I recently decided to start building my own kites for fun. I am looking for a SUL plan that is trick capable like the HQ Shadow or Benson Inner Space and has a wind range from indoor to ~5mph.
indoors complicates the question: All the kites you list roughly fall into two camps - older style lower aspect ratio kites with plenty of sail area that do rotational tricks like axels and 540s well (Shadow, Inner Space, Synchro, Pseudo) and higher aspect kites offer pitch tricks like the Abraxis, Quartz and Thornback.
The older style kites will generally be much easier to fly indoors/in almost no wind because the have more sail area and flatter sails, the newer school kites are always likely to harder work (there are some commercial new school kites that work indoors but were talking free plans).
So for indoors
my choice would be an older style kite; I keep an SUL Acara in my bag for when my UL's won't fly (plan on my site along with the Thornback but its not much fun for pitch tricks)
Certainly while the Thornback can fly, with care, in
light wind maybe 3~5mph, its not designed for no wind (it works in light wind because it has more sail area, being a kind of halfway between old and new styles).
WRT the framing, if you're going indoors I'd go for skinnies, they're not a stick you want to knock around but they'll survive outdoors in 5mph. Also keep the sail super light - P31 if you can find it, .75oz ripstop LE tunnel, dacron nose, minimal re-inforcing and set the bridle a little heavier than you would for outdoors in almost no wind to give you something to tug against.
How much time will it spend indoors? IMO there's a big difference between something that is fun indoors and something I'd use outdoors in a gnats-breath on a summer evening, and 3~5mph is UL country - build two kites
