Martin Lester Bird Kites

I attended the Fort Worden Kitemakers Conference in March 2001 and this is the result of the workshop taught by Martin Lester. Not a soft kite, as you may have expected, but instead a variation on chinese bird kites using modern materials.

Martin Lester (16K)
Seagull: M and XL (13K)
My version of the swallow (17K)
Swallow and Eagle (7K)

Martin developed a whole series of different bird kites based on a single frame. Simply by varying the aspect ratio and making slight changes to wing and tail shapes he created a surprisingly recognisable swallow, eagle, and sea gull.

The kites are built from ripstop and 1/8 inch fibreglass with a wing span ranging from approx. 1 to 1.5m. Martin also showed us a double-size seagull he had built: this had a wing span of about 3m and was framed in carbon, but it still used the same frame design.

So far I've built the eagle and swallow. The eagle flies very nicely, but the swallow is more problematic. The swallow's wings are tensioned by the fibreglass and have almost no flutter on the trailing edge, i.e. plenty of lift and very little drag. This gives it a tendency to rise quickly and then veer off to one side and dive. After adding a tail it now flies pretty reliably, but still moves around the sky a lot. I'm curious how the sea gull will perform.