The sky?s the limit for a local kite maker now living in Tempe, Arizona.

Eugene Harvey, originally from Warwick, has been living in Arizona for the last five years and said it was always his ambition to sell Bermuda kites in the US.

?In 1986, when I was attending St. Petersburg College in Clearwater, Florida, I created Bermuda kites for an exhibit and campus demonstration,? said Mr. Harvey, who was recently featured in the Arizone Republic, the state?s biggest newspaper.

Nine of the kites were on display in the school?s library until the end of the semester. But at the end of the year, all nine were sold in a day.

He won his first kite-making competition in 1978 at the Warwick Workmen?s Club.

Mr. Harvey hopes he will hit gold with his business idea, the ?Bermujan Kite Kit?.

?You open the bag and put the kite together yourself,? he said. ?I hope to have ?Bermujan Kites? up and running in October.?

He said he can market directly to thousands of American kite-fliers through the American Kite Fliers Association.

?There is a real market for kites here,? he said. ?There are hundreds of thousands of kite enthusiasts.?

Three of Mr. Harvey?s kites are now on display in the museum of Phoenix?s Sky Harbor International Airport and will hang there until October.

?They wanted to highlight kites from around the world,? Mr. Harvey said.

He said the kites on display at the Phoenix airport are traditional round kites, however he also makes diamond shaped ones.

It takes him three to four days to build each kite, he said.

Mr. Harvey has experimented using different types of kite material, including a ?rip stop? fabric which is more durable than fragile paper.

?Rip stop is nylon, is more durable particularly for them to be on display and so the colours won?t fade.?

He said he had wanted to use nylon on his kites for a number of years and develop new techniques for papering a traditional frame.

The nylon is cut the same way as traditional paper, he said, but rather than gluing the fabric to the wooden frame, he uses double-sided tape.

?It is waterproof so when it rains they can fly,? he said. ?I use the same material for the tail, so you don?t have to drag wet tails.?

Windsocks make ideal materials for his kite tails, he said, once they are cut into two to four foot strips.

When Mr. Harvey and his son visited a kite festival in Flagstaff, Arizona, in May, his ?hummer? kite made hundreds of heads turn.

?There were a few hundred people there but only one Bermuda kite,? he said. ?It was buzzing so loudly everyone was looking up and wondering where the noise was coming from.?

Unfortunately, one of the spectators stole his kite.

For the last seven years, he and his brother, Steven Harvey, have been collaborating on three kite books.

In October, he intends to visit Bermuda for the launch of two of his books.

The first book instructs readers how to build their own Bermuda kites. The second book includes details about adding different design ideas into Bermuda kites.

Mr. Harvey has put a lot of thought into kites. He has been building them for the last 35 years, ever since he was a ten-year-old at elementary school on Ord Road.

Every time he visits Bermuda, he spends hours in the library and has discovered that several Caribbean countries build kites similar to Bermuda?s. But in Jamaica, they fly kites on Easter Sunday rather than Good Friday.

?I have travelled to a dozen or more Islands and six have similar kites, including Jamaica, Bahamas, St. Lucia and Barbados,? he said.

Mr. Harvey may be contacted at bdakitesaol.com.