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Weekly Update: Week 4

This week was all about improving our prototype. The prototype that was made last week worked well enough but is was quite heavy. We decided to replace the chopsticks with bamboo skewers. The skewers are much lighter and happen to be a little bit longer. The basic frame of the kite stayed the same. However, the frame with the skewers did not require a second skewer to be put own the back of the center. To hold the frame together we decided to use hot glue for a stronger hold. To make the sail, we used the same type of plastic bag we used to make the sail for the previous prototype. We will start to test different plastics once we nail down a frame material and shape.

This prototype worked much better than the original. It glided much better. This could be because it was much lighter. At one point we tried bending the frame. This did not work the way we had hoped. We  undid it and restored the original shape.

Another thing we worked on was attaching a string to the kite. At first we attached the string directly to the center of the kite. This happened to be the center of mass. attaching the string here gave the flier very little control. To fix this we attached a string from the nose of the kite to the back of the kite. The flying string was then attached to this string. This gave the flier much more control.

This weeks goal is to test different plastics for the sail. Now that we have decided on the structure of the kite we need to see if different plastics will fly differently. We also need to see what factors in the string affect the flight of the kite (length, type of string, etc.)

Comments

  1. RichMay 4, 2017 at 5:00 AM

    would really help to have some photos - normally kiters (like fishermen) use the word "lines" not strings to talk about the lines attached to their kites.

    How do you measure or quantify "control" of the kite - this might be hard to actually measure, but you can be more clear about what you actually mean in terms of the mechanics and report specific observations that can be compared to future prototypes

    ReplyDelete

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