Select to expand quoteRagzilla said..
I'm really interested in the kite building workshop!!
any info or dates if / when you do another one??
if there is interest we could set one up, would need about 7 people
That video of the 10m "strutless" griffin clearly had the shadow of 3 struts in it so I call BS on that one. Having said that, I'd love to have a 13 or 14m Cloud type LEI kite that'll fly in 10knots and can relaunch from the water.....
I made a bunch of kites in the early days with the intention to working up to kitesurfing kites. I also did countless repairs on ram air foil kites and a few repairs on LEI.
Sewing is not that hard to learn and is very useful and satisfying. It's great to be able to repair stuff and make custom stuff. It's quite an interesting branch of engineering. Almost everything you may have learned in wood and metal working applies to making stuff out of fabric.
Designing kites is much harder (especially bridled foil kites). The number of inter-related variables you have to deal with is massive. Profile, plan shape, bridling, tow points. Change one thing and all the other things change. It just gets absurdly complicated. Surfplan and other programs will draw and calculate for you. They won't do the actual design. That's up tp you.
The idea of building a kite for $100 is absurd. The fabric alone is more expensive than that. The real killer is all the bits and pieces you have to buy. Needles, thread, bits of webbing, dyneema for the bridles, dacron, adhesive tape for sticking seams, bits of Velcro. I have boxes of odds and ends left over from various projects.
It will also take you 5 times as long as you think. For every panel you need to make a template, then check it, then draw it on the fabric, then cut it, then sew it ... then unpick it because you've made a mistake, then swear at the sewing machine because it's jammed and on and on and on.
