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At the MKS Retreat in February, an idea was hatched to do a cooperative tetra workshop this summer. Well, this is it. When: 22-23 July, 2000 Where: Margo’s Club House (Same location as the Post-Smithsonian KF Party, Burtonsville, MD) What: A Tensioned Sail Obtuse Tetra design by Sam Huston Sponsor: Jointly sponsored by Wings Over Washington and the Maryland Kite Society Shepherds: Drake Smith and Mike VanMeers Description: This kite will be based on a 30" wide Obtuse Tetra cell, with a tensioned (airfoil shaped) sail. It is a light wind design, suitable for 4-30 cell arrays. The sails will be polyester, internally braced with A20 fiberglass spars. For info on the Obtuse Tetra, see Bill Kocher’s article in the Summer-Fall 1991 issue of Kitelines. The Workshop: Since this involves a lot of repetitive work, we thought we would explore production line techniques. This means we will set up teams to cut spars, cut sails, make fittings, and sew forth. The goal is to make a mess of sails the first day, and assemble arrays the second day. What would be cool is a picture of the weekend’s total effort stuck together as one kite. Predictions have been made as to whether such a beast will be capable of flight. Reality will prevail. Plots will be hatched. Ideas are welcome, but variations will not be well-tolerated on the coop cells, which must fly as a unit. The Cooperative part: We will work together on components to be used by the group. You pay for the materials for whatever you take home, plus at least one more sail to be flown as part of a coop entry at the AKA National Convention this Fall. The Challenge: Bell flew some huge arrays of Tetras, but with much smaller cells than this. There is great interest in making large (hundreds of cells) arrays as a cooperative effort. Another goal of the weekend is to thrash out a suitable design for such a kite. Your talents, ideas, criticisms, and energy in this portion of the workshop will make this possible.
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