OCTOBER 2O15 MKF CLUB OFFICERS INFORMATION CLUB FLY-INS CHAIRMAN - NEWSLETTER EDITOR We hold club fly-ins each month (winter Bill Souten included) at various sites. These are informal 52 Shepherds Court events and are a great way of meeting other Droitwich Spa MKF members. Worcestershire, WR9 9DF MEMBERSHIP CARDS 07840800830 [email protected] Your membership cards can obtain you discounts for purchases from most kite retailers I am sorry but I don’t do ‘Facebook’, in the UK, and gain you entry to events and If you want me either email or phone.....I’ll get back to you asap. festivals free or at a reduced cost. Please keep SECRETARY them safe. Sam Hale PUBLIC LIABILITY INSURANCE 1 Ryecroft Close, Tean, All fully paid up members are covered by Staffordshire Moorlands, Public Liability Insurance to fly kites safely for ST10 4JA 0789 500 9128 pleasure anywhere in the world. If you injure [email protected] anyone whilst flying your kite the injured party may be able to claim on the club insurance for TREASURER up to £5,000,000. The club has Member-to- Frank Wood Member Liability Insurance. A claim may be 48 Borough Street refused if the flier was found to be flying a kite Castle Donington dangerously - e.g. using unsuitable line, in Derbyshire. DE74 2LB 01332 811030 unsuitable weather; flying over people, [email protected] animals, buildings or vehicles. This insurance does not cover you for damage to, or loss or MEMBERSHIP SECRETARY theft of members' kite/s. Rachel Stevens BUGGIES, BOARDS & KITESURFING 20 Cunliffe Street Unfortunately we are not able to cover these Edgeley activities within the clubs insurance policy. Stockport. SK3 9LG 0161 4290078 [email protected] ‘MKFNEWS’ DEADLINES FOR 2016+ WEBSITE MANAGER ‘COPY’ PUBLISHING MKFNEWS Peter Bindon DEADLINE DATE 31 Arran Way th 25 Mid January Rothwell 1 14 December 2O16 Leeds. LS26 0WB 01132 828771 25th March 2 Mid April 2O16 [email protected] 15 2O16 24th June EVENTS CO-ORDINATOR - MKF NORTH 3 16 Mid July 2O16 2O16 24th Mid October 4 17 September 2O16 If you could help fill this post please contact the Chairman EVENTS CO-ORDINATOR - MKF SOUTH The MKFNEWS is pleased to print articles and photographs submitted by any interested party. All submissions are reproduced at the Editors discretion, however the Club cannot be held If you could help fill this post please contact the Chairman responsible for any views or comments contained in any such articles. studied kite shapes and their flying qualities Paul E. GARBER from information covering a period of 30 centuries. Target Kite Shortly after the United States entered the war, Garberm bow a lieutenant commander in the Special Services Division of the Navy’s B ureau Popular Science ( May 1945 ) of Aeronautics, heard Admiral John H Towers remark that one of the things the Navy needed Target Kite Imitates Plane’s Flight most was an improved moving target to speed up the training of aircraft gunners. by Garber tucked that remark away in his head. Arthur Grahame At that time, he was helping with the production of millions of model airplanes Drawings by Stewart Rouse needed by the armed services for recognition instruction. The Army and Navy have reached back 3000 years into history for something to improve the Garber kept thinking about targets. A kite might shooting eye of their air gunners. do. It would be cheap, easy to produce. But if it was stationary in the air it would be an easy It’s a kite --- one that performs maneuvers no mark for even a novice with a gun. What was kite ever performed before. When the war is needed was one that could do aerobics and over it is going to be the delight of kids from 7 dodge bullets. to 70. A quarter of a million of the kites have already been produced for machine gunners Working in hours mostly stolen from his sleep, to rip apart, and production is still going on. and assisted by Lloyd Reichert and Stanley Potter, fellow kite enthusiasts, Garber perfected This kite will dive, loop, and bank sharply. It will his target kite in a little less than a year. plummet like a stricken airplane hurtling earthward with its engine at full power. It will He used as a basis for his kite --- which is recover with all the ease of a pilot hauling without a tail --- one with a bowed cross spar back on his stick, and race for altitude. developed from a Malay kite half a century ago by an American experimenter, William A. The Navy’s kite --- it was developed by the Eddy. Garber was after instability; this kite had Navy and then adopted by the Army --- is it. called the best air-gunnery target in the world. It was perfected by Paul Edward Garber, who When the wind presses against the covering probably knows more about kites than anyone fabric, the lower portion of the kite becomes a else and who might be called the champion sort of vertical keel. The bowed spar becomes kite flyer of five continents. a weight carrier similar to that of a bird’s wings. Lateral balance can be destroyed and As curator of aviation at the Smithsonian restored simply by altering the air pressure on Institution in Washington DC, he was custodian one side or the other of the face of the kite. of the museum’s kite collection, which ranged Garber added a fin near the lower end of his from weird oriental kites representing gods and upright mast to augment the keel surface. To demons to the box kite capable of carrying a this he attached a rudder, controlled by the man aloft, invented by Lawrence Hargrave, of kite’s operators by means of twin flying lines. England. When he was satisfied with his product, Garber Garber knew that kites, notably a type demonstrated it for Captn Luis de Florez, Chief invented by Alexander Graham bell of of the Special Devices Division, who in civilian telephone fame, had exerted a profound life is a successful inventor and consulting influence on early airplane design. He had engineer. Captn de Florex watched the kite’s spectacular aerobatics for a few minutes. ‘That’s fine’, he said, with a cheerful disregard for navy red tape. ‘Get 1500 made up’. Demonstrations to other Navy officers and to the Army were enough. The Garber kite was adopted. The kite must be good. Gunnery officers are elated when their students hit it once in 50 shots. What the target kite will do to peacetime kite flying is easily imagined. Appropriately, it is being manufactured for the armed forces by A G Spalding and Bros, makers of athletic equipment. structure and control mechanism in my device which provide a much more speedy and maneuverable target. With my apparatus, the kite can be made to describe loops, vertical or horizontal figure 8s, steep dives and climbs, ordinary turns, and combinations of these maneuvers. The operator may stand in one place on the ground if there is sufficient wind to fly the kite, or he may ride a vehicle or other moving platform in order to provide relative wind to fly the kite or in order to tow the target past a long line of guns while maneuvering it. The simplicity, positiveness, and ease of operation of the control means makes it possible to operate the kite from such a moving platform. It is, accordingly, the major object of my invention to provide a maneuvering aerial US Patent # 2,388,478 target apparatus for anti-aircraft gun practice wherein a maneuvering kite and controls Target Kite therefore, operated on the ground, cooperate to furnish a rapidly and completely ( Cl. 244-153 ) maneuverable aerial target. This invention relates to kites, and in particular Another object of my invention is to provide an to those which can maneuver from the ground, improved apparatus for controlling a together with devices for their control. maneuvering kite from the ground by the kite strings. Kites have been used for sport as well as for utilitarian purposes for a great many years. It is another object of my invention to provide Some have been designed for great lifting an improved apparatus for controlling a power and some have been designed more in maneuvering kite from the ground by the kite regard to their beauty or oddity. Several types strings. of maneuvering kites have been known, among those being types which could be It is another object of my invention to provide controlled from the ground. Among the latter an improved apparatus for controlling a type are those illustrated in the Patents # maneuvering kite from the ground by the kite 1,744,529 and 1-908,325 to DeHaven. strings. My invention relates to maneuvering kites of Other objects will become apparent as the the type which may be controlled from the description proceeds in connection with the ground by the operator. The kite and control attached drawings, wherein: apparatus is specifically designed to provide a maneuvering target for anti=aircraft target Figure 1 is a perspective view of the kite in practice, and the kite is rapidly and easily operation and showing the operator using the maneuverable, making it particularly useful reel to control the kite. and successful for that purpose, however it is also suitable for signaling purposes or the like and for sport. While the aforementioned patents to DeHaven disclose kites having some degree of maneuverability, there are differences in Figure 4 is a side elevation of the reel shown in Figure 1.