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PrintDate Submitted: November 30, 2008
Article Type: Discourse
After 20 years of Revolution Kites, Ali Fujino at the Drachen Foundation has asked me to look back and recount some of the highlights.
We all have memories of kite flying when we were kids, but instead of buying my first kite for $1.50 and seeing how many spools of string I could let out before losing it in the clouds, my first kite started at the dining room table. When I was around 8 years old, my family (three boys, three girls, three left handers, three right) sat around the dining room table with my aunt, and we built diamond kites out of paper bags, complete with tails made with a string of rag cloth bows. It was late in the evening when we finished. My brothers and sisters went to watch TV, but I was so excited to test my new creation that I took it out and ran down the middle of the street and flew it under the moonlit sky. Looking back on it now, I can still feel the visceral sensations of my first kiting experience. The cool evening air, the magically lit road becoming my personal testrunway, the shadows of the neighborhood watching my experiment unfold.
I received my Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Since I always loved to create things, I knew early on that engineering was the discipline for me. During my senior year, a guest lecturer gave a presentation on car crash equipment he had designed and built for the Ford Motor Company. Talking about how “drunks off the street” were used in the original crash tests, I knew this guy was a rogue maverick of an engineer. I promptly followed him out of the lecture hall and asked for a job. The following Monday, I was knee deep in military computer programs, sheet metal retrofits on trailers, stainless steel plumbing for jet engine starters, and vacuum forming plastic fairings for underwater sonar towing. This guy was nuts and I loved it. But some of the most influential experiences came in the off hours. We would spend hours and hours reverse engineering and building WWII fighter aircraft models from pictures out of books. I mean from scratch! Then we would bolt a motor in and throw them – crash them – rebuild – adjust – and throw them again. I developed a certain sense for subtle control of aircraft using control surfaces. Now THIS truly influenced my later kite designs. One weekend traveling down to San Diego
Page Number: 11
PDF Link: Discourse Issue