|
The guy over there to the left - that's me. My fatal first contact with kites was caused by the
wish to produce some photos from a higher perspective and therefore I thought it would be a good
idea to build a kite big and stable enough to lift my camera. I started reading all the
kite-related material I could get and finally decided to try to build the parafoil described in
Wolfgang Schimmelpfennigs book. I had no experience in kiting (in fact I never flew a kite while I
was a kid) and exactly the same experience in sewing. Nevertheless I bought all the material I
needed for the parafoil, my mum showed me how to sew a straight seam and two days later, the
parafoil was ready and flew great! I built a rig for my camera (2.5 kg all in all) and found out
that the parafoil which gave me the impression of ultimate pull was not able to lift the thing. So I built a lighter rig, but the only time I tried it,
there was hardly any wind. This was about 4 years ago and that was the
time the kite-bug beat me.
Since then, I built several stunt-kites, started power-kiting with the
Sputnik, bought a buggy (Scooter) and currently concentrate on building
either buggy-engines or single-line-kites although I also try to do some
tricks and indoor-kiting.
As I work together with Bernhard since several years (first during my
time at the university, now at Daimler-Benz) we both exchange ideas,
hints, templates and often compete in producing new kites (e.g. when
building the Gecko and the Pterosaur). Therefore (and thanx to the great
inspiration, discussion, information exchange and whatsoever resulting
from participating in rec.kites) I got much more involved in kiting than
I would have dreamed of 4 years ago. So I don't mind most of my friends
asking me: 'You are building another kite? I thought you already had one
??!?!' They'll never experience Aoxomoxoa.
|
