Welcome to KiteSport!

KiteSport was started as a retail outlet in Crossroads Mall, Bellevue, WA, in 1989. This was after a fruitful partnership in Gasworks Kiteshop, Suspended Elevations in Seattle, WA, as a retailer and manufacturer of kites. Prior to that, Tom gained related experience with a variety of jobs, studies and journeyman work especially with wooden sailboats and their repair, rigging and a brief touch of sailmaking.

His direct manufacturing experience began with sewing on industrial machines and pattern-making as a part of work for Recreational Equipment Co-op, Inc., developing their Mountain-Sewn Pattern line. Working in downtown Seattle at Thaw Corporation with head clothing designer Carol Goff allowed Tom to get familiar with the process and skills needed for manufacturing in the fabric trades. It was his first exposure to the steps needed to research, design, price, order and sew fabric products on the factory floor. Since machine sewing was not a forté, as his previous experience was on home machines repairing worn out gear, he was chosen the guinea pig as a novice to see how hard a pattern was to sew. He also designed and made climbing gear and assessories during this half year project. Thus the project included apprentice pattern making, allowing him to learn some of the rules for garment sizing, cutting layouts, estimating yardage and labor by item and help to guide the performance features to match the market research.

As a partner at Gasworks Kiteshop, Suspended Elevations, Tom helped create many original designs with over 100 in his portfolio alone. The Starflake is among the best examples of an evolved facet kite design being inspired by the Snowflake design. Large improvements in light wind flying came with wing-tip spars added to create a better lift-to-drag ratio. The outer structure was abandoned in favor of compression stick to remove that drag source. This was the first in a line of tumbling boxes of which uniCell is a part. This list includes Asteroid, Meteorite and the Comet in the Starflake product line.

Another important design created during this partnership came from his analysis of the two-stick kite and all the structures used by them. He performed basic research on the two stick kite and classified them by structure. From this he noted a missing and simple method to relate keel and wing with two sticks. The KiteSport two-stick is not an Eddy, the classic American variant, or the older Malay type which is a better flying variant almost identical to the Indian fighter's structure.

This wouldn't matter except that:

  • The design flies really well from light breezes to the afternoon onshore blow.
  • It's simple to make and can be varied widely in aspect ratio.

    • This results in many advantages making kites. It allows great bird-like kites which are hard to get to fly because of the high aspect ratio. Also works for little kites that you can fly on thread with aspect ratios near 1.


    This structure is a standard for every KiteSport two-stick kite that isn't fighter. It's chosen primarily because of how great the design flies, how forgiving it is when you change aspect ratio or wing shapes. It's also easy to make, making the design a great value overall. All this was of course unintended, some vague hoped-for goal at the start of the study. After a decade of flying and refining this design, it's ready for kids or adults to enjoy at a good price.

    uniCell also has a unique structure and cut refined over time to get better performance. The idea of a one-celled box is from the late 1870's and many are made. Popular are three current kites which are in this category, the Cube, the Pop Can by Goodwinds Kites, and the Triad by Prism. These are all fun to fly. The added wing area and light structure allow you to fly uniCell in really light winds, something box kites normally can't do without graphite spars which add a lot of expense. The idea was to have a tumbling single cell box that's good for Seattle skies. Here we don't have strong enough breezes to keep a standard box off the ground very often. Weighing only 115 grams with 7 square feet of wing area, uniCell is a really fun kite to fly and doesn't cost $100 in spars to keep it off the ground in light air. This is possible partly because of how spars are placed to reduce parasitic drag while still keeping the wing fabric tight. This uniCell is the fifth major revision over the past two decades and flies the best.

    Tom was also known for fighter kites, both flying them and as a kitemaker. The KiteSport Hata line is a standard and inspired by both the Nagasaki Hata in aspect-ratio and the Indian tissue figher for it's curved nose. Bamboo is a special material when it comes to kites and Tom still hand carves and heat bends bamboo spars for fighters. This allows a certain feel for the art of kitemaking as bamboo has great qualities and can be tapered by hand to make great fighter bows. However, these take hours each so add too much cost to offer to kite stores for resale. Instead, the KiteSport Hata line uses fiberglass for the bow to keep the price down. To emulate bamboo tapered bows better a second strut is added. The extra strut is left out for light wind flying so the system gives a wider range of wind to fly in. Birch doweling is used for the keels and is heat bent to give curves to nose and tail that allow easier self-launching after a crash.

    This online retail store is where you can find many original kites too expensive to resell but great fun to fly for their looks and performance. These are made to order in most cases as most people want custom colors. Please email KiteSport to order any of these or have further questions or comments.