http://www.ozfeathers.com.au/kaos
Hi there everyone.
First of all, a big thank you to Nosediver for providing us with this forum, and giving me the opportunity to do this profile. Like Mark Clements in his (excellent) profile, I find it hard to know what to write. So forgive me if I ramble in directions that are of little interest. Rather than hit you with one large tome, I think it will be easier for me to post a number of short chapters as I find the time to hit the keyboard. Hopefully it won't end up too disjointed...
Cheers
Kevin
Part 1: (Are you sitting comfortably? then I'll begin)
Name: Kevin Sanders
Details: Age 50, Married to Linda for 26 years, 3 children, one grandson
Nickname: KaoS
Occupation: Kite Designer/Builder, Computing System Administrator
Interests: Kite building, motorcycle road racing, Aussie Rules football
Years Flying Stunt Kites: 15
Years Building Kites: 14
Website: http://www.ozfeathers.com.au/kaos
Kite Types Flown: Single line, dual line, quad, fighters
THE BEGINNING
My first sport kite was purchased in 1993. Back in those days Linda and I had three growing children under 12 and a hefty mortgage, and I only had a low paying job. It took me some weeks to convince her that $70 was going to be money well spent. She obviously thought kite flying would be a fleeting interest, and considered that amount of money to be, if nothing else, extravagant. But persistence has its rewards and she eventually relented.
Before she could change her mind, I hurried of to the local kite shop and purchased a fibreglass framed flat keeled two string delta.
My first "sport" kite - stunning isn't it?
Hardly sophisticated, but it was all I could afford. However, standing in the shop amongst those carbon framed, Carrington fabric beauties, I had a strong feeling I wouldn't be satisfied for too long with what I had just purchased.
A few weeks later, with the family in tow, I took my kite down to the local beach and started happily carving lines and circles in that s-m-o-o-o-o-t-h summer wind. There I was proving to the Linda how clever (and dedicated) I was, when another kite flyer arrived and pulled out a Benson Phantom. What a kite…and he could really fly it! In retrospect, he probably did no more than circles, squares, stalls and tip stabs, (it was years later I saw an axle for the first time) but the kite flew so precisely and silently, it put mine to shame. As the afternoon breeze abated, my robust little kite fluttered earthwards, but the Phantom flyer kept on going…and going…and going. I wanted one!
It was hard enough convincing Linda I deserved the original $70. With a new school year starting and the kids needing such luxuries as food and clothes, I knew it would be impossible getting enough money for another kite. But I WANTED one.
Luckily, the world wide web was becoming mainstream and I soon found out I could readily access plans, articles and discussions about kite building. Then I noticed a copy of Nop Velthuizen's "Stunt Kite To Make And Fly" in the local library. Inside was the plan and instructions for a kite called the Gizmo, and to me it looked as close to the Phantom as I was ever going to get. Here was the light at the end of the tunnel…after all, how difficult could it be to make your own kite?
MY FIRST BUILD
There was still the issue of cost, but by building my own I could spread the outlay over a number of weeks ("or months if necessary, sweetheart!"), buying the bits and pieces as I progressed. Hunting around, I found a local sail maker who let me have huge bags of scrap rip-stop for just a few dollars. Some of those pieces were enormous, although somewhat irregular in shape, and heavily wrinkled after surviving a few months in the bottom of a scrap bin. A few patient evenings at the ironing board gave me a good supply of practice material and even some good stock for my first real attempt.
After a short but encouraging amount of sewing practice, I felt confident enough to start the real thing. The resulting "Gizmo" turned out just as planned, and it flew amazingly well. I had the kite I wanted, and I'd made it myself.
Linda thought that was it, I'd climbed my Everest and would revert back to doing more useful things like mowing the grass, and taking our kids to
sports practice.
Little did she realize "The urge to create is strong with this one. (but is no Benson, yet)".
THE SEWING MACHINE RUNS HOT
I spent the next 12 months sewing lots more kites. Initially I made a few for friends. This provided me with a bit of "kite cash" so I could make myself more kites. Some were from available plans, some were merely to change a panel layout but increasingly I ventured away from established patterns and started experimenting.
What happens if you move the standoffs further apart? What about moving the upper spreader towards the T-piece? What difference does a wider nose make? How long or short is best for the bridle? How much tip washout is good? What do winglets do? How big should winglets be? How long should the standoffs be? How much does frame weight affect a kite? How much does frame flex affect a kite?
I learned a huge amount in that time, and I ended up with a large bag of discarded kite sails from experiments that didn't turn out as I'd hoped. But far from being discouraged, I always felt that each one taught me something new or reinforced a previously held belief…er, I mean theory.
THE SEWING MACHINE STARTS TO MELT (or how I learned to sew really well and really fast…)
In 1995 Linda and I bought the local kite shop. At that time, the cost of importing known brand sport kites was fairly high, so the previous owner had designed a few basic sport kite models, and these sold very well (it was before the days when China made acceptable, inexpensive sport kites). Included in the business were the plans and the rights to continue making these kites. Suddenly I went from tinkering away on my own designs to hammering out bulk numbers of 4 different designs.
This was another great learning experience. Having to consistently manufacture dozens of kites per month to a high standard, while keeping costs down, minimizing wastage and keeping to a tight schedule certainly taught me the craft of putting a sport kite together right! During the first few months there were a fair number of partially finished sails that had to be discarded due to brain-fade mistakes, sewing machine "mind of its own" incidents, and sundry "oops" moments. But as time passed, my efficiency rate climbed and I once again found time to occasionally experiment with my own projects. It was a proud day when we replaced the existing shop brand stock with kites I had designed. By the time we outgrew the kite shop 3 years later, I reckon I would have constructed around four hundred sport kites and well over a thousand single line kites.
The Icebreaker
TIME FOR A BETTER KITE
Linda and I left the shop, but our interest in kites was a strong as ever. After a couple of years performing school based kite workshops, Linda branched into feather banner design eventually starting up her current business "OzFeathers". With the extra time I had on my hands, I widened my interest and started creating single line display kites, while continuing to tinker with my sport kites.
It is difficult to pin down when the Temptation came into being. In many ways, a kite called the Icebreaker that I designed in the late 90's was the template for it. But instead of just tweaking that kite a bit more, I decided in late 2002 to start with a clean slate. Having said that, there were some design fundamentals that came straight from the Icebreaker (wingspan, leading edge length, nose angle - in other words, the silhouette). This was because there is an element of "that looks nice" when a kite is flying, and I'd always liked the overall "look" of the Icebreaker.
A lot of the early prototypes concentrated on spreader and T-piece placement and how they affected balance, both in forward flight and in flat
orientation (fades, turtles, flat spins, lazy susans, etc.) Following that, I experimented with variations in depth of billow. By this I mean longer or
shorter standoffs for a given silhouette.
Prototype 1
Prototype 1 overlayed on Icebreaker.
As anyone who has dabbled with sport kite design will know, it's never a case of one change at a time. For instance, changing the sail so there is deeper billow will lead to a change in the angle that the keel and wings present to the wind, and hence a change in the centre of pressure on the sail. To account for this, the bridle needs to be changed. Ah! That's TWO changes.
So which change is responsible for that unique behaviour the new design is showing? Is the change a good change? Can it be enhanced with further bridle tuning, or should I consider relocating the standoffs slightly. Has the change acted to the detriment of some other characteristic of the design?
Some of the prototypes lasted months, some only flew a single time, but every one was useful. They either reinforced the benefit of a concept or highlighted that I had gone in the wrong direction (or too far) with a specific change.
Occasionally, I would think I'd almost finished. The kite was flying well, doing all the things I wanted it to do and giving me a real sense of achievement. Then I'd "go public" and fly it at an interstate festival where they would have different prevailing winds - stronger, lighter, gustier, less consistent, you name it. Invariably, the latest version of the kite would behave…differently. Maybe it pulled harder than normal, or felt harsh on transitions, or lacked drive under certain conditions. Then I'd head home glumly thinking it would never quite be the kite I wanted. But I persisted and worked through each set back just as determined as before.
END OF THE TUNNEL? (well, maybe this one…)
In late 2004 I pretty much reached the design as it is now. For the next year it remained that "home made" kite that I always had in my bag and flew pretty much every time I went out flying. As I didn't plan to make any more changes to it, I decided it was time to name the kite. Previously if anyone had asked "What kite is that?" I told them it was just something I had made myself.
My patient and long suffering wife, had often commented that had she not known any better, she would have suspected that I hadn't really been at the
beach flying kites, I'd been out playing with the other woman… so I called the kite "The Other Woman".
The Other Woman
The Other Woman overlayed on prototype 1
I took "The Other Woman" with me when I went to Weymouth festival in the U.K. in early 2005. A few of the sport kiters there showed an interest and were generally complementary. But at the same time, Tim Benson was down the other end of the beach flying his final pre-production version of the Deep Space. Of course, there was a lot of interest in Tim and his latest design, much less on Kevin who? from where? Luckily, it gave me the opportunity to fly the Temptation reasonably un-noticed, but at the same time make some sort of comparison with how the two kites flew under the same conditions. At the end of the weekend I was pretty pleased with what I had achieved.
Later that year I met up with David Gomberg at another festival. A chance conversation led to me offering him a sport kite design if he ever chose to
branch into that part of the market. I didn't place much emphasis on it at the time, but over the following months the discussions progressed and I
sent samples to his factory in China. I thought that would be the end of my involvement - how wrong I was!
)
"Temptation"
THE DESIGN AND BUILD PROCESS
When prototyping, I find the quickest and easiest way to get a sail shape is to draw it full size on paper. I am lucky to have the use of a large glass topped light table, 5 metres long and 1.5 metres wide (that's over 16 feet long and 5 feet wide - thank you OzFeathers!). I have rolls of white bond paper 0.9 metres wide and 150 metres long, so far I've never run out of paper.
The light table
Very few of my kites have been over 0.9 metres in spine length, so in almost all cases the entire sail outline can be drawn on one piece of paper. Once
the outline has been drawn, it is easy to switch on the lights under the table, then roll sailcloth over the top of the paper and cut directly on the
pattern. I hot cut prototypes using a flat edged 40 watt soldering iron. The flat edge is easy to guide along the pattern lines, and the low wattage allows
cutting the fabric without burning the paper. If I want to make a patterned sail for an interim prototype, I create a graphic consisting of straight lines
so the hot cutting can be done using a steel ruler as a guide. This method is too time consuming and inaccurate for producing multiple kites, so once a
design is finalised, and a sail pattern chosen I make up templates. For these I create a full size drawing in Corel Draw. Not only does this drawing
contain the full outline, it also contains separate objects for each panel. I add the required seam allowance where necessary to each panel , then print
full size on a HP DesignJet wide format printer (once again, thanks OzFeathers...). Very accurate, very reproducable.
Initially, I used artist's matt board for my templates. This is a fairly dense card that can be cut accurately using a razor edged hobby knife. I then edged the card with a "fireproof" tape. I can't remember what the tape is called, but it is heat resistant. This tape allows repeated use of an Engel hot knife without burning into the card (which would alter the shape of the template over time).
More recently I have used thin metal sheet for templates, either aluminium or galvanised steel. It is more time consuming to cut (jig saw, file and sandpaper - nothing sophisticated) but easier to finish accurately. Panels are cut with a 7 mm overlap to allow for the use of sail maker tape and lap seams.
Bernina have always made great sewing machines, and for the past 14 years I have done all my sewing on a 950 series semi industrial. I use triple step zigzag for all lap seams, and occasionally (not often) small zigzag for fine detail finish and some straight stitching where necessary. Triple step zigzag has one HUGE benefit over other stitches - it is really difficult to notice if the seam is straight or not. You can waver one or two millimetres laterally along the length of a half metre seam, and it is pretty much undetectable to the untrained eye. Do that using a straight seam and everyone will notice!
Yes, I do still hand make custom Temptations. Under the terms of my agreement with the Gombergs, I'm allowed to make custom versions.
For the Temptations I make, I use higher grade sailcloth (German manufactured Dimension Polyant) and dacron, APA, Tradewinds and Jaco fittings and spectra
cored bridle. Also, on my kites there is a choice of 6mm (Korean made) pultruded carbon frame or SkyShark P200s with 5PT lower spreaders.
Do my kites fly better than the Gomberg ones? No, certainly not significantly. The pultruded framed versions I make are pretty much identical in flight to
the Gomberg ones. The kite was designed with a pultruded frame right from stage one to the final product. It wasn't until after the design was complete
that I started experimenting with other frame materials. After trying wrapped rods from various manufacturers, I settled on Skysharks. In comparison to the
pultruded framed versions, the Skyshark framed Temptations are capable of flying in lighter winds right at the bottom of the range, and are more responsive
(a vague term, I know, but I'm sure you understand).
FUTURE DIRECTIONS?
There are always ideas bubbling away. Right now I'm working on an ultralight, tentatively called the Gossamer
Gossamer prototypes 1 and 2
I have been working up some Kaos graphics similar to those used on my single liners for Rev 1.5 sails
KaoS revs
...and I really should do some more work on my "team" kite, tentatively called Maelstrom
Maelstrom prototype 2
I could go on, (and I'm sure some of you will think I already have...), but this is probably a good place to close up for now. I hope you have
enjoyed the journey.
A huge thanks to Nosediver for letting me ramble at my leisure, and for providing us with this forum.
All the best
Kevin
) just in a few
short years in to this flying thing we all do.
