For most adults, the word "childhood" means a time in their lives when everything seemed interesting and exciting, a time of naive exploration and unexpected exhilaration, a time aptly described by the title of the Russian film When Trees Were Big.
Some of us, however, never lost the ability to play, imagine and, quite literally, let ourselves fly away. One such person is Yevhen Yakhonin, a 48-year-old kite flier from Khmelnitsky, who has been launching his homemade constructions into the skies for the past eight years. For Yakhonin, who heads the Center for Scientific and Technical Creativity at Khmelnitsky National University, kiting is "a second profession ... a second life."
In some countries, kiting has been practiced as a professional, even extreme sport, for the past 10-15 years. Only recently has it gained popularity as such in Ukraine. One reason for the delay is the absence of high-quality materials needed to make the kites, called "air snakes" in Russian.
Yakhonin first got interested in "air snakes" in 1998, when he saw an article in a newspaper about a kiting festival in China and decided to make one of his own. At first, his friends and family just smiled when they found out about his new hobby. Yakhonin has a wife and two daughters.
It took him five days to make his first kite, but the construction was a failure. Moreover, he soon realized that the phrase "no flying conditions" applies to kites as well. Now he can make a simple, unsophisticated model in just 15 minutes. But the attainment of such design skills only comes with time and experience. Yakhonin wants to write a book on the subject. There are already a lot of books featuring different models with explanations of their construction, says Yakhonin, but he has yet to see anything written in simple language on how to make your own kite.
The simplest kite design is called an Afghan. The various designs are named after the countries where they originated: e.g., Russian, Balkan, Lithuanian, Taiwanese, Japanese, etc. Although flying snakes are probably the simplest form of aircraft, "at the start of the flying era, some of the fathers of Russian aviation, like Nikolay Zhukovsky and Alexander Mozhaysky, studied aerodynamics using kites," says Yakonin.
The Khmelnitsky sportsman believes that one day people will find a practical use for kites. Mankind has come up with a practical application for the wheel, so why not for kites? The wheel has done a wonderful job of facilitating ground travel, but with all the traffic jams that one encounters these days, "more and more often people will want to fly," Yakhonin thinks.
Efforts to utilize kites for transportation are under way. A German engineer named Stephan Wrage has already publicly tested an invention called Sky Sails, which uses kites the size of a soccer field to tow sea vessels like oil tankers. The kites are steered by computer.
Yakhonin is also keen on big kites. This year he plans to make his biggest yet - 100 square meters - which will be able to lift a person into the sky. Yakhonin has already made such a voyage, flying to a height of an eight-story building. He described the experience as "unforgettable."
Carried away by his hobby, Yakhonin has organized his own kiting team among students from the university where he works. These students are "the future teachers of labor classes and they have to be 'technically creative' to teach their own students one day," he says. Both guys and girls take part.
Many of Yakhonin's friends and colleagues have also taken up the hobby, throughout Ukraine. In order to exchange knowledge and skills, to demonstrate achievements, they visit one another and attend festivals several times a year.
There are two main types of kites: traditional models that fly on a single cord, and ones that have two cords, which allow a person on the ground to have total control over the five-thousand-year-old flying machine. The latter type allows kiters to perform aerial stunts, synchronic flights and air dances. This year, Yakhonin and his students are planning to execute an air dance to background music at festival.
To make a kite, a variety of materials can be used. Yakhonin started off with wooden sticks and paper. But paper gets wet, so he switched to polyethylene and then nylon for bigger kites. Now he employs a special type of nylon called rip-stop, which is used for making hang-gliders and paragliders. Nylon is not only strong, it's expensive: usually around $5.00 per square meter. "As you progress in your hobby, it becomes more and more expensive," says Yakhonin. To start off, one can buy perfectly adequate nylon that costs only about four hryvnyas per meter.
As for the frame, he eventually switched to carbon fiber-reinforced plastic tubes, which are used in the West.
So why does he do it? "I am not a young person any more, and at some point I understood that movement, both in the literal and figurative meanings, is the most important thing for a person," says Yakhonin. For him, movement in figurative terms means a person's individual development. In literal terms, flying a kite can be a great way to get some fresh air and exercise.
Yakhonin cannot afford to devote as much time as he would like to his hobby. He still has a full-time job and family. Conveniently, his wife has also gotten interested in kiting. His two daughters, admittedly, have other interests, but his nephews are eager to learn his craft. Most of his friends were at first a bit amused, but now they make and fly kites together with their families. Then again, kiting has always been seen as a family activity, recalls Yakhonin.
One day, he hopes to make his hobby into a living, for example, by organizing competitions and even sponsoring products with his kites. This year, he plans to make his first trip abroad to attend a kiting festival with his students. Who knows, maybe he will find a sponsor. It's this kind of romantic optimism that got Yakhonin interested in kites in the first place.
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