Kites: Soaring Spirit

We have developed a kite we call the Soaring Spirit. It is a hybrid based on the square diamond, a Hata fighter kite and a dragonkite. We love the graphic opportunity it gives us. This one is based on a graphic symbol for a feather commonly used in ancient designs in Soutwestern US. Two feathers are placed back to back at the ordinal points of the compass, north, south, east and west. It is a centuries long tradition in the SW to paint your door and window frames in a teal color. The tale is that it keeps the evil spirits out. So I used that concept and created an eye in the center, an eye of the good spirit. It is as if the eye of the spirit has a headdress of feathers on it and is looking down protecting us. The tail makes it seem to rise up to the heavens; hence the name Soaring Spirit.

It is 11 feet wide and 75 feet long. Cross spars are 505's and the spine is 554's. To get a scale of the kite, here is a photo of Carveth sparing it with his daughter, Carla, supervising.

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I've also made smaller versions. The bear is a special symbol to the American Indian, a symbol of strength and courage. The arrow is a heart line, a source of life or "breath" of the animal. In this kite, the heart line is portrayed as lightning to emphasize the power of the bear and equating it with that of the power in nature's lightning.

This one was made to be packable in my backpack so I'd always have a kite with me. Width is five 5 feet, the width of the fabric as it comes off the roll. It is 50 feet long. The spars are 18 inches, the max length that would fit my backpack. I use A20's for sparing. Wind has not been a problem with the light weight spars for as the wind picks up the kite tends to dump it out the back tipping more parallel to the ground.