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Just when you thought it couldn't get any better Mark Clements put an "S" in Stunt Kites. Mark raises the bar a tad on some top notch Super Stunters. Proudly presented here in Marks own words. It's an honor Mark to Feature both you and your Kites. From all of us at Nosediver's, job well done!.




Name: Mark Clements
Aliases: Jest of Eve, JoE, (Marky-Mark by my old boss and friend G.B.!)
Age: 38
Occupation: Kite Designer/Builder
Interests: Kites! Making Music, PC gaming
Years Flying Stunt Kites: 3.5
Years Building Kites: 2
Website: Jest of Eve Kites
Kite Types Flown: Duals (99.9%), Quads (0.1%)
Favorite Form of Flying: Smooth light winds with an UL
Least Favorite: Flying competition when the wind is too strong (as it always is!).


FOREWORD

Well I didn't know what to write, but I read Paul Shirey's spot and that gave me an idea of what to do. As my old boss Graham would say "I don't want an essay, Mark"! Sorry, but I only have two switches; MIN detail, or MAX detail. This could have been much longer, but I resisted. It's easier to just spew out the memories!

That's me up there in my Gemini-obsessed days!

I have far less history than Paul, indeed most other kite makers, so I figured that if I crank-up the detail then I can make quite a few pages of stuff that might be interesting, or perhaps sometimes boring! It's all so recent that I remember it vividly. There's a lot of detail in the Trident area and this is simply because I'd never made a kite before so literally everything was unknown and a challenge. Even silly things I find embarrassing now!

EARLY DAYS

I started flying kites in June 2004. Yes, that's right...2-0-0-4! Summer. I was working in a typical job doing the usual stuff that is expected of people who work for a company these days.

One weekend, me, my partner Wendy and her daughter Abbie decided to go on a trip to a local country park for an afternoon out. Someone had bought Abbie a cheap box kite and I was charged with the task of setting it up and getting it flying for her. This is something I did reluctantly, it was just one of those 'Oh I suppose so' things! Once I got the thing in the air they couldn't get it off me!

Here's a photo of me having fun and Abbie (in mini-form) looking very unimpressed with me hogging her toy! Notice how I'm too close to the trees? n00b!



On the way home I remember saying something like "I should get one of those two-line kites that you can steer around the sky and do loop-da-loops with." Something I thought that might be more fun for me as tech-head the next time we go out for the day.

That was the sentence that brought me to this point today.

I remember looking on the Internet for stunt kites and was interested in something that was easy for a beginner, but had enough to appeal to an intermediate; I already had aspirations! I settled on a New Tech Firecracker, it seemed to fit that bill and came with instructions for beginners.

Sure enough the kite arrived and I read the instruction book front to back a few times, but something weird happened in between, something that had already blown me into freestyle flying before I'd even flew a sport kite!

I'd been going over the Internet looking for info on tricks. I found the Prism site with all those trick animations, I didn't know what they meant, but it looked good! Then, I came across Andy Wardley's site; smack in the middle of a year where he was making a new kite freestyle video every month.

My jaw dropped! At one point I remember thinking "This is just fancy CGI, surely?". A little more surfing made it clear to me that kites had really come on somewhat from what I remember as a child. All I could think was, "I want to learn that! That's really cool!"

It took a while for me to pluck up the courage to go out and fly the Firecracker. First flight was in strong winds and Wendy had to launch it for me. Smashed the poor thing up a bit but it was fun and that Firecracker can take a newbie-beating!

About two weeks later I spent a Saturday in hot summer sun flying the Firecracker on my own. I learned a lot that day. Solo launching, recovery-to-launch, control of the kite, snap-corners, and towards the end, snap-stalls. I wasn't an outdoors person at that time so I went home looking like a lobster! Sun burn was the price I paid - ouch!

I took the Firecracker to it's limits (or so I thought). After a while I was doing tip stands! Wow, but I still couldn't do an Axel. During this phase I had bought a copy of "Flying Techniques" by Aeolian and had watched it over and over like a real geek. Money not being a big problem I decided to buy a Gemini.

Gemini Day1 was weird. It was bigger and oversteery. Just weird. Gemini Day2 was good and bad. At one point a 'little punk' (we call them 'Chavs' over here) on a stolen motorbike rode straight through my staked lines and dragged my 2-day old Gem up the field, bouncing around with me screaming at him! I didn't know it at that point, but he'd broken the ULE.

That didn't matter because I knew this kite could Axel, so if it didn't Axel it was my fault, not the kite. I still couldn't Axel it! I sat down at one point and pondered why it was that I was doing everything right but not getting an Axel? I thought "Maybe I'm popping the wrong hand." Got up and tried it....instant Axel! Unfortunately the damage was starting to show and the ULE spar started to poke through the Dacron. Time to pack up. An early introduction to kite repair.

Here's a photo from that very afternoon:



To move things forward a little, I spent a lot of time doing Axels, but didn't like the way they looked. I watched a lot of Andy Wardley in Flying Techniques and realised that he was popping his arms down by his sides (I was going across my chest).

I needed to go back to learning Axels properly; arms at my side, left and right, top wing, bottom wing. To this day I still tell people they need to do Axels all over the place and learn everything about that 'feel'. It's important. Axel take offs, Axel landings. There's a lot there to play with for a new flier and it sets you up for later tricks in a way that's very important if you want to progress.

GETTING INTO IT

I played with the Standard Gemini a lot then bought an UL Gem which for a long time was my kite of choice. I liked light winds a lot. I started getting into yoyo tricks after watching RandyG's tutorials. Around this time also was the initial info on the Benson 'C-Class' (Deep Space) and it's Roll Bars. I didn't really understand them properly but modified my UL Gem to included them. Later I modified my STD Gem with Roll Bars and this is when I realised how cool pitch tricks could be.

My Gemini Roll Bar mods were useless at first. They were good for one wrap only. It was only later I realised that they were'nt far enough out at the Trailing Edge. Once I changed this it was multi-wrap fun!

In 2005 I started branching out and visiting kite events in the UK. Up until this time I'd been a solo flier and had taught myself everything I knew with no input from anyone else. I met Brian from Aeolian at Middle Wallop that year, which was cool. Later I met some of the Fractured Axel people at Dunstable Downs kite festival for the first time. Great guys!

DEEP SPACE
I was a Benson man, in fact I still am! (secretly).

I was at Bristol, September 2005 when the Benson Deep Space was officially made public. I loved it. It was a Benson all over and I had a lot of fun with it. It was more precise, evil in a tip stand and cometed like nothing I'd flown before, ummm (Gemini's - Ahem!).

My Flo.Orange DS back at the camp site: (I've got a DS! )




Back home, after the festival, this is the kite that taught me how to FlapJack and do multi-lazy-spins, the one-pop variety that the DS is so good at. I loved it, but something bugged me about it. Looking back I now know this; you don't fly a DS like a Gem, they are different kites. I didn't understand this back then and found the DS frustrating compared to the Gem.

I wanted a kite that was going to see me through some competition rounds for the year ahead. I wanted it to be the DS, because it was so good, but I found the Gemini to be better behaved. So, I went back to the Gemini. However, I did win my first competition with the Deep Space, on ABW's turf at Guildford with him judging. That was cool.

CHANGES

Life in general had changed for me at this point. I was not happy in my work and felt that a major change was in order; to improve my quality of life, which at that time was pretty lousy. I decided to leave the job and the rat-race for a while. Re-group myself, take some time off and find a new direction. I did this in October 2005 and moved in with Wendy. At least we'd be together all the time as opposed to when the job permitted.

I wrote a guide to help people install roll bars onto their Gemini, then accidentally deleted it! So I started work on a bigger more detailed guide and included a means to make the Gem's leading edges easier to change like the Deep Space. It was fun to do that, but when it was done I wondered what I could do next that was a bit more challenging.

Around this time I'd been making other mods to my Gemini. These mods were known as the 'ABW Mods' on account of Andy Wardley changing small aspects of his own Gem to make it more appealing to him and his personal taste.

I tried these over a few days and would go out to test the results. I remember thinking that this must be what it's like to test a prototype kite. I then realised that the next logical step was to start building kites, but what kite to build? I could make a Virus or an Orange, but I didn't know those kites so why not just skip the building part and go straight into designing? Some kind of weird head-start?

Yeah, why not. It'll probably be really hard, the results will be crap, but at least it's a start. I can refine it later and improve it to where I want it to be.


THE TRIDENT


How do you design a kite? That's a big question when you know very little. Lots of Internet surfing and reading up was helpful. Ian Newham's site on kite design was a big help and contained information that eventually became very useful when testing designs in the field.

On the 12th December 2005 I sat down at the PC and collected together lots of photos of sucessful kite designs. The usual suspects, Nirvana, Fury, Transfer, Deep Space and many more. I felt that having the sail graphic in place was a distraction and made all the kites look the same. So, after a few hours I'd outlined all the kites with vector lines and removed the photograph layer. I had a screen full of kites that looked far more interesting, because all that was left were their true shapes. They all looked very different then.

This turned out to be a very useful exercise. With the kites represented by a mere outline or silhouette, the subtleties stuck out clearly.

Over the next few days I drew my own outlines. Just rough kite shapes with a spine dividing line. I got to about 15 of them then started to throw away ones I didn't like or ones that looked too much like other kites.

I finished with a shortlist of three shapes and I quite liked all of them. After a lot of indecision about which to make I decided to 'morph' all three images into a new shape. I didn't have any fancy software to do this, nor did I even own a printer/scanner at that time! I traced the three shapes straight off of the screen, lined them all up over each other and began tediously averaging dozens of points drawn onto the outlines. I ended up with a new hybrid of all three and it looked just fine, so I went ahead with that one.



PROBLEMS/SOLUTIONS

My kite outline was that of a finished kite that didn't exist. I needed this 2D representation of a 3D object to be changed into a 2D shape that I could cut a sail from. How do you do that? I didn't know so I just employed a simple method in order to get close. I drew a bunch of radial lines from the nose to the trailing edge, from the spine out to where the rough position of the standoff would be. Each line was cut, shifted very slightly away from the spine then stuck down. This worked and certainly made the shape look more like a kite laying flat before the spars go in.

I re-traced this back to the screen using vector lines again then using a cheap printer I made a miniature paper model.




This model allowed me to see that once built, the design took on the familiar sport kite shape and some of the subtleties, like the sweep-back effect of the leading edges.

After this I made a full scale model to see if the kite's size was about right. It was made using a black trash bag, sticky tape and 3mm carbon rod! It didn't last long but I managed to keep one side alive long enough to take a photograph.



Once again I took a vector outline of it and compared it to my original outline. It was close, but all those generations and inaccuracies had made the aspect ratio increase. I didn't mind, I thought it still looked nice and would probably be better at yoyos. Seems I got that right! I was really into yoyo tricks at that time.

Now I had to think about building a kite. I mean actually making the thing. I didn't have a clue, I'd never used a sewing machine; I knew nothing at all.

My oldest Gemini was long redundant and a tad beaten up by now. I really loved Tim Benson's work and was amazed at Bristol when I first saw my Deep Space, it looked like it was built by a perfect robot-kite-making-machine! Which is he is, I suppose . So, I grabbed a scalpal and started picking the kite apart. I know, it's awful, especially to me! But, I learned some things that really raised my eyebrows and made me think that this might not be as hard as I thought. One of the things I learned was particularly relevant to my design because, like the Gemini, it had really curved leading edges. I pondered for hours about how you place a curved sail into a piece of folded Dacron that really doesn't like to be curved and resists it tenaciously! I realised that the Dacron had to be forced into the curved shape and kept there, then dropping the sail in was just like matching up two jigsaw pieces.

Next up was a sewing machine. I looked up on sewing and sewing kites in general, bought a machine and started practicing on pieces of A4 paper. I always thought that stitching around in a curve would be really difficult, but I had it down after one sheet of A4! The difficulty turned out to be in the choice of tension for various materials and combinations of material. I didn't realise it at the time, but I was using the wrong thread, far too wirey. Realistically, it took me over a year and two different sewing machines before I truly understood how they work. Once you understand them and know your own machine, you can virtually guess what tension settings you will need for any given material(s).

BUILDING A PROTOTYPE

I decided to call my first prototype '6A1'. I was such a Benson fan and had followed the Deep Space through the whole 'C-Class' phase of recognition that I decided it was quite a good way of identifying prototypes. If I remember correctly, the '6' is the year, 'A' is the sail shape, and the '1' is the revision of that sail shape. I was expecting to go through quite a lot so it made sense to me to use the same system. Sorry Tim, I'm just such a total FanBoy!

I gathered together some necessary materials. Some cheap grey rip-stop, some black rip-stop for trailing edges, Dacron, Velcro, some Cordura for a nose and some fittings I might find useful.

A sail template was printed out in 'tiled' format, which means you have to crop the pieces then stick them all together to make a big sheet of paper. Cut around the outline and you have a sail template (half a kite). I built the kite from this, adding a slotted T-Piece area that would allow the centre-T to be moved around for testing. The leading edges also had very elongated socket cuts, allowing for plenty of adjustment and the trailing edge Dacron had lots of evenly spaced holes for adjusting stand off positions. The method I chose for curving the Dacron is still something I use to this day. I don't know how other kite makers do it, but I have board that contains an outline of the leading edge and I tape the Dacron down so that it follows this edge. So, every piece of tape creates a pleat in the Dacron and literally forces it to curve. There must be a quicker method; suggestions by reply, please!

Framing this kite was extremely difficult and took hours. I didn't know how long to make the spreaders, or the stand offs, or the leading edges, it was hard and just one of many headaches to follow! Like the bridle, how do you make a normal 3-point bridle for a kite that's never existed?

At the end of the 10th January 2006 I had a kite....




This photo makes me laugh now. The wingtips are too long and the stand off positions are far too close to the spine! This would prove to be amusing (now) when I first tested the thing!

When I first launched this kite for real it felt like one line was two foot longer than the other! I had to check the bridle for snags! It was absolutely awful. Oversteery beyond that of a Stranger Level 7 and generally impossible to control!

However, armed with a head full of Ian Newham's site info, I got to work on the stand offs and bridle in fairly cold conditions (not much fun at all). I only expected this thing to fly and maybe do axels, yoyos and backspins if I was lucky.

Four and a half hours later, after countless tweaks, I had the thing flying straight, axels, cascades, yoyos (wow!), flapjacks, 540's and even cometes! I was really amazed!

HARD TIMES AHEAD/BEING NAIVE

Over the next few weeks I had a hard time with the kite. Being mainly a Gemini flier I was locked into Gemini construction. The whole kite was framed in 6mm Structil and I kept returning from the field with a bent brass lower spreader ferrule. Why? I spent ages trying to figure this one out!

I remember changing the lower spreader T-Piece to a big moulded plastic fitting, thinking this would solve the problem. One day I was out with the kite in this configuration but I'd changed the bridle to something like an ABW Tri-star. It was rubbish for a while, but I went back for that 'one last tweak'. I made this tweak and within 15 minutes was down to a T-Shirt in freezing winter conditions. I was having a ball! Then I snapped the lower spreader at the T-Piece.

I was such a newbie. It took some thinking, but I finally realised that the reason single spine kites are framed with tapered lower spreaders is because they are stronger at the point where they are at most stress; the centre-T. DUH!

I got some 5PT's (based solely on the Deep Space as a reference) and framed the Trident Proto in it. It was good.

I remember that later I decided that if framing the lower spreaders in Skyshark 5PT was good, why not frame the leading edges in P200 spars as well? Something that also came from the Deep Space, I knew very little about framing at this time.

I did this and spent one glorious Saturday flying the Trident proto in winter sunny conditions thinking "Wow! This is my kind of kite".

The following day I took the kite to a small, Better Flying Day in Bath. The wind was nice and I really displayed what the kite was good at. It was mentioned on the FA forum as the biggest surprise of the day. It surprised me, I was starting to do things with it that I didn't think it could do.


(Photo courtesy of Al Tanner)

I really need to fast forward here.

I liked Pim Kusters idea of a Roll Cage for a kite like mine that was so good at yoyos. I didn't, however, like the idea of it being visible to the flier. I engineered a method of putting the Roll Cage concept at the back of the sail and therefore, less visible to the flier.

Over a ridiculously short space of time I managed to convert the prototype into a production kite. This was a hard period for me. Imagine spending every waking minute thinking of nothing but 'Problem/Solution'. I would stare at the kite for hours over the week just thinking 'How can I do this?'. This went on for a while and was very consuming and rather exhausting, mentally.

I'd flown the Trident for long enough to believe that I had something that I really liked, so why mess around any more? I loved it. Time for a sail graphic.



Once happy with the actual kite, I jumped into designing a nice sail graphic. This was not hard for me, I'm quite natural with graphics and art. I was working on the graphic one night and feeling like certain colouring made it look like an ice cream cone!


At this point I was thinking of names like "Thorn" or "Groove".

Wendy said "That bit in the middle looks like an eye." So, I turned it into a reptile eye. It looked good.

I spent ages messing around with different concepts, but eventually, the 'eye' had it and I declared that the 'eye' design was the most striking and effective.

Turning that 2D version of a 3D object into a 2D set of panels that would eventually make a 3D image of the 2D graphic was, eeerrmm, something of a challenge! How do you do that? Yet another kite making challenge. Where do they end?

By a process of comparison from printed output vs. on-screen appearance, I gradually tweaked the graphic to more accurately represent the on-screen appearance compared to the real thing. It worked!

Then I decided to do everything in the computer.

I needed each overlapping panel to overlap it's adjacent panel by 4mm to achieve an eventual overlap of approximately 8mm. This meant chopping out each panel into a separate image and drawing new vector lines around, with an exactly matching 4mm overlap.

It took a while. But, eventually I had a set of images that I could print out and make templates from.

I made a test build.



It was great to see the thing in the flesh at last and once finished I remember flying it for the first time and feeling great about how good it looked in the sky.

Throughout the year I spent a lot of time flying the Trident and making some for certain people.

I made another for myself that was my main squeeze for the year:



I developed an Ultra Light version in the summer and it turned out great, with a new take on the sail graphic.



It was a good learning experience working on the UL Trident. I did a lot of testing with different spars and weights. It taught me a lot. Interest in the kite was growing and lead me to the decision to start a kite making business. This became a reality in September 2006 when I started Jest of Eve Kites after a crash course in web site design!

By the way, the name Jest of Eve is something I once thought would be a good name for a band. It is better described in this FA forum thread:

Explain your screen name

I sold a few kites and got feedback on them. The Trident was originally a personal project that reflected my flying style at that time. I loved it, but some people pointed out flaws in it. It's no good at Insanes, too pitchy, it doesn't sit in a Turtle very well.

I wasn't into those tricks when I designed the kite so it wasn't a big deal. But, on the anniversary of the Trident's conception I set out to make something new, something that would address the Trident's weaknesses and whatever else developed along the way. This is 'the way it is', apparently, in kite design. You never know what will happen.

Almost to the day of the Trident's anniversary, I started work on a new kite. It would be harder this time as I had expectations of the end result, but that's the job so get on with it!

I didn't want to veer too far from the Trident, I loved it. Let's just try to address the issues and make something based around that concept. My original concept was a little ambitious. I wanted to head for a Plasma type kite. Something that was good for a big wind range. I'd been thinking about some venting flaps like the Plasma that would only open when the wind was strong enough to open them. I thought about flaps on light torsion springs that would open when there was enough wind pressure to activate them. It was a very similar idea to the Silver Fox Vented.

The idea never made it off of paper because I realised that the flaps would 'flutter' or vibrate all the time. It might work, but the complexities in realising it where too much for a production kite.

Never the less I committed myself to a new kite despite having forgotten all of the difficulties and brain-ache of actually doing it!


* * * THE TALON * * *

I started with my Trident sail shape and straightened things out on the leading edge and modified the trailing edge considerably. I was looking for the kite to be more precise and capable of Insanes and Rolling Cascades, even though I could do neither of those tricks! I used a Mohawk and Deep Space to get to grips with Insanes at novice level, but it was quite easy as I'd already been doing the entry part of that trick for ages, I just didn't realise it!

A huge mistake I made when testing the Trident was lack of notes. This time around I decided to take the opposite approach and 'go nuts' on notes. I started a journal of the experience and it has proven to be invaluable. After every test session I added my feelings (from memory) as to how the kite behaved that day.

In testing the Trident 'Light' I'd learned a valuable lesson applicable to any kite maker; 'Reference Points'. If you love what you're experiencing, write down every detail of it and refer back to it as the best-last-configuration. If your expansion on that 'reference point' is no good, you have a 'reset' point at which you can return and re-group yourself. It's all down in black and white.

The first sail "7A1" was odd. I messed-up the scaling in the PC and wound up with a template that was clearly too small for a trick kite. I decided to build it anyway. Why not test out it's personality? I can always make a bigger version later.



Here's an entry from my first test of this sail:

"16/Dec/06
FIRST TEST SESSION WITH FAIRLY LIGHT WINDS VERGING ON UL CONDITIONS BUT BUILDING TO USABLE FOR TRICKING AND COMETES. VERY OVERSTEERY, MUCH WORK ON STANDOFF TWEAKS AND BRIDLE BROUGHT THE KITE INTO LINE ALTHOUGH LEFT THE FIELD WITH NO MORE ADJUSTMENT ON THE PIGTAILS. NEED TO CHANGE FOR MORE ADJUSTMENT ROOM AS BRIDLE ON THIS SMALL THING SEEMS TO WANT TO BE QUITE FAR OUTBOARD.
SEEMED TO HAVE THE FEELING THAT IT WILL ROLLING CASCADE.

NOTES:
*KITE ROLLS UP WITH NO WEIGHT LIGHTING FAST
*SITS IN A TURTLE RATHER TOO WELL
*DOES 2-POP ROLL UPS
*CRAZY COPTERS ARE STUPID-EASY AND THE KITE VIRTUALLY ROLLS UP DURING THE PULL-DOWN
*YO-FADES ARE CHILDS PLAY, EVEN DID A BACKSPIN
*540s ARE REALLY NICE
*COMETES ARE SUPER-FAST AND TIGHT LIKE A DOT MATRIX. BLOODY AMAZING ON THIS THING, BETTER THAN A FURY. THE AXELS ARE A BLUR, ALL YOU SEE IS THE CLOCKWISE ROTATION GENERATED BY THE COMETE.
*FLIC-FLACS ARE SNAPPY AND OVERFLARE IF YOU WANT.
*BACKSPINS ARE NOT VERY NATURAL.
*DOESN'T DEAD-LAUNCH (SIZE?)
*WAPS ARE CRAP AND BARELY THERE (ALTHOUGH THEY WERE CRAP ON THE TRIDENT PROTO TOO)
*LAZY SPINS ARE DISSAPOINTING.
*JLs ARE THERE AND REASONABLE, BUT COULD PROBABLY BE IMPROVED WITH MORE BRIDLE TWEAKS
*PRECISION ISN'T GREAT BUT BRIDLE WAS GETTING CLOSE TO ALLOWING TIP STABS WITHOUT LUFFING-OUT.

LEFT THE FIELD WITH INNER STANDOFFS AT POSITION 8 AND OUTERS AT 4.
TEST YOYOSTOP POSITION WAS 10cm DOWN FROM UPPER SOCKET LOWER CUT"

It's interesting to note that I still fly this proto sail to this day, simply because it's so much fun! Especially in yo-fades and cometes which are handed to you as fast as your arms can move! I should market it on 'fun factor' alone! It's the only high wind experience I've ever enjoyed. To a passing observer it might appear that I'm having a fit of outrage when doing a comete! It really is insanely forgiving and will keep up with your fastest 'flailings'!!

In reality, 7A1 didn't last long though. After a second session of testing it's precision was not living up to my goal and I decided to drop it and move on to a new sail shape at the correct size (with a view to re-addressing the size later).

I hit the PC and modified the shape, mainly in the trailing edge and this time scaled it to size properly. I called it 7B1.


"7B1"

I didn't know it at the time, but 7B1 would eventually become the EXACT sail shape that is The Talon today!

One thing I have learned from kite design is that for any given sail shape, there are many different configurations of that shape that need to be tested. You can easily change the aspect ratio and standoff length/positions for any given sail shape. Actually doing this is a very long and tedious process of testing where one's 'gut reaction' to the result of that change is key. Is that particular change a good thing or a bad thing? It's anything but easy, it's just a complete grind of "better or worse?". This is trick sport kite design at it's essence, and really does depend on the designer's perspective. Are you French, British, German or American? Different strokes....Each sail shape handed to a different designer would result in a different end result, I feel. The number of variables vs. wind quality are somewhat 'off-putting' to anyone!

I made 7B1 as a kite and tested it. A note from my journal (27/Dec/06):

"Feeling that there's a lot of scope with this design. Most of the fundamentals are present and correct with a nice dash of precision. Feels very much like a Trident, but not quite the same.
Keen now to take it out in some wind and explore it's precision a little more. Tomorrow should see to that."

I played with it for a while but wasn't inspired.

By the 14th Jan '07 I'd modified the original 7A1 shape to be larger and tested it. I called it 7A2 and played around with it for a while. It was OK, but wasn't terrific. Eventually I felt that 7B1 was where I should be heading and that was that. In hindsight, I have no record of ever testing 7A2 with a P200 leading edge. This was a bad move.

When I test a new shape, I always frame it in 6mm Structil because it's easy to build and gives you a rough idea of what the shape is capable of. Adding some Skyshark to the frame later always seems to improve things. I didn't do that with this shape and that might have been a bad oversight because the original small version is great!



At one point however, I did some more tweaking of the shape and built a new model which I called 7C1. It was quite different and had some nice points, but I couldn't get on with it's feel. It was too far from 7B1, which was the most interesting so far. It felt like a Sea Devil, but I'm not sure if that was psychological due to making it out of white fabric!


"7C1"


So, I flipped back to 7B1 for a while. Here's a journal entry from that time:

"25/Jan/07
Out testing 7B1 in nice wind. In this config the kite is very nice with unbelievably stable fades and turtles, however it suffers with the pancake to fade problem and refused to yoyo. Added a 20g weight and this changed things. Yoyos are back and it feels ok.
Added another standoff and played around with the centre V shape, thinner certainly helps the pancake to fade problem. Found a nice compromise with the two standoffs and flew the kite for a while trying all sorts.
Hmmmm. This is quite nice, it's really behaving a lot better now but is quite spongy and difficult to flic-flac. Decided that it's good enough to convert the LE's to P200's and explore it a little more. The Skyshark should add more stiffness and bulk, hopefully this will have a positive effect. Finalised yoyo stopper positions ready for rollbars on the 2-piece LE.

Back at the lab, re-framed and roll barred."


The next day was even better and is noted as a 'reference point'.


"26/Jan/07 **7B1 REFERENCE POINT
Standoffs at 6-10 LLE Sockets 2cm above bridle loop o-ring (42cm down) = 40cm down.

Mama mia!!! Re-frame has totally changed the kite and killed off some problems.
Spent a long long time flying and tricking it with the only adjustment being a two-step shortening of the in-hauls which made the kite spin tighter and become very slightly less precise.

This is coming together now. Most tricks are in there and it's repetoire is large, even barrel rolls! Only major concern is Waps, which are difficult due to the spin part of the trick pulling the wing down and causing the kite to go off horizontal, therefore picking up a tip in the process.
The other small concern is that cometes feel horrible to execute, there's something wrong in there with the bridle, I'm sure. Looking at the bridle it seems as though the out-hauls on the LE are both under tension when popped....dunno, it just doesn't look right. I also feel that bridle tow-points are too close to the kite (short legs).

Briefly moved the centre T up a bit and it seems to have quite an effect on the axel 'shape'. Not nice, but the change was noticeable and gives me another variable to tweak later.

During the stronger waves of windspeed, some wingtip wobble was noticed....grrrrr bollox! Have to drop in those Nitros at some point?

NOTES:

*AXELS AND CASCADES ARE REALLY NICE
*KITE WILL ROLL UP FINE WITH THE 20g IN THE TAIL. THEY ARE OF EVEN SPEED AND NOT AS INSTANTANEOUS AS THE TRIDENT
*MULTI-WRAPS ARE A LITTLE MORE DIFFICULT, NEEDS LIGHT WIND BUT THE KITE WILL TRY TO WANDER DURING THE POPS
*SITS IN A TURTLE WELL ENOUGH, NOT MEGA DEEP BUT WILL STAY THERE AND CAN BE LAZIED.
*NOT SURE ABOUT 2-POP ROLLUPS, I DIDN'T MANAGE ANY AND THEY DIDN'T HAPPEN BY ACCIDENT SO PERHAPS NOT A STRONG POINT
*CRAZY COPTERS ARE REALLY NICE
*YO-FADES ARE REALLY QUITE ACCESSIBLE
*FADES GOOD BUT NOT SUPER SOLID...IT WILL ROLL OUT OR FALL OUT IF NOT TENDED CAREFULLY - ON PAR WITH A STD. TRIDENT
*540s ARE OK BUT IT SEEMS THAT THE INITIAL 'FLARE' NEEDS TO BE BIG TO GET THE FLATNESS
*SLOT MACHINES ARE NICE
*COMETES AS MENTIONED WERE THERE, BUT SPONGEY AND AWKWARD, DEFINITELY NOT HOW I'D LIKE THEM TO BE
*FLIC-FLACS ARE STRANGE. THE KITE FEELS LIKE A DEEP SPACE HERE. THEY'RE EASY IF YOU OVERFLARE THEM, BUT OTHER WISE A LITTLE WANDERING
*FRACTURED AXELS WERE OK BUT THE KITE NEEDED TO BE DOMINATED HERE WITH SHARP POSITVE INPUTS
*BACKSPINS ARE FINE BUT CASCADES NEED MORE CAREFUL ATTENTION
*DEAD-LAUNCHES OK
*WAPS AS MENTIONED ARE AN ISSUE
*LAZY SPINS ARE THERE AND IT MULTI-SPINS VERY NICELY
*JLs ARE PRETTY GOOD
*PRECISION IS VERY NICE INDEED. GOOD CLEAN TRACKING, SHARP CORNERING. STANDARD SNAP-STALLS WERE CLEAN AND TIP-STABS WERE CONTROLLED AND QUITE PRECISE. VERY WELL BEHAVED IN STALLS - NO LUFFING.
*TURNING CIRCLE IS NICE
*BARREL ROLLS ARE THERE AND CONSISTENT ONCE INITIATED. CAN BE STARTED FROM A BACKSPIN LIKE THE DEEP SPACE )
*INSANES ARE QUITE EASY.

All in all it was the best session with the '7' class protos so far. Lots of decent flowing freestyle. The frame still feels loose and lacks bulk, just feels too light for a standard, wishy-washy like trying to spank around an UL.


Back at the lab, rebuilt the bridle with longer legs taking the towpoints further from the kite. I just think that they were too close and the whole comete thing might be aided by this change. POI has changed slightly because of this and is now slightly higher and a tad more inside (see photo "7B1 After reframe and rollbars.JPG" - red circled area)."




I became a little bored of testing 7B1 and decided to drop in a couple of Skyshark Black Diamond Nitros (BD Nitros) to the lower leading edge, just to see what they were like. The weather was predictable at that time of year, so here's an entry after that initial session:

"9/Mar/07
Re-framed 7B1's LE's with the BD Nitro spars.
Went out mid-afternoon in some pretty strong wind hoping it would die down towards evening. It did.
In the wind these spars seem to do what they were designed for, I noticed no wingtip chatter even when it was pulling my arms off. Impressive, wonder what they'd be like in the Trident?
When the wind settled down to a low breeze I got some proper flying in and have to say that the kite feels much nicer with these spars in. Can't put my finger on it but definitely flowed more smoothly."

And a later session:

"27-28/Mar/07
Out over these two days in some very nice smooth and light breezes.
The kite is truly excellent in these conditions and is a pleasure to fly. More successful Waps prove that the trick is consistently do-able but requires a greater degree of finesse.
It's clear that the BD Nitros have made a marked difference to it's behavior. So, comments from the 9th about the kite flowing more smoothly are very true as it's extremely good at sustained sequences of tricks with a fade stability that's handy for getting you out of trouble near to the ground; like the Trident Light. I would prefer it to sit a little deeper in a Turtle for those inclined, so will probably try shifting the T up a little more and see what I can get away with before the negatives creep in.
Now have to start thinking about final build techniques and graphics. Making a full-blown test model would be a good way of checking how it fairs with the bulking-up process.
If anything, it's a damn nice kite that I'm loving even if its wind range is predominantly low.
Sweet.
Centre-T is currently at 26cm and it's notable that raising it has a deadening effect on lazy multi-spins."


Some time was spent trying to figure out why cometes were so lumpy and Wap-do-Waps were so poor. Eventually I realised that I'd been using 20g of tail weight for far too long. After dropping the tail weight the Cometes and Waps improved dramatically. The final Talon has very little tail weight. That 20g seemed to be anchoring the Wap-doo-Waps at the spine and making it too easy for the input-wing to be pulled down. It is also notable that excessive tail weight can hurt cometes.

It was pretty obvious at this point that the Talon was taking shape but I needed to finalise the finish and the sail graphic.

Sail graphics are fun to design, but a nightmare to realise, especially using my desired approach. My technique, as I've already described, is to design the graphic on a 2D screen that represents a 3D image, in other words I design what it will look like when it's finished and built up.

The Talon graphic started out as all straight lines but this quickly became boring and looked like a whole load of other kites. So I hit the curves once again and things developed.

At one point I had a graphic that looked like an orchid. I 'flashed it' to Wendy and she said it looked like a flower. Job done. 'Orchid'. That's a cool name for a kite, I thought.

I messed around a bit more with that orchid idea and eventually found myself with the Talon design. I spent hours colouring this crazy set of panels in so many ways and I didn't 'save' any of them! It was a very flexible sail design capable of being changed in so many ways that it was hard to see a common theme, just different 'themes'. I loved it and pushed on to the process of realising it, which is of course, lots of hours of work. However, I did notice that there was a common theme in the design, that of 'claws' or 'talons'. Even the centre of the kite in certain themes looked like a finger with a sharp nail. "Talon" seemed the only name for the kite. And so it was.


CREATING THE GRPAHIC (again!)

For me it's a case of having an image on the left of the screen which is the original 'built-up' look. On the right (separated at the spine) is the flat/empty sail half. Into this empty half I'll start re-creating the image in its stretched/skewed form.

Once it looks OK, I'll colour it and print a hard copy. Folding the paper along where the standoffs are and rough sail depth produces a miniature kite-half that can be visually compared to the left-of-screen original design. Any problems are noted on the paper version and it's back to the computer to fix those problems.


Doing this about ten times results in a very accurate flat representation of the sail graphic and is the reason why the Talon, for example, looks exactly the same as the colourizer image you see. Once this process is complete, the graphic-half is scaled back up to 100% size and the individual panels are isolated.

I do as much as possible in digital form and prefer to add my panel overlaps in the computer. This is so that the final printout of any panel is immediately usable as a cutting template.

As previously stated, any panel that overlaps another panel needs to have an overlap (for me) of 4mm, equaling 8mm in total when the two panels are aligned. In the computer I'll use a small vector line that is exactly 8mm long when printed. Each overlap will have a new set of vector lines traced around it using this virtual ruler. This is a tedious process consisting of many albums of music in the background! But, once the work is done, these images can be merged down into JPG's and printed out for use as templates.

Here's what the Talon tip looks like at this stage (complete with mini virtual ruler!):
NOTE: The original curve (centre-line) was produced with a bezier curve, but accurately matching another bezier curve along side it is frustrating, so I chose to just use varying resolutions of straight vector lines.



I made a test build in blue. This is the result of lots of hard work because you are testing the concept of a final build, so everything has to be in place, every detail, as best as possible.



I tried it out and it was nice; very similar to the 7B1 proto. However, I spent some time trying to lose the idea of a wingtip piece. This is a pain in production so if I could lose that bit it would be a good thing. I went out a lot in April 2007 testing the BD Nitro as either higher in the leading edge (with a wingtip piece), or lower in the leading edge (no wingtip piece). Sometimes twice a day, just to see what the difference was, good or bad.

The weather at this time was particularly good and greatly accelerated the testing process. I realised through testing that the BD Nitro really was at it's best higher up in the leading edge. Darn it! Oh well.

I then moved on to make a Final Prototype that incorporated all the new tweaks, just to iron out any last things before production. I built this one, which is all over my website (purple) and set to work on the bridle.



I'm not great with bridles, but I try hard. I knew that the Talon could Barrel Roll and Backspin with the best, but it was really an 'either or' situation. It was either a Barrel Roll machine or a Backspin machine. I had to find a balance.

To get there I made a bridle that was adjustable in small increments. I'd already concluded that the Talon bridle was sensitive and that the 'tipping-point' between good, flat Backspins and easy-entry Barrel Rolls was fairly fine. Messing with this bridle narrowed things down to a good compromise.

I first flew 'The Purple One' at our Rougham Kite Festival in the UK. I chose to go on the Sunday because the wind was light, a little too light but it was better than rain and ballistic winds! I hadn't flown in smooth, open wind for a long time and it was really great. My flying site, where the Tridents and Talons where tested is actually a truly awful place to fly kites, with only a 40 degree window of smooth wind! It was a good day with the kite and some nice feedback from fliers.

Looming on the horizon was the Cornwall gathering at Crantock Beach, the place close to where Tim Benson lives and some of the Trick or Treat DVD was filmed. It has become an annual pilgrimage for us now, and a fine long weekend of enjoyment in a place of such beauty. I decided that Crantock would be the last thing I did before making the Talon available. A chance to take some nice photographs, perhaps some video, and last minute testing on a group of great trick fliers and fine people.

Before going away to Cornwall I knew that a materials order was needed, but I still had not decided upon what lower spreader spar to use. The 5PT was OK, but I preferred the 7PT because it's weighty bulk improved pitch performance without sacrificing too much else. I A&B tested these configurations over and over, at one point I thought that the best idea was to sell the kite as 5PT and keep 7PT as my personal preference. To be honest, 5PT is quite enough but my ultimate decision of 7PT had an influence on the kite that had not yet shown itself in testing....wind range.

It's really weird that most of my later Talon testing was fraught with the dilemma of selling a kite that was really only any good in very light winds. The irony is that my final decision to use 7PT spars as a lower spreader made the kite into a robust high wind design whilst maintaining it's low wind performance. This was not tested, it was fed back to me by initial customers. In other words it was a genuine surprise to me!

Cornwall was of course a great weekend with a few nice photos taken and some bits of video footage of myself and another top UK flier. When we returned home I set about editing the limited footage to make a half-decent promotional video for the Talon. I'd had a lot of experience in audio work so converting to video was quite easy and the end result was good enough. I avoided any irritating copyright problems by using a piece of my own music in the video, which seemed to feel right and had some nice audio cues to match the visuals.

Talon Promo Video


PRODUCTION

After returning from Cornwall I really don't think I stopped making kites for about 3 and a half months. When I did it was only to replenish prefabricated parts I'd used in readiness for another onslaught. I was very busy and the Talon had in fact proved to have 'saved my ass' in kite making terms.

I loved working on the UL Trident and had learned a lot from that experience. It wasn't long before my thoughts turned to an UL Talon. Just prior to another annual festival definite, Brighton, I'd cobbled together an UL Talon using the original 7B1 sail with Dacron leading edge and modified frame. It was light, yes, but lacked momentum and 'thrill factor'. I started adding tail and wingtip weight to invigorate it.

Over the next few weeks it was tested and a proper sail was made with ripstop leading edge material and limited trailing edge reinforcing. I really assumed that a 5PT lower spreader would be the logical choice compared to the Standard's 7PT. It's a natural drop-down. I was wrong. Testing everything proves to be really beneficial in the long run. No more photos from this point, my camera's CCD died after Crantock due to the well documented Sony CCD problem!


Here's my journal entry that really is the UL Talon:

"4/Aug/07 - UL REFERENCE POINT


Sorted kite out ready for another test hopefully later today as the evening wind drops. Taped in place the wingtip weights from the proto and taped in place a 5g weight in the tail. Also glued the U/S sockets in place as they are quite loose and sliding upwards causing the upper aspect to change.

Went out and flew for 2.5 hours.

Here we are in REFERENCE POINT territory!

Found yoyos to be too quick and snappy so I changed the L/S down to a pair of 3PT's I'd prepared earlier.

Holy crap! What a kite. This is not just nice, it's really bloody nice. Flew for 2 hours barely stopping it was so good. The change in L/S spar dropped 10g off the weight and it was noticable as the evening wind faded. Great drive in very low conditions, but wow, such a fluid freestyle kite is present. Fantastic flying that I really enjoyed. Now that's a reference point.

Now need to experiment with different spine carbon. I don't like the 5mm Structil spine as it's very loose, spongey and the ferrule is bending really really badly. Perhaps a 2PT for super-weight-loss, or maybe a 3PT. They can be reversed for testing; i.e. fat end in the nose or fat end in the tail.

Came home and did some weighing. 3PT weighs in at the same as the 5mm Structil so this is the prime candidate for testing, upwards or downwards. Fat end low is preferable to me as it may help to reduce tail weight, is stronger, and easier to add a tail-Nock to.

One evening and a huge advance in UL testing.

It really was the best fun I've had with a kite for ages.

Fantastic.


So, ULE P90 - LLE 3PT (with p90 centre piece) - U/S 5mm Structil - L/S 3PT. Tip weights (yet to be confirmed, weight-wise), 5g Silver Steel in the tail. That's it with a Standard bridle onboard and a 5cm brass ferrule at the Centre-T.


This is the kite. Anything else is just better or worse."


When you get this excited about your day of testing, you know you have something. It is important and that gut-reaction about the session is essential to considering that that particular configuration is something that should be noted as special.

I did try tapered spine in both upward and downward configurations, but it just didn't feel right so I went back to the 5mm Structil. One thing I noticed in testing was that the UL Talon was quite willing to do a Crazy Copter, but very unwilling to wrap round into a Yo-Fade. I decided to test a composite upper leading edge spar that was mostly P200 with a piece of P90 further up. I thought this might aid the momentum in Yo-Fades and make the trick easier to perform on the UL.

This is the UL configuration I took to the Bristol International Kite Festival, where I flew it quite a bit. The change had effected the kite in more ways than I was comfortable with. Yes, it made Yo-fades more achievable, but it made the kite heavier and provided less 'Wow factor' than the original reference point. It disturbed the balance that was nice.

After some post Bristol testing I decided that the kite was too much fun to risk destroying for the sake of one trick. I went back to the reference point and figured I had it nailed. I did play around with the bridle for a brief time, but it didn't work out so I just kept the exact same bridle as the Standard that I'd already been happy with.

One thing that did appear as a problem on the UL was that every time I did a Crazy Copter the sail would collapse. I realised that the lower spreader was disconnecting, so the only solution was to increase the length of the spreader ferrule. It worked, but hey guys, test every trick you know on your design!

I held off announcing the UL Talon for a while because I was still busy making Standards. I'm always looking forward to the next opportunity to fly the UL in some smooth wind, it's lovely!

Since it had become apparent throughout the year that customers were liking the Talon wind range, I figured there must be a good vented kite in there somewhere. In October '07 I started by framing an old test build in some heavy spars that were all stuffed with heavy carbon. My thinking was to make a really heavy frame and get this frame right before attacking the sail with venting holes.

I gave up quite quickly on the vented, simply because going out in 18mph winter winds in the UK is not much fun. Trust me! My idea was to pick this up again seriously once the weather changed to summer strong winds with long days of testing in warmer conditions when you can sit down on the dry grass and not get a wet butt!

SUL ??

Weird thing is that my attention turned to the idea of making an even lighter version of the Talon, a SUL. In Jan '08 I set about reducing the weight of the UL by 50g, entirely on paper. I ended up losing nearly 70g on paper! I built a test version but at the end of the build I'd gained 20g from somewhere and was back to my original 50g loss. I've flown the SUL once to date and it was....interesting. It needs to be more than interesting to charge money for, so I'll play around with this thing a bit more I think. Fill the gap between the real job of making my first decent vented kite. I don't really think freestyle flying exists in this wind range, but I've seen some of the world's best put on a pretty good show in these conditions! I think the kite is just a small part of it, most of the performance is in the flier negating the wind speed and showing their skills as an all-round flier. I'm too lazy for all that running about stuff!

CONCLUSION

I've been really surprised at the popularity of the Talon, I really didn't think it would do so well. This is good and bad. The good is that I'm still paying the bills and drinking a cold can of beer in the evening! . The bad is one of the strengths of the Talon; the sail graphic.

Sure enough it's a thing of beauty, but that comes at a price. Any seasoned kite maker will recognise the fact that the panels are not the most efficient, in terms of fabric use. I do suffer from an above average degree of wastage. I never throw anything, and convert anything big enough into smaller panels ready to be used. However, I still have a whole bunch of off-cuts that can surely be used some time in the future. *The cogs are churning*

It's great to read all the feedback from customers who love the kite and it's build quality; all of that has been a huge amount of work in a relatively short space of time. I'm no ego-head, the good feedback just makes me go 'Phew!'. It was all worthwhile.

Even though I'm just one guy doing everything, even the kite bags (I hate making them! ). I try to treat my customers as best as possible, after all they're spending a lot of money on a kite; it has to be worth it and they deserve my full attention. If John Doe needs a spare LLE spar for Sunday and it's Friday afternoon, I'll run around like crazy to make sure he gets it next-day! He helped me, so he deserves it.

WHAT'S NEXT?

Don't ask me, I just work 'ere!

SUL is....ya know, interesting. Vented? Well it deserves a shot but I really have to go to town on the airflow through the kite with more effort than I did with the Trident vented which was good, but not good enough.

One thing is for sure, 7A1, the lil' ball o' fun is definitely worth experimenting with some more. It's crazy!

I'm not overly keen on making another new sport kite at this time. There's a load of great designs out there and to actually ready myself for a change in direction I'd have to fly more of these kites and get a taste for their benefits, then perhaps add my own take on it.

Frankly, it would be great to come up with the next Revolution (kite). However, innovation is difficult. The Airbow tried, but was dropped by people before it flourished. There is scope in Andy Wardley's vision of a 4-line freestyle kite, but not from me at this time.

CONCLUSION

"Thanks to all my kite friends and customers for supporting me (especially Bryan Beasley ). You guys are the reason I can continue doing what I don't consider to be work. No more must I crawl my way through traffic like a lemming or watch the clock until I can go home! It's a great thing to work for yourself and even better if you can do it from home. The best thing however, is when you love that work and every customer is a friend.".

Priceless

Happy flying,

Mark, Wendy & Abbie.