Kitebuilder.com

[kiteguy]

Um, use plastic gallon size milk jugs. Filled with water they weigh about 8 lbs. 6 of them being held with a kite 50 lb kite string is VERY uncomfortable.
(Even 3 of them dangling from a 50 lb kite string is more than I like to do.)
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Dave Ellis
Kites + Kids = Education

[marty]

Reminds me about a saying that I once heard, "A pint is a pound, the world around."

I used a fishing scale way back when to measure the pull. I was very surprised to see that what I thought was a lot of pull really wasn't that much. I think it has to do with the angle of the pulll. We are more used to lifting straight up rather than pulling down at an angle (unless you work out doing pull downs). My almost 8 foot rokkaku pulled about 40 pounds in 10 mph wind (measured at ground level).
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Gentle breezes...

Marty Sasaki
Arlington, MA USA

[CJQ]

HI guys I think doug was intrested in evaluating more technical applications pretaining to kite constructions rather than how strong a pull a particular kite developes. What was interesting was the coments Bill made about pull and feel of line tension. As flying experience progresses the flyer through instinct learns about the amount of load or pull a kite will produce and what line to select for a given wind. Great observation Bill.Flight time is a good instructor. Sounds like you have a handle on it. Back to Dougs intrest ( I think) I would like to know things like if there are 8 stiches per inch what is the pull out lbs per inch of fabris compared to lets say 10 per inch or 5 per inch. With adheasive or not. In three layers of 3/4 oz fabric ( hem ) how much stronger is a 1/4 in. groumet than a 3/8 in gromet. So much to be learned! Doug comment on this. Is this your objective?

CLIFF

[Doug LaRock]

Right on Cliff. I think it would be interesting to evaluate things as you mentioned. The tensil strength of different fabric, or seams, or tab pull out, or line strength with different knots,or thread size, or gromet pull out in different fabrics, or,or ,or?? Any way I would like to measure up to may be 300lbs or more. I was digging in my junk and I have a 100 psi gauge that is rated at 1/4 % accuracy and marked in 1/2 lb incraments. So if I build a little hyd cylinder with 3 sq in on the rod side the gauge reading would be times three. I will probably build something in the near future.

The idea of using a game scale to measure line pull sure seems good for the price. Mounted between the anchor and the flying line you could monitor pull in different wind speeds. It has been my experiance that most people over estimate pull. A kite thats making 50lbs of line pull is all most impossible to holed by hand. My theory when flying a kite of any size is use plenty heavy line because the kite doesn't care if its lifting and extra pound.

Another area I would like to explore sometime is anchor pull out strength
as in different style and different sand conditions. O well that one may have to wait.