I have been making my own sky lanterns since one year.I made a blog for those who are interested in it.My biggest achievement in making sky lantern is 15 ft tall 4.5 ft wide lantern made completely made with news papers for science fare in a school.I have expertise in making long flight sky lantern models with flying time of approx 10 min, flying at 500ft altitude.
Go through my site where there is tutorial for making sky lantern  and also my Sky lantern selling info.
http://www.flyinglantern.blogspot.in/

Very Well Mr. Kiran ....something new and useful thing...will upload my Build log soon....need to get some kite paper tomorrow...

Sandeep

Hey, Mr. Kiran,

Thanks for highlighting this before Diwali. Enthusiasts will surely give attention in this.
Do anyone have heard sun powered balloon ?

Sky lantern is called FANUSH in Bengali and there is a house named PHANUSH_BARHI (means sky-lantern house). You perhaps seen that some colorfull sky lantern in different shapes like Kettle, Jokar, TajMahal etc. etc. have been flown in front of Victoria and in Viswakarma Puja at Indian Race Maidan of Kolkata. Those are made by Fanushbari.
This is not very long past and not even a decade. In that house I heard that some mathematician calculate (from ISI) and all family members prepare the Sky Lantern.

I have no news since joining this forum. It's near ChatuBABU-LatuBABU's House as per NEWS Paper. And the favorite Australian Tissue paper (Colored) that can withstand High Temperature, can not found now except White colored one.

Surely in this dewali, some Fanush (Sky-Lantern) I can show you. I prefer to glue all sheets (symmetrical of course) half folded as shown in the pic. (right top side.). A 15 minute in word processor build in drawing gives this, no graphic software.
As shown in the picture, you can make 2-6 or higher stage and hence longer sky lantern.
Moreover, using more radius by more sheets, you can make larger dia Sky Lantern.
But always make bottom round using bamboo stick (for light weight, and fire holder with Iron or Aluminum wire and preferably no SAG, sothat the baloon cannot catch fire.

Good Luck.

kiran sir congratulations on this feat.
i used to do this in my childhood at our family farmhouse in Neral.
but what i did was something similar to this.

i used to fly a huge kite known as Dhol in local Marathi language.
kites have threads tied to them.
these threads were known as KANNI.
and at the back junction of kanni i used to tie a paper lantern with a candle in between.
these kites were big in size and provided a good wind resistance.
as a result of which they easily took the load of the lantern with them and flew at some nice heights.
from the bottom the the view was really awesome.

just had a short glance at your blog.
i assume these fly on the same principle of a hot air balloon.
hot air is lighter than cold air and hence generates a lift resulting in the flight.

Sun powered balloon popularly called as Solar balloon. It needs black paper or black polythene cover. Air inside gets heated up by sun`s heat and rises up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Asstv3jtpSs&feature=related

I am selling 3ft sky lanterns in attractive colors of yellow, orange and red each for only 100 Rupees, shipment free.Diwali offer. Hurry up. If any one need them e mail me at

nice work kiran

Happy Diwali

Use biodegradable ecofriendly stuff for Diwali
www.flyinglantern.blogspot.in

Thats a good sky lantertn