Fighter Kites

Flying these kites is loads of fun. Read about my fighters on this page. For more information on fighter kites in general, as well as lots of good plans, visit the Northwest Fighter Kite Association

NFKA Standard 2003 This is the design Chuck Lund flew to win the 2002 WSIKF competition. I built a medium, light and no wind version using .06, .05, .04 carbon bows.	(49K)
Firefly Tom Humphrey, an NFKA stalwart, taught this kite in a class at the 2003 Fort Worden Kitemakers Conference. It is a split-tail fighter with .03" tail battens. The bow is .05, the spine is bamboo and the sail is made of Clearphane.	(49K)
Woodtick A modern fighter kite using Cellophane and micro-carbon. I built this according to the plan Woody Woods published in AKA Kiting, vol 24, issue 4.	(16K)
Master Pan A modern fighter kite using Orcon and micro-carbon. This design is by Jeff MacInnis. Look here for more details on this kite.	(40K)
Indian Fighter The classic fighter kite. The one you see here departs from the traditional tissue paper and bamboo construction by using tape-reinforced Mylar for the skin. This is one of the very few kites I did not build myself: It is a Stafford Wallace import which I bought in order to study and compare it to my own efforts. Look here for more details on this kite.	(52K)
Buka Dako (plan by Andy Selzer) The Buka has recently become very popular among western fighter kite enthusiasts. Like the similarly shaped Korean fighter it is very fast and tracks perfectly. The blue and pink kite is my first attempt at building a Buka. I used Andy Selzer's plan on the NFKA site. The kite with the fish design is a painted silk kite built by Gary Goodenough.	(12K) (12K)
Vari-Fighter 2000 (by Ed Alden) This design is based on a classic diamond shaped fighter, such as the Nagasaki Hata. However, it uses modern materials (Icarex and micro-carbon) and an innovative adaptive bridling and bowing system. As the name suggests, just about every aspect of the kite can be adjusted. This makes it a great experimental kite. A very detailed plan and discussion of the design principles is available on Ed Alden's site.	(46K)
"Takeshi Nishibayashi's Large Fighter" (plan by P.Gallot) A larger kite, which is slower than a small indian and easier to control. The plan calls for 3 bridle attachment point on the spine, which makes the bridle a bit tricky to adjust.	(9K) (11K)
Classic fighting Rokkaku This is a small 75cm version. Check out my Rok page for more details on this kite and Roks in general.	(16K)