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Eileen's Kites

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Single-Line Kites

First childhood experiences are almost always with a single line kite. You either find a good place with sufficient wind to launch without running, or you found that you were encouraged to run until you got the kite far enough aloft so that it would catch the upper breezes in order to keep it aloft. Once in the air, you had to maintain tension on the line. With sufficient wind and tension and you could easily let out more line to get your kite higher. Of course you were always limited by the length of line you had available, but I never remembered getting to the end of my line.

There are several kinds of single-line kites, from diamond and delta-wing to complexe box kites. As a child, my kites were the diamond style, but I grew to love flying again with my delta-wing. I later purchased a delta-box-wing, which combines both the delta design with a simple box-style construction. For single-lline kite flying, it is my favorite. After I became interested in dual-line kites, I found that I could stack my diamonds on a single-line easily.

Then I experimented with various ways to anchor my single lines once I had them aloft so I could launch more kites into the air. Soon I found I could make shorter flying lines on some kites and anchor them together on a single line, joined at some distance from the kites themselves and allow the single line to provide tension for each of kites. For this I had obtained a line with a very high tensile strength. I'd put one of the delta-wings on the thick line and anchor it while I launched another kite, usually a diamond. Once I determined which way the kite was going to fly in relation to the original, I could hook it to the Delta's line and launch another.

I had seen this done by only one other individual prior to that time and while I was flying my single-line kites this way, I did not see any others using this technique. I was usually quite successful with a grouping of three kites flying from the same point on the single line and the two outer ones usually "leaned" away to one side or the other from the central delta-wing. Once I get my single-line kites in the air, I usually like to try a stunt kite pair to see how the wind will hold for them.


Sources for my pages include:
  • Baker, Rhoda and Miles Denyer. Flying Kites: Simple Step-by-Step Kite making projects. Edison, New Jersey: Chartwell Books/Quintet Publishing Limited. 1995.