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Free flight is the art of making very light model planes & flying them. At the moment I manage to fly kites on occasion, no place to fly free flight models :-(. Ahh well. In front of our house whe have a lovely large clear green. Perfect kite flying territory. We've also noticed that if we go out flying a kite ... then others get braver and follow. Yayy. If we ever manage to get a club together it might be fun.

Our kites:

• Stunter - Knoopkite - two line - bought this while on holiday in Luxembourg after canoeing down a river. While we were waiting - shoeless & damp in the rain for a bus! :) Flown in Holland during some terrible days, with too little wind in the summer usually. Playing with the bridle was educational ... as was trying to fly it in low winds. The wind here in Ireland is much better ... this one zooms around the sky.
• Triplane WWI model kite. Got this in Boston June 1997. Fun & very satisfying to assemble, very simple too, only needed some wood glue and knife. Flys really well with very little wind, inclined to jerk left---right---l;eft---right though. Can build up and get very unstable. (only one line bridle on it at the moment. Poor thing has been bashed a little, ... flown straight into ground at times ... repaired a bit. Last repair Jan 2000. Now displayed on our stairs :) Easy access so it's been flying a bit lately ... it even survived being left with some girls while I had to head away with Daire for dinner & bed.
  Lovely kite. Can launch with 0 length line at hand and slowly leave out from there.
• Brookite diamond with tail and sled leader for stability. Lovely kite again. I can manage to fly it when the wind is very low. Also in highish winds. Can run around against the wind when the wind is low enough and fly it home. This is Hugh's kite from limerick. Brought it up with us to Dublin Nov 1999.
• Fionnuala got a kite for S3 Kris Kindle. Light spars bending back dihedral whaddyacall it for stability. Wide diamond with mouse & .... Poor thing not flown yet. Would be good in light winds I think.
• Brookite mini diamond kite for Christmas 1999 from Fionnuala. flown with too much wind sometimes ... It does really fast anticlockwise circles close to the ground. Looks good with its long tail ... have attached sticks to the tail to slow it down and keep it heading UP. This works really well and the kite dances around the sky. Can parachute the sticks down. More stable in lighter winds .... lost bendy cross spar now but replaces with light stick from garden. We also attached it to the WWI triplane and they go quite well together ... however disentangling the lines afterwards was ... interesting ... must get a dedicated SHORT line.

For now the rest of this is just a collection of links:

Kites

Power upskiers and other BIG power kites. kitelist Ryans wreckreation powerkiting Power Kite Site o mi look at all those links egroups kitesurf
WOAH! Kite Safety Phil very high

kites & origami polyhedra kite

Richard Nourse kites+stuff in UK poolekites
Kite Fantastic http://www.anti-gravity.demon.co.uk/kites.html windthings Scotland kite club Greens Kites
ODP/ Regional/ UK/ Recreation/ Kites
Regional/ Europe/ Ireland/ Sports/ Outdoors
Recreation/ Outdoors/ Kites/

Anti-Gravity Air Sports and Street Sports Les cerfs-volants Mullin kites Brookite micro

Hkulk of "the Swallows" what is kiting IO kite from advance

?¦ Kite Zoo ?¦ Kite Flyer's Site ?¦ Peter Peters' Kite Site ?¦ Definitive Kite Site ?¦ Micro-Kite ?¦ Japanese Kite collection ?¦ Japanese master | jka | Kite plan list ?¦ Kight Lights ?¦

paper planes, mcshane's planes/ Old Faithful