I love your website. I am a 63 year old retired former judge with a wife who likes to fly kites and a 6 year old granddaughter whom we are introducing to kite flying. We are all rank novices, and we just started kite flying less than a month ago, and already have 6 kites and 2 small commercially available para-bears called droppers which we bought from intothewind.com. We have a release mechanism we bought elsewhere which is simple and works pretty well with the para-bear which we have modified by adding a loop to the top of the chute. (As delivered, the dropper was designed with a crude trolley to take it to hit a split cork on the line which released bear, the whole thing relying on the chute to drag it to the cork--a not very effective system. We just put the loop on the chute, and suspended it on the other release mechanism which works by jerking the flying line sharply to release an adjustable friction holding mechanism. )

We would like to get a few ready made parachutes with indication of what weight fauna could be used with each so we could take many of my granddaugter's fauna for rides. I have looked at your website instructions on how to make these, and I find them to be a bit challenging for a guy whose hands look normal but which function as 10 thumbs whenever he tries a home repair or craft project. I am neither handy nor a techie, but enjoy kiting and parachuting animals. I have already dropped a stuffed frog which weighs about the same as the bear which came with the chute. I attach the bear or the frog with a swivel snap which is larksheaded to the shrouds. The fauna are attached to the swivel with kite line.

Any ideas you may wish to share would be most appreciated.

Why isn't everybody dropping stuffed animals from kites? I don't understand why this isn't an Olympic event yet.

Bob Cordek

And from a later email a paragraph that sums up why we do what we do.

Dear Arthur,