Detailed Reviews

• Penguin Book of Kites
  by David Pelham.
  What usually is called the "bible" of kites contains few sketches about an ordinary Cody, nothing special. It will be difficult for an newby to built a Cody just with these instructions. But in addition to the plan it also contains some interesting information about the historic details, S. Cody himself and his manlifting system. No information on spars and sizes of the spars.
• Plan by Hugh H.J. Andrew
  Contains a very detailed description on how to build a cody. Templates are provided for the sail and each of the 20 or more reinforcement patches. Guides through the whole process of building a cody and even gives recommendations for how to select the bamboo, and which material should be used for the edge binding.
• Plan by Nico van den Berg
  We are working on the description...
• Plan for a 45cm cell Cody. This plan is originally from Andreas Rathge, Kiel, and is published with his permission. The instructions are very straightforward. Andreas has built many kites based on this plan and he has also built a working man-lifting-system that he has shown on several kite shows mainly in Germany.
  
• Drachen aus aller Welt
  by Wieland Backes (in German)
  W. Backes describes, how to built a Cody with a cell size of 50cm. He uses ramin spars and tyvek. The instructions are very detailed, but as in all of Backes books, he uses rather old fashioned techniques.
  In this book there is also a description of the Cody Manlifting system, but no detailed instructions.
• "Skywork Experience II"
  by Christine Schetel (in German)
  This book contains a plan for an extended wing cody with a cell size of 30cm. We have not yet built the kite following these instructions, but we have noticed the following:
  • The instructions seem to be rather short. Only experienced kiters should use this plan.
  • Extensive use of carbon spars.
• Rainer R. Franke
  in Drachenmagazin, Issue 3/94 (in German)
  Contains a plan for an extended wing cody with a cell size of 35cm. The instructions are very short and it seems that not all the details are given in the plan. But we have been in contact with the author of the plan and he has built many Codies based on this plan before. The kites built according to this plan will usually fly very well, they will not break and they also look very good.
• 
  A la recherche du bleue(sp?)(in French)
  Contains a very nice description of the french activities in the military area at the beginning of the century. Also mentions S. Cody and his man-lifting system.
• Bill Cochrane
  "Box Kites, flying and making", B.T. Batsford Ltd., London 1993, book. Information provided by Bruno Caracciolo, Italy:
  "In this book you can find 3 plans of Cody kites (one normal, cell size 35cm - one large normal, cell size 75cm - one extended wing, cell size 45cm). The section abou the Cody kite contains 7 pictures, 28 figures, 16 pages of explications + a couple of pages about Sam Cody."

Most of the books mentioned above are available through the Kitelines Bookstore.