Articles

  • Christmas with Peter Lynn
    It’s winter here [in New Zealand]. It’s been fairly mild, so I can’t really complain, but summer seems a long time ago. Last year I didn’t spend so much time in the seat, so when my Christmas holiday approached, I decided that I was going to ride my buggy as much as I could and jam with my buddies. I finished work on Friday, Dec. 17, 2010. I would have 18 days off and I wanted 10 rides. Not an unreasonable target if the wind blows. 
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  • World's Largest Kite
    After dallying with kites for seven or eight years, I got seriously hooked in 1983 when I walked into Reza Ragheb’s Hi Fli Kites, a store in Aurora. Very shortly thereafter, I picked up a Saturday Evening Post and saw the shocking back-page photograph of Steve Edeiken being lifted by a huge kite on the Northwest Coast. Steve’s shocking death sent a wave through the kite world and gave us sobering insight into the power and danger of these behemoths. 
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  • 30 YEARS AND STILL FLYING 1980-2010: SAN FRANCISCO, BAY AREA SUNDOWNERS
    With their signature stacks of thirteen Hyperkites pulling 40’ long tails, The Bay Area Sundowners have the distinction of being one of the oldest and most entertaining kite flying teams in the world today.
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  • ADVENTURES IN KITE TRACTION: WELCOME TO THE MAD WAY SOUTH
    The story about to be told is one of great heart. At times unbelievable and utterly mind-blowing, it has come straight from a self-confessed mad-man. He is Ashburton, New Zealand’s Craig Hansen, aged on the edge of half a century, and the record is entirely true and correct. It speaks of four men and a support crew who conquered the rugged, unforgiving Sahara Desert and its many barbs - all the while in buggies - by harnessing the power of wind as their fuel alone. It tells of determination, innovation, inspiration, and new world records.
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  • ADVENTURES IN KITE TRACTION: RECOLLECTIONS ON (ALMOST) 20 YEARS OF KITE BUGGYING
    I first saw Peter Lynn in his kite buggy in either 1990 or 1991 on a beach in Japan. My first thought was, “He’s done it, he’s found a way to get in everyone’s way!” But that was shortsighted and selfish – what Peter had really done was to reinvent kite traction, this time as a sport for thousands.
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  • THE FLEXIBLE HAPPENING
    THE EARLY DAYS Since the invention of the box kite by Lawrence Hargrave and the bowed kite by William Eddy, there has been only one man who created a major innovat ion i n unmotor ized flight . Of cour se ever y enthusiastic aviation specialist and kite-fanatic knows more people who were inventive: Otto Lilliënthal, Alexander Graham Bell, and Samuel F. Cody. From the perspective of innovation, though, the invention of Francis M. Rogallo was a real breakthrough.
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  • TO MAKE THE MOST OF WIND POWER, GO FLY A KITE
    In 2002, the Drachen Foundation awarded me a grant to perform some basic explorations in the use of kites to generate useful electrical power. This grant was originally predicated on furthering explorations of the LadderMill invention of Professor (and one time astronaut) Wubbo Ockels.
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  • Key Question Is Asked by Its Inventor: But Is It the Breakthrough Kite for Traction Flying?
    Some Greek said that if an Ox drew a picture of God it would look like and Ox. Perceptive for 2,500 years ago, I thought, and also I thought that it's time my writings became a bit less serious again. But then I thought, like hell they should, this having fun is a serious business. "I look through a glass darkly, etc." Ah, to know the future. What will be the standard kite surfing kite five years from now? The Big Question!
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  • Traction Kiting
    Samoans and other island sailors of Polynesia used kites to propel their canoes throughout the vast Pacific. (Although I have it on good authority that using kites in this manner by Polynesian sailors is a fact, I haven't seen the documentation. Grist for one's own mill and, perhaps, another article.) Because he wrote about it (we'll take him at his word), we do know that in the early 1700's, a young Benjamin Franklin, while floating on his back, employed a kite to pull himself across a pond.
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  • Knotty Kite Patent Problems: Protecting Inventions in Predatory Marketplace
    Patents are a "damned if you do and damned if you don't" for kite designers. They take huge amounts of time (which I'd rather spend kitemaking), they are horrendously expensive, like more than US$ 50,000 for just a few core countries (plus at least the same again in a defense fund to establish credibility), and, even after considerable investment, won't necessarily be granted or be defensible because of legal vagaries.
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