"Peter Powell, who has died aged 83, developed
the first two-line steerable kite, selling millions worldwide and
sparking a stunt-kite flying craze.
His interest began in the 1960s when he was trying to help a young
cousin fly his new kite – a traditional diamond-shaped kite with a
string tail. “The wind was wrong either too low or too high and he was
so disappointed,” Powell recalled. “From that moment forward I became
obsessed with creating a kite that would fly in any wind”.
Two years after he began experimenting with different designs he
patented his first kite – a six-footer – with which he went for a world
record of highest-flying kite: “The lines snapped and I lost the kites.”
After that he decided to go bigger
and made 30ft kites and sat a 70-year old woman on a swing seat
suspended from seven of the kites as they rose from the ground. The
stunt was filmed by the BBC and his doughty guinea pig earned a Charlie
Chester award for providing public amusement.
One day Powell was flying one of his 6ft kites and noticed a list to
one side which he tried to correct by attaching a separate line to the
other side. It caused the kite to loop, so for fun he attached a third
line and found he could loop the kite to right or left. Then, one night,
he thought about removing the centre line and just tethering the kite
with two lines on either side: “To my greatest relief the kite controls
behaved intuitively... The lines did not lock together and the kite
[carved] arcs in the sky.”
After two
more years of hard work, in 1972 he launched the 4ft steerable stunt
kite on to the market. The kites came with a long, hollow polyethylene
tail that was inflated by the wind, making them stable and adding to the
visual effect as they performed stunts."read more here
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