Aeronautics
You Decide
Refine Your Kite Design


Graphic of three kites

At right are several popular kite designs including (from left to right) delta, box, and delta-box.

Some cool sites to help in your development of your design are below. When you click on these sites, you may be exiting the NASA web site. These sites are not under NASA control, and NASA is not responsible for the information or links you may find there. NASA is providing these links only as a convenience. The presence of these links on any NASA web site is not intended to imply NASA endorsement of that site, but to provide a convenient link to relevant sites which are managed by other organizations, companies, or individuals.

  1. Kite Plans on the Web (note: some links are no longer working and many kites (especially cellular ones) are very complex: http://www.kites.org/tmr/planlink.htm
  2. American Kitefliers Association kite plans: http://www.aka.kite.org/?kiteplans.html
  3. See Web Quest sites as well, copied below as you saw it during the quest!
  4. KiteModeler download *: http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/kiteprog.html
    *Use only if you have extra time!

Web Quest Resources:

  1. Kite Museum: Stabilizing Principles of Flight (yes, it is incomplete): http://www.win.tue.nl/~pp/kites/fak/science/stabilizing.principles.html
  2. History and basic info on kites: http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/kite1.html
  3. Kite history, designs, aerodynamics (see science section under teachers) from National Kite Month's web site: http://www.NationalKiteMonth.org/
  4. Aerodynamic forces on a kite: http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/kiteaero.html
  5. Bridal point geometry: http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/kitebrid.html
  6. The Kite Zoo (plans and information on the number of lines and kite use): http://www.kites.org/zoo/
  7. How to fly different kites: http://www.gombergkites.com/how.html
  8. Kite terminology index: http://www.win.tue.nl/~pp/kites/terminology/kiteterm.html#aspectratio
  9. A very detailed and well written response to questions about aspect ratio: http://www.kites.tug.com/Building/msg00120.html
  10. Aeronautics in the context of airplanes and other flying things explained. Includes Bernoulli's Principle: http://virtualskies.arc.nasa.gov/main/maeronautics.html
  11. Geocities kite sites: http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/4569/
  12. Plans, pictures, and general information: http://enterprise.sct.gu.edu.au/~anthony/kites/
  13. Kite history, plans, and general information: http://www.total.net/~kite/index.html

You Decide Intro
You Decide Scenario