Kite Ferries and Para-Fauna

• Kite Ferry - Standard
• Kite Ferry - Lifting
• Para-Fauna

Kite Ferries

First Attempt - Discarded

My first attempt at building a kite ferry was according to the plan published by Jochen Herz. The special feature of this ferry design is that it uses a shaped, spinnaker-like sail, thus dispensing with most of the sail's frame as well as any sail retraction mechanism.

It looks good in theory, but in practise it has a number of drawbacks:

• The sail's angle of attack needs to be precisely adjusted to suit the line angle.
• In gusty winds the sail tends to flap and in extreme cases may fold up completely.
• Like all sails based on exploiting drag it is not suitable for kites flying at high elevation - which rules out most of the kites in my collection. The ferry will either not rise at all, or it will pull down the kite as it rises. In either case it is impossible to achieve high altitude.
• The ferry does not reliably return after releasing its load, because the retracted sail still produces a significant amount of drag

Second Attempt - Success

Later I came across Anthony Thyssen's kite ferry page. Anthony had the brilliant insight (so obvious, in retrospect, yet I have seen no prior references to this type of ferry design) to use a sail based on an Eddy kite, thus endowing the sail with a lifting capability. Now that I come to think of it, this is comparable to the Cody man-lifting system: Cody's system also used separate kites to tension the guide line and to actually lift the "payload".
The advantages:

• ascends very steep lines; in fact, vertical ascension is possible
• reduces lift requirements on the kite, since part of the ferry's weight is supported by its own sail
• no adjustment of sail angle required; the sail is self-adjusting

So I have replaced the sail on my ferry with a new version based on Anthony's plans. It performs perfectly, rising smoothly and promptly returning after releasing the payload.

Para-Fauna

At the moment I have a single intrepid para-bear willing to participate in my experiments. It weighs approx. 100g and uses a standard 10-gore parachute calculated with the very handy Java gore calculator by Thomas Dorf Nielsen.

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Initially, I simply placed the bear in a little cloth bag; the opening was secured by a ring connected to the ferry release mechanism. This was functional but not very stylish; also, there was a danger of the bear getting fouled up in the shroud lines.

My current improved version features a proper chute pack with static release line. I'm rather pleased with it. Packing the chute is a bit more work, but it looks a lot more professional; foul-ups are also less likely.