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3.5 Stunt Kites to Make and Fly



Original Dutch title: "Stuntvliegers, Bouwen en Besturen"

The original is in Dutch, but it has been translated to English.
I have not read this book, so I have taken the liberty to include
what Joost Wesseling (joost@paramount.nikhefk.nikhef.nl) wrote
about it:

Joost Wesseling:

The book mentioned above was first published in Holland in May
1991. It starts of with an extensive overview of materials to use
for building kites, discusses techniques like sewing etc. It
furthermore discusses flying stunt kites. The "build it yourself"
section contains detailed plans of 9 types of stunt kites:

   1. Shuttle, a diamond type of kite, quite like an Ace or
      Acroracer, easy to build and fly.
   2. Speedwing, the well-known German stunter.
   3. Teamlight, an ultralight Hawaiian.
   4. Spin-off, well known.
   5. Kwat, a peculiar design that consists of two adjacent
      diamonds. It is flown with four lines, cheap and easy to
      build,
   6. Cicada/Gizmo, they resemble the Phantom, VERY fast and
      accurate. The Cicada is somewhat larger than the Gizmo. I
      have built a Gizmo and it is one of the best stunters that
      I know.
   7. Speedfoil, a very fast cousin of the Flexifoil.
   8. Sputnik I and II, two parafoil-type models, I is used when
      you need a lot of "pull", while II will fly without many
      problems in a storm (I tried one in force 7 wind).
   9. Dykehopper, a Dutch design which seems to be know as "the
      beast" because it is very hard to build, harder to tune
      properly and  even harder to fly. Given its reputation I
      never tried building one.

Many people in Holland use this book, together with the German
book by Schimmelpfennig, as guideline when building their own
kites. I have never spoken to anyone who was disappointed.

Publisher    - THOTH Publishers

ISBN         - 90-6868-052-8

Rumour:

The authors are working on a new issue of the book; or better to
say on a new book, to be issued in May 1994. Bundled with the
book there will be a stunt kite flight simulator running on a PC
- not a toy but a real tool to design individual or team
routines. (Simo Salanne, November 93.)



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