With tuppence for paper and strings
You can have your own set of wings
With your feet on the ground
You're a bird in a flight
With your fist holding tight
To the string of your kite
(Let’s Go Fly a Kite - Mary Poppins 1964)
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On page 39 of the Cub Scout Handbook I saw I could earn not one but two badges - Science Fun and Built. And the task which look very easy - making a kite. So after I did my homework one night my grandfather and I made of list of materials according to the images for a “traditional paper kite” as the schematic in the handbook. (Today’s Cub wouldn’t build anything but would earn a badge in “Drone Piloting” as it soared and captured video that was delivered to his personal personal iPad device)
Materials:
Two light thin dowels - each approximately 36 inches long. (Pop said he would get two pieces cut to size at his work.
Two sheets of newspaper - that was easy for me to supply. We got the Daily Republican newspaper 6 days a week.
Glue - mom has a bottle of LaPage’s Spreader Mucilage (glue I called it with the red rubber thing that measured out the stuff when you held it upside down.)
200 feet of string and it noted it was available on a spool at my local friendly Cub/Boy Scout Supplies store at Franks’ Men & Boys stoe. (Seeing this in the plan really got me excited as I imagine my kite soaring about everything on our street.)
In a couple of days we had all the parts and it was building time. Pop and I meticulously followed the handbook instruction:
Draw your kite sail. Lay your paper or bag smoothly on a flat surface (if it is a piece of paper make sure it is folded in half), and mark three dots to form an isosceles triangle. …(wow this was math and science I noted)
Cut out the kite sail. ...
Build kite structure. ...
Tape kite sail to the four ends
Attach your line. ...
Make a tail.
Go Fly your kit
We finished and I rushed outside. “Huston we have a problem” would have been my appropriate Nasa message. There was absolutely not even a breeze - let alone a wind which was the key ingredient Pop and I didn’t think about. As my Grandmother Ethel would say when something went wrong…, “The best laid plans of mice and men…” She never finished this sentence and just let it hang. The most important part of a kite was in nature’s hand and the element was way out of ours. Hours waiting turned into forever as there was no wind for the whole weekend.
A couple of days later Pop came in from work and said it’s blowing and it’s time. Once again, I carried my project to our back yard. Pop said, “Let out a couple feet of string and run across the lawn and it will start to fly.” I did it. The kit flew up to the end of the string about 10 feet above my head and then made a dive at the ground. I tried again and again as the kite started to look traumatized from it’s short destructive flights. Pop shouted, “Stop…we forgot the tail!” And he went into his garage. “A tail?” I wondered just what that was. He returned with a few feet of rags tied together and attached to the bottom point of my kite. I ran again and felt my kite literally take off and tug at the line. “Let some out slowly,” Pop yelled as I stopped dashing and the kite was flying high. Higher it soared as I let out the line a little at a time. When it was really high I discovered that I could “steer” it by pulling the string. It danced back and forth. I yelled to Pop, “Look at it…this is great…we did it.” And the instant after I had proudly disclaimed our success, disaster struck.The string ran off the spool, all 200 feet was gone and so was my kite. Higher an higher it soared like an eagle until it was just a speck in the sky. I sat on the ground getting ready for a big cry - but pop consoled me with is usual remark when something like this happened. “Oh well it was fun while it lasted.” And we both started to laugh hysterically and then we went in for supper. Later that night I wondered how far the west wind carried my kite flew on its own. I imagined a kid in Iowa watching it diving toward it dystiny and then seeing that it was a kite made of a paper from Millville, New Jersey…printed a week ago.
