It seems like someone has found Charlie Brown's "kite eating tree" in their past.
Speaking of flying things like kites.....ya ever do this
I bought everyone in the family a dollar store kite a few years ago. It was great fun on a perfectly breezy day. After an hour or so the grand children got bored, then our young'uns took the little ones home. I was left with twelve perfectly flying kites all tied to my pickup bed rails.
So I figured I'd see what they would do stringing each of them in a series. I had two lines of six with each kite at a hundred feet apart. It was pretty awesome actually. A lot more pulling force than I expected from plastic kites around two feet square.
After a while I got bored and left them flying tied to my truck. Both lines were up for well over three hours.
Blade helicopters makes an MSR that is serious fun ready to fly indoors or outside with little wind for $60. It's a mini fixed blade that works surprisingly well.
Buy a spare main and rear rotor, flybar, and landing gear. I've crashed mine hundreds of times. Bought one for my dad and one for my brother for Xmas and they all still fly, although not quite like new.
When I discovered delta kites, as a kid in Falls City Nebraska, I found I could get them really high. I bought 5 mile rolls of kite string. With a home made theodolite to measure ( Thanks Estes Rockets! ) I got them over 5 miles high.... and lost a lot of kites.
I learned that you can, in a good smooth wind, get them to fly fairly high, then cut the string and the weight of the string acts as a keel and they just go up and downwind. Needs a real long string,
I lost several kites that went that a way dragging their strings. Those don't count, since they surely got tangled some miles away and crashed. But those half dozen or so I got juuuuuuussst right? Since I was using more than 10 miles of string...... may still be up there.
Anyhoo....
Take a look at these engines.
They're for PPG's ( powered paragliders ) and the Thor 200 Evo looks especially nice in a HP/weight sense. Like the counter balancer a lot.
Btw, the reason that a kite can fly away is the wind gradient. They generally grow stronger as you go up, at least in the lower regions where friction with the ground slows the wind.
If the kite is in a uniform wind, the string will fall below it and blow back behind it, destabilizing the kite and it falls.
with higher winds at altitude, the kite is faster than the lower miles of string, and they act as a drag. The kite remains stable, and just keeps rising.
I assume they all eventually destabilized at high altitude, or one of the jillion eddies in the atmosphere, we chased them for miles and they kept getting smaller.
How did you track a kite five + miles up? I loose sight of mine at about a thousand feet.
At night with a light on it would be cool.
I made a three stage "A" motored rocket by rolling a paper book cover, stuck in a hand carved styrofoam nose cone, taped the seam and cut three intersecting winged butted sections for the motors to kick each other out with a '0' chute timers. It was a foot long, the diameter of the A motors, with a ribbon recovery. It always went out of sight within seconds. First stage got it to about three hundred feet, the second to about eight hundred feet, and the third stage always disappeared into the sky. It's acceleration rate multiplied as each new motor fired and the weight of the used motor dropped off.
The winged first two motor stages would flutter back to the ground and usually about four minutes later the fluorescent ribbon would come back into sight depending on the winds. It made twelve successful launches. It never came back on number thirteen. It was the quickest, highest flying rocket I had ever made. It out ran all of Estes best speed rockets that any of my buddies came up with.
Built with Pre-preg Composites, molded to shape and cured in an oven. Like a giant model airplane.
The technology, molded "plastic", let's you make shapes that allow the air to flow by with minimal disturbance. Using carbon fiber, kevlar, & glass, they are able to use different weaves like traixial fabric, and to tailor the number, and orientation, of the layers to match the needed strength.
Using factory support, you build it yourself with a lot of help. Starting with 2 weeks at the factory learning the techniques and working on every system.
NOTE: I don't post the Lancair site here since Google says it's hacked. YMMV, Browser Beware.
The Lancair line of planes has an interesting history.
The original Lancair 235 was built to run the 120 hp, 235 cu. in. engine. ( duh )
It handled like a fighter, went seriously fast on not much power, and was a bit of a handful.
A small wing to make it fast, and a very sleek, streamlined shape that means it just doesn't want to slow down, and did I mention the small wing that means you fly fast all the time? Need a long runway and you land at 100mph.
So builders put bigger engines in them.
They went & landed even faster.
So the company made a bigger stronger model and made it more stable.... the Lancair 320. ( 320 cu. in. duh )
then the Lancair 360,
And the builders put bigger engines in them....
Then the IV ( 4 seater, Fassssst ) IV pressurized......
Fast landing planes and pilots that don't get to fly often enough, Plus heavier than "stock" airplanes... ( with higher landing speeds )
AND..... these things got a rep for killing their owners, like H2 Kawasakis and certain little Brit sports cars...
Then the new 2 seat Legacy ( and they finally got enough tail & wing on it to be stable at 400 with 600hp..... )
They race them at Reno, and are doing around 390mph....
The 3/4 scale WW2 planes are built from wood, fabric covered, with a common structure, faired to shape with stringers, different wing tips and cowlings.
The P-40 wasn't fabric covered, but it's got the right general shape. A Hurricane version would rock. Tails surfaces are a little large in proportion, but that's required for stability in the lighter/smaller format.
Loehle bought the rights to the WW1 planes from another company that folded, and improved them. They are built from aluminum tubing & fabric, and use the same approach of common internal structure and different shapes for the outside.
I'm told that the companies pinhole filler is very good stuff for 'glass and Carbon Fiber. As with all paint related products, it's designed to work with it's own family of products, and the top coat products use urethane thinner... so do your homework...
It was the quickest, highest flying rocket I had ever made. It out ran all of Estes best speed rockets that any of my buddies came up with.