Welcome to
"The Vulture Page"
Featuring the NPW9b
I’m assuming you’ve seen my NPW Home Page for NPW’s and where
a TON of alternate building information is given for ALL NPW kites. If you haven’t, have and look and please… if
you’ve any additional suggestions, tips, or other ways of doing things &
are willing to share…. Share it with us for everyone’s benefit!! Contact ANYONE mentioned in these pages and
we’ll make sure it gets mentioned and possibly published on one of our
web-pages.
So on with the NPW9b, which is the newest
progeny of the Rogallo wing. The NPW9b
is an upstart, muscle-bound cousin to the original NASA NPW5 and NPW9. In looking for a way to make a totally “no
waste, whatsoever” NPW5, I stumbled across a way to do it… save material, and
make a kite completely out of one piece of material of ANY given width. I also found that I had independently
“discovered” a hybrid NPW9, but with a much wider center panel ~ half again as
wide - hence the name NPW9b because there was another similar kite that had
just come out on the open market. The
name “Vulture” was born of an offer I made publicly to make an eNPW5 Vulture if
someone else was willing to front the materials. I had 2 takers at the end of a period of over
a year. At that time I was heavily into
developing the newer NPW9b with several other kite makers and the NPW9b
“Vulture” was “hatched”. This “NPW9b”
ended up as a result of many ideas from other folks interested in the NPW
kites.
On this site I have posted some hints and
tips for helping you get in the air faster and easier… just as I did with the
NPW5 pages last year. Initially, the
NPW9b was an exercise in trying to save material
for a friend when he had hoped to make NPW5’s en mass for a unique commercial
purpose. There’s a schematic on how to
do that below. The plan can be used for
any of the NPW family of kites - the difference being deciding the center panel
width, leaving the upper or lower corners of the sail in place - or not.. Then it’s bridled accordingly.
This is the basic plan of the NPW9b
To the left is an inspiration I had for an NPW kite for quite a
while.. You can see the face has
changed considerably to the NPW9b Vulture because I kept playing with the eyes
and wanted to make Mr. Vulture a little more “pissed off” looking…. I also wanted to fall in about the 3.0M^2
area, or thereabouts in size. I knew it
would be larger in size than the NPW5’s for the same height, or keel length,
because the center panel seemed “pinched” or too narrow to my sense of balance
and aesthetics The center panel is now
considerably wider than any other of the NPW Family, by comparison, and the
result is considerably larger in area …
Almost a half a square meter bigger.
It soon ended up being a 135Cm tall, 2.7M^2 NPW9”b” with the Vulture
face below.
Andy Hook of the
JP’s program (with Fredrick’s profiles) is
definitely for the designer and Tom’s program is for the builder. If you intend on making this kite, you HAVE
to peruse both sites and these fully functional programs. The information to be had there is
invaluable. Note that the bridles can be
swapped from one program to the other… the sails are the same in both. See JP’s site at http://freedom2000.free.fr
, and Tom’s at http://members.shaw.ca/kiteman/
.
Also an
added feature, Tom is working one an NPW-HA.
This is basically a 9b, but has 3 center panels and bridled
accordingly. Look for the program soon
on his site below… You can see a pic of
the HA on the Vulture 9b gallery. It’s
the blue and green number just below the Vulture at the top of the page. The inventor of the HA is Jan Claes and you
can see much more on his site at : http://users.pandora.be/claeskites/page5.htm.
Enter Larry and Karen Green…
Below is the
first newly finished and unbridled prototype sail of an NPW9b “Vulture” made by
Larry and Karen. It’s similar to that
of the new, much improved commercial models of the NPW9, but the similarities
stop there. The NPW9b is fully
appliquéd, has a Cascade Bridle (less frontal line area in the wind to slow it
down), and because of it’s larger center panel, for it’s size, this little
sucker will haul your ass all over the field in a 10-15Mph wind! The first few NPW9b‘s have a 33% wider panel,
but the final units have a full 50% increase over the original on which this
design is based….
I wished I was a buggier because Mike Dooley
and I think this NPW9b style kite is a very inexpensive buggy engine. I haven’t used it as such, but Mike was VERY
impressed with it in
More time went by online chatting with another NPW phreak like
myself… Larry Green. Between the two of us the present and final
version of the “Vulture” was born, or better yet, hatched. Below, Karen does most of the tuff stuff;
Larry sews the straight runs. One can
see that the work is exquisite.
Below are some of the Vulture
Family Variants (or ought I say “Deviants”?) that came from Larry’s very
pregnant mind. Most of these have
already been committed to the needle and Ripstop.
Neat, huh? If you have any questions about
the building or sewing of these special kites, contact Larry… ( Click Here)
Here’s
the man who is basically the “Instigator” of the NPW9b, so to speak. Stelios Alexandrakis and I capitulated online
for a long time over several alternate ways of making NPW5’s and bridling
them. Stelios came up with the center
“C” or “M” bridle. I don’t know where he
got the idea, but it was just before the commercial NPW9’s were on the market.
The standard eNPW5 (I think) to the left was
the predecessor of what was to be.
Stelios added the extra bridle to the middle of the wings, (below,
right) pulled the middle harness in a bit flattening the sail considerably, and
a hot kite was born.
Stelios got the idea to duplicate the 8
bottom lines from the “A” panel of the DeJong plans and add
that extra set of lines to
the points you see below. The little white points show well on the right wing
in the middle. This flattened the sail
considerably and was very successful, but not THAT much better!! The flatter he made the sail the better it
became!!
Then Stelios dropped out for a while…
something to do with possible commercial development of his kite… I guess it
never happened because he’s back now.
Thanks to Stelios, we can all benefit from his first ideas.
Can you, at all, imagine flying the kite to the right?!! 12 square meters of converted NPW5/9!! The winds on the
Stelios’ website
is one of the most comprehensive around for guiding you to make your own Wipika
type kites, too... and the board, if you can speak and read Greek!! He has a program he has written to make a Surf-Kite
similar to the Wipika, and even shows how to make the bladders for them. Click here for his website and have a
look… There is a lot more than just kites……
Lets jump ahead several months and go to
Tom White’s home in central
Below
are a couple pix of that very first NPW9b hanging from the ceiling in Tom’s
den. This is a great idea to get a feel
for what the sail will be like when in the air.
It also allows one to even up the shrouds without measuring.
Thanks again, Tom for all the help!!
Cut to the parking
lot behind Larry Green’s place. The
fruits of those several months of emails, drawings, and general yakking has
produced the Vulture you see in these next few pix. Below is a small gallery of the first few
flights of the NPW9b Vulture. That’s
Larry on the ground.
And here’s my
latest pix of MY Vulture… Not a lot different, but the sky is blue!!
See
a Movie of the Vulture
in Flight (.avi) Want to see some more pix of NPW9 and
NPW9b’s? Click HERE for the
Gallery.
You might want to check out my
home page: NPWBill, or
another site, JustMyStuff, a kitesite dedicated to Dad for taking his
son kite flying. I cover several other
varieties of kites there… and, of
course, more pix!!
Thanks for looking…
XXX
Thanks
for looking… Best of Luck!! EMail to: NPWBill@cox.net
May the wind always BE
at your back!!