Again these dimensions have been derived from the materials popularly available at the time. Other subclasses of stunt kite have emerged including high wind 3/4 kites typified by a 125cm leading edge or trick kites with a 150cm leading edge. Since many commercial kite makers will want to avoid the extra manufacturing process of cutting spars and / or want little waste as possible many commercial kites adhere closely to this. Typically the waste cut off from the upper spreader is ferruled to the tail end of the spine to give a spine length of around 1m. Typically the leading edge and lower spreaders are made from 82.5cm spars (a hangover from the early days when kites were sparred in carbon fibre arrow shafts) giving a leading edge length of 165cm and a wingspan in the region of 8 feet. Mark Cotrell's 'Standard' was a little broader but in reality the standard stunt kite is now typified by a single spine delta sport-kite with the now ubiquitous A layout frame. Any sail batten, stand-off, cross strut or bridle arrangement may be used.Any swept wing stunt kite planform allowed. Paraphrasing slightly, he proposed the following as a guide to the production of a "Standard Class" stunt kite: In 1990, in his book Swept Wing Stunt Kites Mark Cotrell put forward the idea of the standard sport-kite. It might be useful to describe a 'standard sport-kite' so that comment can be made on the effects of changes to this generic design. Conversely if you want to change something about the way a kite flies, it is not possible to change just one thing and get the desired result, myriad small changes in a number of areas are usually required. Life is never that simple though, every change no matter how small has a multitude of effects in many areas of the kite's behaviour. Now life would be really simple if it were possible to bring all that together in some neat formula. Talk to experienced kite designers and they will often tell you that a large part of what they do is based on a developed instinct, a kind of 'feel' which comes from flying lots of different kites and associating the differences in shape with differences in flight.
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