Kite Making - The Airbra part 1

In the beginning....

Airbra in flightAnother project - this time based on Andy Wardley's Airbow kite. I saw the pictures released on various Internet sites, including the video's of the prototype flying and I was, to saw the least, intrigued! As the Airbow hadn't been launched I decided that I would "have a go" to produce something similar - no mean feat given that:

a) I'm not that experienced in kite making techniques, and

b) I've never seen a real live Airbow.

So I started thinking and planning my own version of the Airbow - called the Airbra (well it does look a little like a bra - at least in my mind....).

Why did I want to do this? Partly I liked the shape of the Airbow, but I also wondered how it compares to the Deca - there are a number of similarities between the 2 kites - 3-D shape, bowed spar, no discernible leading edge. And I thought it would be a good learning experience. Which in hind sight has been shown to be true! As well as bloody frustrating.....

Planning

I tracked down every picture I could find of the Airbow - even the logo from Andy's Airbow website - printed them out and tried to work out what the kite is actually like.

I quickly worked out (OK guessed) that the Airbow was fully symmetrical - each wing is the same length and height. I also guessed it would be somewhere between 200 & 250cm in length (turns out the official Airbow is 225cm - so not a bad guess!). I also noticed that the final launch version had a multi-panel design (the prototype appearing on the videos had just 4 panels - one for each wing surface) that either was truly 3-D, or gave the illusion of being 3-D.

After a few rough sketches to try and work out the proportions I built a basic paper & straw model of the kite. At this point I made the following assumption:

The sail was flat, and only deformed into the 3-D shape by the spars.

[Airbra model & cut panels] Dropping the paper Airbra it seemed to do all the Airbow type things I had seen on the videos - like spinning and stuff - so it seemed like it was all right,

Next phase was the cardboard templates - as we had been keeping all the old cereal packets for this very purpose I had quite a lot. But not enough to make a whole wing (i.e. half a kite). So I made a quarter wing since the kite is symmetrical I can reused the quarter template elsewhere.

I also wanted a sail pattern that was nice to look at, not like the proper Airbow (I wanted no confusion in anybody's minds that this was 'my thing' ), and an easy way of telling the up from down - the left from right (it can be hard with symmetrical kites working this out - think of the Papillon and the Kwat).

Construction

• [colour template & card template] I started the actual construction by drawing round the card templates for each panel onto the ripstop using a pencil (any soft one). I then added the relevant seem allowance - which for this project I chose 8mm for the internal seams and 12mm for the leading/trailing edge. I generally drew all the panels on the same colour then cut them out together.
• To cut them our I decided I would simply use a sharp craft knife. Hot cutting is better, but does take much longer. Given I haven't had any problems with my Revolution (which was also 'cold' cut) after nearly 10 months of hard use I felt that 'cold' cutting was going to be fine for this project.
• Note to other would-be-kite builders: buy a long ruler, not the 62cm one I got! For any length longer than 62cm I had to use a piece of wood to guide the knife
• I simply used my usual glue (Bostick) to glue the panels together then sewed them using a straight stitch and a simple seam (nothing fancy here....)
• I built the kite into quarters, then made the two separate wings, then finally attached both wings together - but more on that later.
• To aid knowing which panel was supposed to be attached next I labelled all the cut panels with sticky labels. This meant I could keep checking that I was sewing the right piece in the right orientation - surprisingly difficult!
• [panels with check labels]
• I kept checking the overall 'fit' of the pieces of the sail by laying them out in my living room both before and after sewing - as seen below (and actually lots more pictures I haven't uploaded...).
• [Half of panels on floor] [Panels laid out]
• I finally decided I wanted a splash of colour on one Wing tip to help work out the orientation of the kite - I ended up cutting away the tip and replacing with a red panel.
• At the end of this stage I ended up with the 4 quarters - now I had to work out how to assemble them into the finished kite sail.

Links

• Airbra Info
  • Airbra Gallery