kite, and the one of the Deca 6
is from the front, but the kite has been turned upside-down and tilted
back into a "parked" position. I've got another one from the
viewpoint of the flyer where you can clearly see that none of the spars
attach directly to each other - they're all separated by strings.
I've also got a picture of a minergy 5
from the back.
What do the names mean? What's a Deca 1? Deca 6? 333?
My kite is a Deca 1 because it's made from one panel. You can see that
the Deca 6 has six panels, and they also make 12, 15, and 31-panel kites.
My kite is cheaper because it's simpler,
but the material of the kite ripples some as it bends around the frame,
and doesn't fly as smoothly. The more panels you have, the fewer ripples
you get in the kite, but it also gets more expensive. From looking at
the Guildworks website I'm not sure that they even make Deca-1's anymore.
The 333 is the odd-looking triangular thing in the top picture It's got three lines, one connected to each corner of the kite, and the other end connected to a triangular handle. Rotating the handle rotates the kite, and tilting the handle makes it move forward or back, wich are extremely relative terms with this kite, because it's symmetrical and has no top. Sort of a novelty gift for the kiter who has everything.
Synergy kites are made by a company called Guildworks, owned by Marc Ricketts. All the early kites (including mine) were hand-made by him, but I don't know if that's still true. They come in many different sizes - the larger ones will take very heavy winds and move slowly, the smaller ones take less wind and move more quickly (mine has maybe a 6 foot wingspan - medium-small). The smallest ones are called "minergy"s and are really cute, but really zippy. They also make "zero-wind kites" out of extremely light materials - they're so light that walking backwards or letting them turn produces enough wind to fly them. They're designed to be flown on zero-wind days, or indoors (cool, flying a kite indoors, eh?)
What are some other kite links?
These are a handful of useful and interesting kite links that I've found.
Syngergy Deca
