Page:Kitecraft and kite tournaments (1914).djvu/63

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combined kites
55

Another way of flying kites in tandem is to fasten all kites directly to the one kite line, the line passing thru each kite after the the first. This method however requires a helper for each kite and they are placed closer together. At one of the Los Angeles Tournaments, two boys had a beautiful team of green and white kites arranged in the second series of tandem. The kites were of the triangular box and house kite order, Fig. 89, were six feet and nine feet tall, and were nine in number. There was insufficient breeze to fly them well, but it was great sport for thirty or forty boys to run with the kite line. They were strong enough to lift up a large man. The heaviest pull that was registered was a little over two hundred pounds, but in a good breeze they would have pulled over four hundred. I would like to show you a picture of them, but I failed to get one.

Fig. 104.

Fig. 105.

In the second series of tandems, while all kites are attached to the same line directly, there is an individual bridle for each kite, but in the third series we have a sort of harness that combines all kites together, so that if one tips forward, all tip forward, and vice versa. It will be seen that in Figs. 107 and 108 where a number of tailless kites are arranged in a regular series, that there is a complete harness running from the larger kite as a head, to the banner floating