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Zippy8
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Sturdy Designs' Épée

Tue Sep 07, 2010 6:21 pm

Just pictures to start with. Busy for the moment. :wink:

Image
Image

Image Image
2.2m wingspan, weighs around 290g with 20g of.... hardware.... at the base of the spine. Nothing too unconventional about the design, maybe a little wider in the keel (ie; inner standoffs set quite wide). Nice build details - nose looks really tidy - but a few things that are fine for a prototype that I wouldn't hope to see on a production kite (the wingtip tensioning line is cutting into the sail quite badly).

Flying performance TBA subject to the whims of the Finnish wind gods. Anyone got a goat they don't mind having sacrificed ?

Mike.
 
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kitegem
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Re: Sturdy Designs' Épée

Thu Sep 09, 2010 7:53 am

Very nice.

Looking forward to a flight report.
 
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stuartF
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Re: Sturdy Designs' Épée

Tue Sep 14, 2010 10:13 pm

Zippy8 wrote:
Anyone got a goat they don't mind having sacrificed ?

Keith or Vee could perhaps donate a sheep :badgrin:

Stuart
the lunatic is on the grass
 
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Vee
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Re: Sturdy Designs' Épée

Thu Sep 16, 2010 9:39 am

We love all our sheep and would not send them to sacrifice :badgrin:
Love Veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Needs to fly more, now that I can.
 
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Zippy8
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Re: Sturdy Designs' Épée

Mon Sep 20, 2010 2:06 pm

Well I've had the kite for a while now, flown it as much as I can and it looks like that'll be all that I can fit in for a bit. Given that no bugger else has said much on this subject.... :P

Looking at the kite it does have quite a wide set to the standoffs and a wide turbo bridle too.
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A little unusually the bridle attaches to the spine below the centre T à la Prism's Zephyr. I'd love to know what this is meant to do on either kite.
Image
As mentioned it came with 20g. of weight in the tail. I reduced that after a while for reasons that I'll go into.
Image

I really can't say that I've taken to this kite very well. It doesn't help that it has virtually no presence on the lines - almost no pull or feedback. Now I'm not looking for a kite to be able to support me whilst I lean back at 45°...... but I find it helps me when I can get a sense of what the kite is going through. Given that it's a quiet kite too then all I've got to rely on is what I see and sometimes I don't see straight. This is very much my prejudice but it affects the whole experience for me.

I found that I could get it to do most "stuff" that I can do (after a while) but I was frequently overdoing the inputs or mistiming them. It seems quite eager to rotate (in all axes) and that lack of feedback really wasn't helping me moderate my pops and yanks. You really don't need to muscle it about though. With the 20g. of added tail weight it pitched fast and kept on pitching even when I didn't really want it to any more. Cut back to 7ish g. it was better (for me) but it was still easy to lose if left alone for too long. Single pop, multiple rotation efforts tended to mess themselves up. I wasn't able to get a Flat Spin that I'd think worthy of the name and I still couldn't pin down a really tight Fractured Axel-to-Fade - the Épée constantly rolled out immediately or pitched past the point where the Fade settles down. It's almost certainly in there somewhere but it's a little knife edge for my my tastes.

A few times I did get quite a nice little sequence going but I found that what I was doing was hitting what I planned on until the kite wandered off a little and then I had to improvise around it to get it back fully under my command. The idea seemed to be to keep it moving with small, fast inputs and don't leave it alone for too long with slack lines.

All in all I think that the bridle~tail weight combination could do with some work to calm the kite down and make the performance more accessible. As it stands I don't think it has the repeatability that I'd look for in a commercial kite. Construction wise it's well put together but the tail weight simply looks out of place and the holes that the wingtip tensioning lines run through are showing signs of wear already. I don't know how much of a prototype this still is though.
Image

With time on the kite and a dollop more talent :wink: it'd be a nice enough kite but as it is it's firmly in the "try before you buy" camp.

HTH :?

Mike.
Last edited by Zippy8 on Mon Sep 20, 2010 4:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
 
don0017
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Re: Sturdy Designs' Épée

Mon Sep 20, 2010 4:03 pm

Not to be a picky wart, but, that's not a reverse turbo bridle, just a standard turbo (according to your pics)
 
berkeley64608
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Re: Sturdy Designs' Épée

Mon Sep 20, 2010 4:05 pm

reverse turbo bridle.....LOL

great review...
 
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Zippy8
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Re: Sturdy Designs' Épée

Mon Sep 20, 2010 4:08 pm

don0017 wrote:
Not to be a picky wart, but, that's not a reverse turbo bridle, just a standard turbo (according to your pics)

I've become so used to writing "reverse" before "turbo/dynamic bridle" it's become automatic #-o Edit: I'm not kidding either. I've managed to write that the Cosmics have reversed uns too. No idea why though. :-k

Of course you're right. Edited. Ta muchly.

Mike,
wow.... people read this some of stuff !!!
 
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Will S
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Re: Sturdy Designs' Épée

Mon Sep 20, 2010 4:37 pm

Thanks for the input :)

Still a work in progress, I was just looking for some input like what you've given me. It gives me a bit more specific stuff to work on in the field.

A lot of the construction details are not set yet. I use prototypes to test out new ideas, and often times there's a reason those ideas aren't seen on many kites.

The dropped inhaul connection helps stabilize it some in normal flight while still letting it trick fast. So the kites a bit less likely to just randomly fall on its back with a bit of slack as some very pitch happy kites are. Not sure I like it, but I found that I got along with this kite better set up that way.

By the way if/when I do get this kite to a happy point I will send it around to all y'all again. I suspect that I'll be changing just about everything on this kite before it's done. As it is, this is the 3rd frame combo, 8th sail shape, and who knows how many bridles I've thrown on these things. So I'm quite happy continuing the process. I can tell you that it's miles beyond what it once was though.

Will
 
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Zippy8
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Re: Sturdy Designs' Épée

Fri Sep 24, 2010 8:27 am

It turns out I did get some more time on the kite. Never trust a meteorologist. :-(

I put it back (mostly) to the 20g. tail weight and avoided the very lightest bridle settings. More familiarity with the kite has certainly helped with some issues which I had but not smoothed out all of them. For one thing the minimum wind speed to get this kite into the air is quite a lot less than the minimum wind speed to get it working properly. It's not one of those "impressive light wind performance for a Standard kite" deals. Give it enough oomph and it improves a lot.

But it's still an overly pitchy kite for my tastes in any conditions. For a recreational kite it can get a lot less fun when the kite falls out of a trick because of this. As a fr'instance... it's not hard for a Lazy Susan to wrap itself up on exit or Backspins to just sort of fall over themselves unless you're careful (which I rarely am). It does mean that Yoyo's are a doddle however.

Now I really don't think that the world needs yet another does everything quite well kite. I'm all for a bit of personality in a kite - I have an Element and a Cosmic TC XS after all - but I think this one could do with a lot more user friendliness and a better compromise in the bridling just to move it away from the knife's edge a little.

I'm off to work... NOW !!!... so I'll move it along when I get back in early October. Who to ?

Mike.
 
berkeley64608
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Re: Sturdy Designs' Épée

Tue Sep 28, 2010 5:38 pm

I flew your Sabre this past weekend. Neat kite. Had a number of people thinking about getting one. Does this epee kite fly like the Sabre?

Is the epee more of a radical styled kite? It looks interesting just wondering what its geared for? Does it taz? Yo-fade? Ect..

wondering....
 
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Will S
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Re: Sturdy Designs' Épée

Wed Sep 29, 2010 1:48 pm

The epee is far more radical than the saber. The saber is designed as a comp kite, while the epee will (hopefully) be an all out freestyle kite. I'm trying to make tricks a lot more forgiving/flowing than they are on the saber.

Easy taz machines and yo-fades are on my list of requirements.
 
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Zippy8
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Re: Sturdy Designs' Épée

Thu Dec 02, 2010 1:10 am

Zippy8 wrote:
I'll move it along when I get back in early October. Who to ?

I've still got this BTW sorry 'bout that. Need a name and address.

Mike.