From Newsgroup: alt.folklore.computers
On Sun, 6/21/2026 7:27 AM, Mr. Man-wai Chang wrote:
On 6/21/2026 3:57 PM, Nuno Silva wrote:
Now that's to home safety like "What could possibly go wrong?" is to
engineering.
Engineering is a job. Keep it in the workplace!!
A home should NOT be a laboratory nor a factory.
You've led a much-too-sheltered life, if you haven't
been constantly making things.
I once built a kite, that was 12 feet high and 9 feet wide.
The tail on the kite was 50 feet long.
It took a 30MPH breeze, to get that airborne. The first
day, I couldn't get enough breeze to do it. But the
next day, I didn't have to run with it. I figured this is
great, I'll have no problem getting this up in the sky.
After a harness adjustment, away we went.
Well, what do you notice when a thing is that big ?
It's dragging you along the ground. You can't hold it back.
You're running out of field... You have to dump the kite.
And just at that moment, the kite decides to become unstable
and it's heading for the ground at warp velocity.
I had to give a "giant pull" on the string at the
last moment (I knew I was in trouble on the trajectory).
The kite cleared a power line (11kV) by only about six inches :-)
It was never my intention to be over the adjacent street
with the stupid thing. It started out just fine
over the field I was in.
One of the spars broke on impact. The other spar is still
in the basement back home, as a piece of scrap lumber.
That's how we learn things. By building stuff.
I can confidently tell you, not to do that :-)
Scaling a kite is OK, just not that much.
It was just my luck, a windy-enough day happens by,
for the launch. This was spring kite-weather. If the wind
had not been that high, I would have concluded it would
never get off the ground. Well, it got off the ground :-)
Paul
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
