Ichiban
After an extended sabbatical, our old friend the Ichiban is back and ready to take to the skies. First introduced at Washington DC's Smithsonian Kite Festival in 2000, the Ichiban has been turning heads and raising smiles wherever it's seen.
The Ichiban had several design influences. Take a little Cody, add in a little Lynn, and maybe a touch of Bucky Fuller. Put it all in a mixing bowl with a good dash of Blue Moon's own secret seasoning, and you get something special and unique. I've built a lot of kites over the years, but none gives me quite the youthful joy of having a toy on Christmas morning that I get with the first assembly of a new Ichiban. One minute, it's a big pile of frame parts and sail sections - and then suddenly it's something more, something that sometimes makes me say aloud to myself, "cool".
Is the Ichiban the perfect kite? No, probably not. It can be a head-scratcher to put together the first time, and it's not crazy about nasty wind.
The Ichiban has this great backwards glide when you slack the line, so it's a blast to play with at a windless festival, but it does take an active hand to keep it airborne below its lower threshold of about 3MPH.
Is it perfect? Maybe not. ;-) Is it worth it? Oh yeah! Ask the person that owns one.
Ichiban specs
Design an Ichiban
please be patient, colorizers may load slowly (not showing?)
Move your cursor over a color, click to pick it up, then click on a panel. Please note that the colors shown are subject to availability.
In Windows, to send the image from the colorkite page, hit alt+print screen on your keyboard. This copies the active (pop-up) window to the clipboard. You can then paste it directly into an email. You can also paste it into any imaging program, then crop and save to the format of your choice. If you do crop it, please include the palette bar.
On Mac OS X, pressing Command-Shift-3 takes a screenshot of the entire screen, and Command-Shift-4 takes a screenshot of a chosen area of the screen or if you press Space afterwards you can choose a window on the screen to individually screenshot. These images are saved to the desktop, but if you hold down the control key with the rest of the keyboard shortcut, the pictures are copied to the clipboard instead. (from Wikipedia)
It goes together smoothly and fly wonderfully....toss some tails on for a more flowing look.
The build quality is Blue Moon's standard level of greatness....
This kite is def. worth the money!