Kite flying

by B A R R Y balsapilot@[EMAIL PROTECTED] Apr 19, 2006 at 05:18 PM

There have been r/c vs. full scale conflicts around an r/c club at a
turf farm located south of HFD, where the FAA has complained. No
accidents that I know of, but complaints have been lodged. The
particular club has a large "giant scale" membership, so I suspect that
many of the planes weren't as close to full scales as the full scale
pilots may have perceived.

On the other hand, I've flown r/c @[EMAIL PROTECTED]
active, open airports, with
permission. In that case, we simply used a spotter and landed the r/c
stuff until the full scale was clear of the runway. Kind of like street
hockey. If a plane appears in the pattern, someone yells "plane", and
we stop, and then someone yells "game on!" when the full scale is clear.
Other times, we'd have scanners or handhelds listening for approach
calls.

Woodstock, CT, now a private field, even lists r/c activity in NOTAMS
and on airnav.com.

Before the current stadium was built, r/c was frequently flown at P&W's
East Hartford facility. Tethered balloons were flown to demonstrate
max. altitude to r/c pilots, to prevent conflicts with HFD.



Interesting stuff. Amazing how often new and interesting things keep
appearing on RAP. Its why I keep coming back.

This kite thing has some potential. If the folks at STN all bought sturdy
kites, outfitted them with 40 pound test fishing lines, and flew them at
499.5 feet, they would be perfectly within their legal rights, and it
might make the stunt planes fly a little higher...

I did some web searches, and discovered the record for the highest a kite
has flown: over 30,000 feet. (According to the link, that was actually a
series of 8 connected kites). Here is the what the article said:

What's the highest a kite has ever flown? . . . The world record for kite
height was set in 1919 by the German Weather Bureau, when a series of
eight kites was lofted to an altitude of 31,955 feet (9740 meters). During
the retrieval of the kites, the line broke when the tension reached 145
kilograms (319 pounds).

The single-kite record is 12,471 feet (3801 meters) by the US
Meteorological Service in 1896.

In both cases, the kites were flown as part of weather observation
programs. Kites were used for many years in meteorology, but today
balloons, airplanes, and satellites have replaced them, and the kite
altitude records still stand.

Go fly a kite!
http://www.sct.gu.edu.au/~anthony/kites/
http://www.aka.kite.org/
BRThe history of kites in meteorology:
http://www.total.net/~kite/meteor.html

(E-zine: THE LEARNING KINGDOM http://www.tlk-lists.com/join/

On 2006-04-19, Skylune wrote:
I did some web searches, and discovered the record for the highest a kite
has flown: over 30,000 feet. (According to the link, that was actually a
series of 8 connected kites). Here is the what the article said:

Going off on a commplete tangent (I like doing that), our main method of
launching gliders here is really a big, manned kite (the glider being
the kite of course). The principle behind winch launching a glider isn't
that different from getting a kite airborne by reeling the line in (or
running backwards a little way) to give it some airspeed. Of course, we
don't have a guy reeling in the winch wire at the other end, but a 4.2
litre Jaguar engine! (And the video is at
http://www.alioth.net/Video/Winch-launch.mp4 if you wanna see how it
works)

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