Kite Design

The first stage of any design process is t

o write down what is required of the new design such as:

• What type of kite will it be? e.g. single line, stunt kite etc.
• What age is it to cater for?
• How much should it cost?
• What wind range and/or wind conditions should it fly in?
• Other flying characteristics.

Once we have this information it is time to go to the drawing board, so to speak, and start working out sail design, framing materials etc. This can take some time but eventually we will have a theoretical prototype and then it is time to build a physical version for field testing.

This is the only true test of performance and where we start fine tuning the design, each time building a new prototype until the desired flight characteristics are achieved. This can be a long process depending on the complexity of the design but eventually we will have our production prototype.

The kite now is subjected to a wide range of stress tests, crash tests and basically flown to destruction each time building new prototypes as changes are made. Once we are satisfied, the design is now ready for production, during this stage we decide on the graphics of the kite.

Templates are cut and a small production run is done usually about 10 kites. Each of these kites are then field tested to check for possible variations and adjustments made.

Every element of the production process is now written down in a production manual from cutt

ing, marking, sewing, assembly and packing. A final production run is done with the newly trained staff and again kites are field tested to check that there are no variations to the original.