Worlds Largest Kite

 

The renowned Portsmouth International Kite Festival took place once again for the 12th time on Southsea Common, Southsea, Hampshire on Saturday 23rd, Sunday 24th and Monday 25th August and was host to the first public flight and record attempt of the New Worlds Largest Kite.  This record attempt is in the process of being ratified by The Guinness Book of Records.

Click here for pictures

See Peter Lynn Pose for the camera! - Click here for the Video

The ‘Big One’ Flies over Southsea, Portsmouth

The Portsmouth International Kite Festival (August 28th and 29th) was delighted to have been chosen by the owners – the Al Farsi family of Kuwait, as the location for the first public flight of the ‘Big Kite’.

 And it was big!

The Big One, built by Peter Lynn of New Zealand, is the new contender for the Guinness Book of Records ‘World’s Largest Kite’.  Measuring some 42m by 25m (1050 sq m) it is 50% larger than the current record kite – the Megabite, which is also made and designed by Peter Lynn.  During the weekend an official attempt was made at the record, the kite flew for the required 20 minutes and witness statements were taken to confirm this.  However, Guinness need a newspaper report backing up the claim and unfortunately the dimensions were incorrectly calculated by the local newspaper who made the kite far small in square feet than it should have been!  Hopefully this can be corrected to satisfy Guinness.

Some data about the kite:

The laid out flat size of the Kite is 42m x 25m (1050sq.m.). While flying it becomes a little smaller than this because of curvature of the edges when inflated,  about 900sq.m. By comparison, previous record holders have been 635sq.m and 535sq.m

The Kite took 750 hours to make, weighs approximately 180kgms and used 2500sq.m of specially loomed 50gm/sq.m ripstop nylon.  The main flying line is 25 tonne breaking strain.  Uniquely, this kite has a safety take down system that causes the kite to invert, deflate and descend to the ground- in seconds.


When inflated, the upper skin is 7m away from the lower skin - 3 people could stand on each other's heads and not reach the top.  More than 1000 people could comfortably stand inside while it is inflated (and on the ground of course).