Kite Flying
This was done long ago by my friend Rick Spano:
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His kite "flew" by means of a small fan blowing on the scene. Given that my layout was portable, there was no practical way to mount a fan nearby. I needed a mechanical equivalent.
I began with fine brass C-channel bent by hand into an irregular loop, soldered together, and polished; it's soldered to a piece of bent tubing fitted to the gearhead motor shaft. Then I made a "tone arm" dual-axis pivot from telescoping tube, and a stylus from bent wire. A spring keeps the stylus tracking properly.
For visibility, the kite is made from fluorescent green plastic label stock, with a tail made from a piece of beading thread. The string is 0.004" stainless steel wire attached to the pivoting end of the stylus rod with CA. Note that it took several tries: I spent days trying to get it right, and finally came to realize all of the mistakes I was making.
Mistake one: I kept trying to make the kite line too long. This created all sorts of issues, including excessive wobbling, touching down on the ground (where the kite tail would get hooked semi-permanently into the weeds), and wandering way off course, like into the Kiddie Train Ride.
Mistake two: To get the kite line to run relatively straight, I had to put a slight curl in the wire. This was easy enough to do—simply slide the wire between gently pinched fingers—but I kept trying to do it after attaching the kite and making the other bends, and adding the curl precisely in a specific direction is almost impossible. I needed to make the curl first, then add the kite and other bends.
Mistake three: I kept trying to bond the kite wire to the pivot on the mechanism with a big glob of CA. I needed to use a very tiny amount, after first thoroughly cleaning all old CA off the pivot. It then bonded so well that it was impossible to remove the wire without damaging it.
Once I addressed all of the mistakes, it took about two minutes to make and install a kite.
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The kite now lives on the Saturday at the Park diorama.
