I was first introduced to the “fighter kite” (although I didn’t know it was this at the time) by an interesting Malaysian man at my sailing club. He would sometimes bring his homemade kite and fly it way up in the air, higher than anything I’d ever seen. Sometimes, he would make it dance across the sky.
Later on I discovered this style of kite is often called a “fighter kite”. They are found in many cultures and countries. When used as a fighting kite, the string is coated in glass shards or something similar to make it sharp. By flying into another kite’s string in the right way, you can cut it, causing their kite to drop. You win!
What’s interesting to me is that you have full control of the kite using just a single string. This is very unlike the “stunt kites” I grew up with which use two strings to allow full control. How it works is that the kite has a certain flexibility built in. When you pull on the string, the wind pressure forces it into a V shape which makes it shoot forward in a straight line. When you release the string, the kite becomes a flat surface which is unstable, and it will start to spin. Then, at just the right moment when it’s pointing in the direction you want to go - you pull on the string again causing it to shoot forward. Simple but ingenious.
There are many designs you can find online if you want to make your own. There are the traditional forms from many cultures, as well as modern interpretations.
I made a few myself around 2011. The first was made from a black rubbish bag, and some bamboo and tape. It flew pretty well! I then made a series of very small ones using baking paper and bamboo skewers. These mostly didn’t fly that well, but were fun to experiment with and fly in a small space.
My website used to link to a couple of sites I described as “everything you will ever need to know about fighter kites!” Unfortunately, both sites have vanished. Such is the internet. But here are a few active ones (for now!)
- Fighter kites at kiteplans.org
- This site seems to have collected an archive of plans that have disappeared elsewhere.
- North American Fighter Kite Association
- A great resource, well worth browsing around the rest of the site too!
- Search YouTube
- Many excellent videos to be found on kite making from all across the world.
Written on 6 March 2025