Taking a Flyer

When scoffers tell Dave Kilbourne, a 31 year-old Californian, to go fly a kite, he is only too happy to oblige. He flies over them in a delta winged kite that looks like a large version of a child's paper dart. "My family all think I'm nuts," he admits, "but this kite flying, launching yourself off a cliff into a breeze, has got to be the most satisfying thing ever."

Kilbourne does, literally, jump off cliffs. His avocation, shared by about 50 adventurous spirits in the San Francisco area, is a new and considerably more dangerous version of the familiar takeoff on water skis. The water skier uses a flat kite, and must remain attached to a boat's towrope, but, theoretically at least, the delta-wing can go anywhere. Kilbourne first saw one being used three years ago by a touring Australian and built a copy of nylon and aluminum. Says Kilbourne: "One day I didn't have much else to do, so I decided to hike up the hill and try the kite. I launched into the strong wind, and I could almost just hover. I was floating down the hill maybe two miles an hour. I realized then that if I had a bigger kite, I could have been flying up the hill, soaring."

Not for Kids. Last month he took his 22-ft. red, white, blue and yellow creation up in a balloon. Casting off at 9,600 ft. over Tracy, Calif., he floated from breeze to breeze for 15 minutes. That put him one up on other kiters, who often get their lifts from auto tows.

Manned kites are maneuvered by changing their center of gravity. The pilot sits in a swing seat near the center of the kite, holds a handle bar and shifts his weight, thus controlling the attitude and direction of the kite. Although it sounds simple, flying the contraptions is, as Kilbourne says, "no game for kids." In November, two kiters were killed. One, a Los Angeles beginner, died when he crashed during an auto tow. The second, a friend of Kilbourne's, plummeted 200 ft. straight down when his auto towline snapped.

Kilbourne is now trying to develop a small backpack engine that the flyer can wear to create his own thrust when the wind dies down. With a few more improvements like that, he will have invented the airplane.

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