The dragon kite is basically a Genki kite with curved edges, extra diagonal spars, and a windsock  attached to the middle longeron. The rest is just details, to improve the looks, and hopefully not declining the flying capabilities. Sounds simple? Yes, when the kite was finished it did, but during he building I sometimes wondered what the **** I was doing. 

I started with some basic ideas of how a dragon should look in my opinion. Yours might be different, since dragons do not exist (well... at least sometimes people tell me so) everyone's ideas are right.  Based on my ideas I made a sketch of the outlines of the kite. I used this sketch during the whole building process, and the outlines of the actual kite are a direct enlargement of this sketch, which is shown here. 
 
 

A kite with such impressive looks should be of an impressive size, so I chose the strongest carbon tube available at that time, 11 mm ,  and  based my dimensions on the strength of the tubes. Such a large kite can only be flown single-handed in light wind conditions, so I wanted the kite to be able to fly in 1-4 Bfrt. The wings of the dragon are similar to a genki kite, a proven light wind kite, hence a good stating point. Comparing some of my own kites and kite of my friends, and doing a little math resulted in the choice of a wingspan of 7 mtr. The other dimensions resulted from the sketch. Well, that is how the basic design started.  By now you probably want some real information on building the kite. If you are going to build it, do it right, it should be the star of your collection. Let your fantasy work, think of every detail a good dragon and a good kite should have, take enough time for building it (mine took 300hrs), and make your dreams come true.

Let's start with the wings, the most important part of the kite, these should keep the whole thing up in the air. The outline is as drawn in the sketch. If you take a look at the photographs you'll see that part of the wing is black, and part of the wing is green. The black parts are made out of heavy quality ripstop nylon 65g/m2 and bear most of the tension. the green parts can be as light as you  can get. 
 

The frame consists of  a spreader, three longerons, and  four diagonals. The spreader (11 mm carbon tube) is joint in the middle with a brass tube, bent to appr. 150 degrees dihedral. Use a brass tube with at least 1 mm wall thickness, thin walled tubes will break instead of bend. The middle longeron (11 mm carbon tube), which is the actual backbone of the dragon, runs from the back point of the wing to the neck of the dragon, and is extended inside the head till the nose, where it is fixed to the support frame of the head with a T-joint. Only the part between the back point and the neck is tensioned, the extended part is just supporting the head. The head should be as light as possible, otherwise the center of gravity moves to much to the front of the kite, and it will soar towards you instead of flying on a line. Therefore the extended part of the backbone is not made from 11 mm carbon, but 7 mm carbon tube. At the neck you need a joint which can hold an 11 mm tube on one side, a 7 mm tube on the other side, and which can be fixed to the fabric for tensioning. I use a brass tube, with a hole drilled in the middle for a tension line, and on the nose side a 5 cm long piece of 7x9 mm carbon glued inside 11x9 mm carbon glued inside the brass tube. If  you are really handy machine something better out of aluminium or nylon.

The outer longerons (11 mm carbon tube) have attachment points for the bridle, four points on each longeron, one at the nose side, one at the tail side, one at the cross point with the spreader, and one in between.The diagonals are all 6 mm carbon tube. All the spars are fitted in tunnels, except the extension of the backbone. This is a necessity in a kite of this size, to keep the spars at the right place. All ends are fixed with arrow nocks and sewn on loops of edge binding tape. Black edge binding is used on all edges as reinforcement and colour accent.

The body is, as mentioned before, only a complicated windsock, sewn to the wings and supported by a few spars. Use a soft but airtight ripstop nylon for all the body parts. A little stretch helps you to form fluent shapes, so don't use icarex. You can cut out three pieces of fabric shaped as shown on the sketch to form the basic body. Sew them together, but don't sew the third, closing seam yet. Do all the appliqué work you want, a nice breast, pointed finns on the back, a pointed tail (my tail point is a little drogue) and the legs. Each leg is constructed out of three pieces of fabric. Draw a sideview of the shape you want, cut it out in duplicate, and sew a strip of appr. 10 cm wide in-between the edges of both shapes to give it volume. Leave a little gab where the claw should be attached, and turn the whole leg inside out. Now all the edges are inside. When you inflate the leg the shape changes slightly, so make a small version, try it, change it if it's not what you like, and when it's right scale it up. Sew claws out of two layers of fabric. Don't bother with inflating, just fill them with some pieces of foam rubber (after all sewing is completed).

By the way, opinions differ on whether a dragon should have two legs like a bird, or four legs like a dinosaur.

When all the work on the body is done, you can sew it to the wings, along the blue spotted line in the main drawing Sew two loops of edge binding tape at the tensioning points of the backbone, on the inner side of the body. A V-shaped line will connect these points later with a bridle point on the stomach. Now you can sew the panels together to close the body. Sew a loop in the middle of his stomach, with attachment points both inside and outside the dragon. In projection it should be placed in the middle between the two tensioning points of the backbone. It's nice to do this with the kite turned outside in. Roll up the wings, slap the body parts over the wings, sew together, and turn inside out trough the neck hole. 

Everything is taking shape, its time for the final part, his head. Yes, it's a he, by now you will probably consider it as one of your children, so I won't call him ‘it’ anymore.

 Well, that's it, I hope you've enjoyed it, and if you're really going to build a kite like this, let me 
 know.  (I wonder if I'm the only one mad enough to do it)