As a third year student industrial design, I got the assignment to make a kind of add-on to the kite, that has to be placed somewhere between the handles and the kite itself. The add-on must be functional, can have a fun factor.

We were thinking about a kind of wheel/mill –attached to the rope of your kit and moved by the wind- that dispends soap bubbles in the air. The soap would contain an ethereal oil that smells good, a repellent against a creature like mosquitoes, sand fleas… And this to avoided for example sand flea beets.

We are no experts at all, so we were wondering what it is really disturbing when you are kiting on the beach. E.g. sand fleas, mosquitoes in the air, a walker that walks under your kite even though he has all the beach to walk… and that can be prevent by sprinkling a perfume, repellent… in to the air.

Every tip, lead, comment, idea, correction… can be interesting
and is more than welcome!

Thanking you in advance!

Katrien

ayso soccer players..... find a way to make them leave.... and i'll donate a good chunk of my kiting budget to ya!


On a serious note, if you could design a camer system, that could be used on a wide range of kites (LEI, foils, or arcs) need to be light weight, and adjustable... that'd be cool... there are a lot of homebrew rigs out there, but most are heavy and bulky and have limited range... need one with low drag so it doesnt affect the kite...

as far as something that sprays, nothing will really be Functional, cuz the wind will blow it away... but bubbles might look cool given the right kite...

keep us posted, this sounds interesting!!

Hi

Bugs aren't usually a problem at least for me while kiting. When it's windy enough to kite, it's to windy for the bugs to hover around.
Good idea though.

John

Let me think... the kite is in the air, 30 feet up, down wind, about 60 feet and it is spraying bugs that are bugging me? Hopefully someone else is flying the kite up wind from me to keep the bugs at bay.......easier to use some OFF bug spray. Bubbles will just pop when they hit the kite after they get airborne.....
I like the camera mount, :bigok:

Good for you Katrien and welcome. What a noble project.

I might have an application. While cruising down the beach on Jekyll Island in my kite buggy, I often encounter flocks of Terns and/ or Gulls sitting in groups on the sand. When I approach they are of course startled and fly off often in my direction of travel but the problem is that I will often goose them with my kite lines. They get hit in the ass, squawk, maybe take a tumble in the sky with a big "WTF?" but fly off unharmed. My concern is that some naturalist or bird watching fan will see this and complain that I am a threat to local wildlife.

I have thought of streamers or something to make my lines more visible. The problem is we do not want to create more drag. Maybe a whistle or something if they can hear that, but that creates induced drag and would be annoying over time. Maybe a device on the lines that could emit the proper warning sound but is activated via wireless remote so as not to be annoying (to me and others) when not needed. Maybe something that emits sound outside of human hearing but would be heard by birds (I don't know if this is possible).

See what you think. Curious to see what others com up with. Good luck!!

seagulls hitting my lines

hey angus what may be the go is to mount roo scarers on buggy

Over here bush motorists mount whistle like devices on bumber bars and noise scares roos and gets them off the road.

Will get some and give it a test and then get back to you if you are interested.

Nocando we use them here for deer. They say they work. I have never tried them. I just drive slow because I'm old!!

some sort of futuristic wind generator that is light and can put out a lot of wind in the direction of the kite on a light wind day would be nice...
other than that, a camera mount sounds cool

hey rocfighter you dont have to drive fast to make them work

they are very effective

We could be thinking traction kites when all is needed for the project might be for a single liner.

If so, I used to like the ideas of sending a slide up the line that would deploy small chutes with candy / gum or something attached. Then they would drift down in the wind to students or kids watching from a distance. After the deployment the carrier would slide back to the kite flyer for reloading.

Depending the distance of your targets, it wouldn't have to slide all the way up to the kite. Put a stopper anywhere along the line. As soon as it hit the stopper, the chutes with the stuff would pull out by the wind.

For some reason I like things that would travel up and down the line.

Drew you could use something like this to deploy stink bombs on the soccer fields.

Quote:

Originally posted by Hardrock We could be thinking traction kites when all is needed for the project might be for a single liner. If so, I used to like the ideas of sending a slide up the line that would deploy small chutes with candy / gum or something attached. Then they would drift down in the wind to students or kids watching from a distance. After the deployment the carrier would slide back to the kite flyer for reloading.

Always a popular event at the Treasure Island Kite Festival in Clearwater, FL. The entire bag would dump candy to free-fall. Kids loved it.

Gotta love that excitement! It's almost as fun as the 'running of the bols'!:wee: Definitely don't want to disturb the shore birds(plovers)lol. Reminds me of when I was in the Air Force, flight ops wanted a recording of seagulls in distress, said it would scare the birds off the runway. I had an old civilian boss(GS14) said, "Get me a seagull, I'll put his ba!!s in a vice and record it, that ought to put him in distress!"

Dogs

Dogs love our kites . They love to mark them as their own.
They chase them in the sky. That's not so bad but if you can stop them from peeing on my kites I would be interested!

A well made adjustable camera mount would be cool!

Great project . Best wishes.

How about a Snowy Plovver teletransportation device? Beam the buggers all elsewhere ...

This really doesn't have any aspect of repelling anything but. Many of our kites require us to unhook our lines from the kite and wrap them around our bar or handles. If not careful the lines end up twisted and sometimes knotted causing some grief when setting up next time. It seems that your project doesn't state that it has to be in full use when flying just that it needs to be used anywhere between the handles and kite. So, if you came up with some sort of a retaining device (comb like thing) that would separate all your lines at the beginning and aid with the wrapping up around bar/ handles. It could somehow clip on the ends of the lines once wrapped up so that they would stay separated and when you are setting up it would leave your lines all tidy when laid out. Dunno if that would be helpful at all but for now I'll just keep untwisting the the manual way. Anything to save two or three minutes during setup is two or three minutes you could be flying lol. Just my $0.02:bigok:

Good Luck
Shaggs

there are two camera rigs that are on the market and work well camrig.com and the gopro kiteline mount http://motionboardshop.com/media/cameras/gopro-kite-line-mou...

Quote:

Originally posted by nocando hey angus what may be the go is to mount roo scarers on buggy Over here bush motorists mount whistle like devices on bumber bars and noise scares roos and gets them off the road. Will get some and give it a test and then get back to you if you are interested.

Yeah that sounds cool. Not sure what a roo scarer is but it sounds like I want one. People ask me enough questions about the bug, which is always fun, but it would be great to be able to point to something and say "Well that's a Roo Scarer, DOH!"

Yes would be a good conversation starter, if you wish will find one and send it to you

Quote:

Originally posted by thelaserman there are two camera rigs that are on the market and work well camrig.com and the gopro kiteline mount http://motionboardshop.com/media/cameras/gopro-kite-line-mou...

good call... dang!



i do like the stink bomb idea... blows down wind, soccer players are downwind... they might split :dunno:
i also like the dog/animal whistle idea.... would keep all sorts of animals away, might even warn those birds angus loves so much!

What about putting an anemometer on the lines... higher up than we can reach... and have a wireless receiver you could mount on the bar/handles/bug? That was always the gripe i've heard about wind meters, they measure wind speed at ground level, and it can vary at kite height.... that way you could also measure apparent wind speeds when crusin'

Hey Angus just found out Roo scarerers are a stores item from work, Guess what you just scored a freebie set of scarers, will msg you when I have a set to send to you.

pm sent

Wind direction in the moving buggy is different from the wind direction as seen by a stationary observer. This is referred to as apparent wind. How about something to show the wind direction as seen at the moving kite?
S

Scudley that is easily done mount some thin plastic tube to fork legs with some tape from vhs cassette cut into strips makes a good apparent wind indicator

Something to scare away people who like to sit directly under my kite at the beach. A light weight tourist-seeking missile perhaps.

Quote:

Originally posted by shaggs2riches This really doesn't have any aspect of repelling anything but. Many of our kites require us to unhook our lines from the kite and wrap them around our bar or handles. If not careful the lines end up twisted and sometimes knotted causing some grief when setting up next time. It seems that your project doesn't state that it has to be in full use when flying just that it needs to be used anywhere between the handles and kite. So, if you came up with some sort of a retaining device (comb like thing) that would separate all your lines at the beginning and aid with the wrapping up around bar/ handles. It could somehow clip on the ends of the lines once wrapped up so that they would stay separated and when you are setting up it would leave your lines all tidy when laid out. Dunno if that would be helpful at all but for now I'll just keep untwisting the the manual way. Anything to save two or three minutes during setup is two or three minutes you could be flying lol. Just my $0.02:bigok: Good Luck Shaggs

Interesting idea, however, I've seen devices out there to do just this. My question for you, shaggs, is why is it that you disconnect your lines every time? More kites than sets of lines in your quiver, or do you just like disconnecting at the end of your session? Just curious. Most people I know dont bother disconnecting their lines...

Yeah I like to leave the lines on the foils. A few months ago I experimented leaving the lines and bar attached to the scorpion with the spars still in I could pack it into the bag fully extended and managed to get it to work but it takes too muck room to store it like that in my kite corner. That and I see that same situation for my buddy when he packs away his LEI, just seems like if designed right it could save some hassle. I'm with you though if I can leave it all attached then I will. Way easier to just roll out the lines and give the bar a couple spins.

Yup, already a few line management /time savers out there...

Time Manager


Line Manager


TurboLauncher


Kite Lobster


Last but not least... Homemade Time Manager

and I don't use any of them.

Even with my TD2, I leave the bar attached. Course, the bag for that is pretty big, and it still compresses pretty well, even with the bar wrapped up in the kite. An ARC, well, thats a different story. I'm sure there is a way you could do it, but I dont know how since it's not something I really know that much about...