Sunday 29 December 2013

Wings on Strings - update report

In an earlier blog post, I mentioned Wings on Strings, Flying Fish's sister team within L-katz, deciding to fly in a new formation. So maybe time for a quick update?


Music has now been decided upon (but not telling ...), and the first few patterns choreographed. So that means it's down to flying them in the field, obviously!


And only then do you know whether what looks great on paper actually works in the air ...


Today's practice runs showed that some of the patterns need a bit of tweaking, and as always, you get new ideas while you're flying.


Keep at it, guys!

Wednesday 11 December 2013

A full set of T5 kites - part 2

In my previous blog post, I talked about ordering a full set of Airdynamics T5 kites, and showed the designs for the Zero and Taipan Standards (we already have a pair of SULs). If you have followed Flying Fish on Facebook, you will already have seen the design for the V1:



Which means only the design for the V2 needed to be finalised, and here it is!



Took a bit longer than the others, because the panel lay-out is different from the other versions. The two big grey areas halfway down are removable patches; there's mesh underneath them.

What we have tried to do in this full 10-kite set is play with the yellow, orange and green in such a way that the kites are part of the same family, but that each version pair is different from the others. The two extremes (Zero and V2) are more different than the SUL - Standard - V1 group, and we felt that the Zero should veer towards being lighter and the V2 towards being darker. So here they all are, for comparison; Zero and SUL in the top row, Standard in the centre, and the two venteds in the bottom row. Irma will usually fly the orange-accented kite, and I the green-accented one.




Guess part 3 of this series of blog posts will be when we have actually received the kites, and subsequent parts when we start flying them. Stay tuned!

Incidentally, this is my 100th blog post for Flying Fish. Happy 100th blogday to me!