I love kites. This is an awesome outdoor activity and play for kids. So I am not talking about little dinky kites, I am talking about big kites that have some power. Add some skates or skis or just play with them on the beach and they are a lot of fun.

I built these kites mostly for playing in the snow, or on ice with skates. They were a blast. I also tried to build a kitewing, based on the pictures I saw on the internet, and although it was half a success, here in north east ohio, we don't have mountains, so I could not really use it for skiing downhill, then flying over some cool terrain. It was still an awesome kite

The red-white kite I have to say is built that if the center spar is removed, it can be used as a sail on the dinghy or the kayak. In essence it is a lateen sail then. I sailed with that kite many times and it is the simplest coolest sail for a kayak or even the dinghy.

This is a 3m parafoil kite I sewed up from nylon from a local fabric store. Back then I did not realize that the leading edge can not be that wide open, because the moment the wind speed drops, the kite deflates. I am very, very much tempted to build another one with the correct intake gap. Perhaps one day. I also built a 5m kite similar to this, but I can't find a picture of that at all. That was a real tractor and pulled hard.

Since then I also built two NASA kites. The one picture here is I believe a 2m kite. I have to find someone to take pictures of the big one. The fabric for these I ordered online and they are ripstop nylon kite fabric. Very nice to work with them. These are really, really fun and they pull like a locomotive, they pull very very hard!

This is another NASA kite I made from left over scrap fabric of other kites and sails. The size of this kite is about 4+ square meters. Pulls nicely, but has short lines, which I have to replace eventually.