by Servaas van der Horst and Nop Velthuizen
$21.95. ISBN 90-6868-052-8
THOTH Publishers, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
96 pages, lots of color photos and drawings and
some really nice cartoons
This is the English translation of a completely rewritten and vastly extended version of 'Stunt Special' from the Dutch magazine Vlieger (Kite), as it appeared in April 1989. At least Nop is well known as one of the people from the shop Vlieger Op in Den Haag and as "crazy" buggy pilot.
The book is completely devoted to stunt kites. It is divided into 3 sections, "contents," "construction plans," and "appendices." It contains plans for 9 stunt kites: shuttle (a variant of the well known Ace), speed wing (a copy of a German kite), team-light (a featherweight variant of the hawaiian), standard-200 (sort of spin- off), kwat (a quadliner with the shape of two combined hexagons), speedfoil (an extremely fast cousin of the English flexifoil), sputnik 1 and 2 (enhanced versions of the paraflex, a sparless German kite), gizmo/cicada (two Dutch variants of a modern French design "Big Brother") and dykehopper (in the text the authors admit that "if you really think that you have mastered the art of building stunt kites, then this is your test case"..(whatever Nop will say with this....).
The first section deals (like any other kite book) with the history of kites, kite material, lines, different types of kites and some basic sewing techniques. Different from some other books, Servaas and Nop also explain different bridle adjustments, grips, control bars and harnesses. If you are new to quadliners, you even find some good information about steering this beasts. Some pages about team flying, training and figures lead to the presentation of the plans in the book. Additionally to a lot of comprehensive pictures, you find also some really nice cartoons in this chapter.
The plans for the kites seem also to be comprehensive and clear. I am just building a speed wing, and there are absolutely no problems with the instructions. As already explained, there are plans for 9 different kites. Only the speedfoil, the Gizmo/Cicada, Sputnik and the dykehopper seem to be new designs. What is missing at some places are references or hints to the original inventors of the "old" designs.
In the appendice there are additional instructions on how to build a kite sack, a folding device, foam grips and whiskers. There you can also find a short listing which can be used to calculate variations of the profiles for the sputnik with the help of a spreadsheet program.
When I ordered the book at our local book store, I had to wait three months for it to come. But when it finally had arrived, I found the book very useful, with some new plans, clear instructions and some, let's say, unconventional, cartoons. In accordance to the normal phrase in "KiteLines": Not only if you are a real kite enthuthiast, this book may not be missing in your personal library.
(Review by Bernhard Malle, December 1993)