In its second decade, one of the Drachen Foundation’s self-assigned mandates is to develop programs at all levels of the educational spectrum to interest students in the challenges and rewards of kiting. With the assistance of DF Board members, the foundation recently designed a pilot project for a university-level kite research program, being tested this year at the University of Washington.
DF Board member Dave Lang worked with Professor Bob Breidenthal of the UW College of Engineering, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics to develop a “kite problem” that would interest and engage advanced students of aerodynamics. They settled on this challenge: to make a kite that flies sideways. DF Board member Joe Hadzicki flew into Seattle for a day to join Lang and DF Director Ali Fujino in introducing Breidenthal and the students to kites. They used Hadzicki’s own design, the four-line Revolution, among other kites (a rokkaku and a Sutton Flowform) to illustrate different flight characteristics.
The students chosen for this project, Davud Kasparov and Alvaro Pantigoso, also stopped by the DF Study Center to pick up materials and learn more about the history of experimentation with kites. This is graduate student Kasparov’s first experience with kites; Pantigoso, a senior in the program, grew up building small children’s kites in Peru. Their first step will be to gather information about developments in kite technology over the past hundred years, according to the scientists’ mantra, “First, learn what others have done.” Brainstorming, sketches, and then creation of a computer-simulated test model will follow. When Kasparov and Pantigoso have created their kite, it will be tested in the University of Washington’s commercial-grade wind tunnel. Breidenthal, Kasparov, and Pantigoso will submit an account of their results to an aviation research publication.
Both Kasparov and Pantigoso chose the University of Washington’s Aeronautics and Astronautics program because it allows students to undertake technologically advanced work in a variety of areas. Clearly, each revels in the kinds of challenges that prepare graduates to design supersonic business jets or work for NASA. Case in point: when DF staff member Renea Nielsen asked them to explain a simple aspect of the wind tunnel, neither could resist pulling out calculators and pencils to convert dynamic pressure to miles per hour. “We’re such nerds!” Kasparov exclaimed.
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Breidenthal & Fujino |
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Lang
Hadzicki
Breidenthal, Pantigoso, & Kasparov
Inventor flies invention
Hadsicki & Breidenthal
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