My first kite

This is my first home build kite, a Sanyo Rokaku Hakaku. Which is basically a "double Sanyo Rokaku. Rokaku means 6 sided, hakaku means 8 sided. It was built by Aldo, painted by me. It depicts a "Dragon Ball Z" dragon holding a dragon ball (left claw). We used to love watching that show on Sunday mornings. 2 hours (!) of sweet mind numbing entertainment. Untill the cable company cancelled the Cartoon Network channel. Grrr...

Aldo decided to build a double Rokaku beacuse he wanted to experiment with a two line Rokaku. It actually worked pretty good but now we just fly it with a single line. An added advantage of a double Rokaku is that it has more surface to paint on :-) Aldo had already experimented with building kites using tyvek. He passed the bug on to me :-) We've come to be known as "team tyvek". Which is kind of silly because we haven't got that many tyvek kites.

Tyvek is a great building material, it's fairly cheap, well... less expensive than kite cloth. Which allows for a little experimentation. Best of all, you can draw on it! I prefer using cheap acrylic paint. The cheapest paint I can get because that kind contains the most glue which is really important if you prefer your image to stay put.

Tip: after you finish your drawing put your kite in the sunshine for a good couple of hours. This "bakes" the glue into the fabric. It really helps.