Hargrave Replica at Royal Park

At Royal Park during our November 97 fly was Lenneke Cayley, a fourth year Aerospace Engineering student at RMIT who has been researching Hargrave's box kite. This includes a background study of Hargrave's aeronautics and the box kite itself, as well as building a replica and testing it with respect to current aeronautical principles.

At the November fly we were fortunate to be able to see the replica box fly. As you can see from the photos, it is a full scale replica of one of Hargrave's kites. It flew very well, and as this was the maiden flight a second line was placed on the nose of the kite as a way of controlling it. By pulling in on the nose line the kites attitude could be changed and the kite would start heading towards the ground quite gently. Leneke spent a lot of time producing a very good replica. The shaped wooden spars and cambric sails would not have looked out of place on one of Hargrave's original kites.

For those who have Internet access, Leneke’s email address is s9408593@boomerang.aero.rmit.edu.au

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