Portsmouth Kite Festival

Portsmouth Kite Festival often signals the end of our festival season, and this was once again the case this past weekend. The weather was pretty decent: some cloud cover most of the weekend (heavy on Sunday), but basically dry (only a few drops of rain on Sunday). The wind started off 7-11mph on both days; on Saturday it gradually increased up to about 20mph, whereas on Sunday it gradually dropped down to around 5mph. The wind was always from across the water, so pretty good wind conditions!

After a sunny pilot's meeting Saturday morning, the festival was on its way. As always in my festival reports in this blog, I will focus on the sport kite displays; there were lots of these this year!

Let's start with quad pairs this time.

Fracture was present as a pair (Josh and Harry), flying Fulcrums ...

... and also flying Fulcrums was Evolver, consisting of James and Carl (who is the designer of the Fulcrum, so they were obviously flying these kites).

Switching to Revolution kites, The Flying Squad flew as a pair (Stephen and Dan Hoath).

Even though I've seen their current pair routine many times now, it remains a brilliant quad pair routine, full of typical 'Hoath elements'. Always a joy to watch it, no matter how often I've seen it.

On to teams, but staying with quad kites: The Quad Mob (Josh, Harry, Chris and Simon).

The Flying Squad came back in the arena, first as a 6-strong quad team (Stephen, Dan, Ryan, Simon, Susan and, new to the team, Pat) ...

... and, subsequently, as a 3-strong dual-line team (Stephen, Dan and Ryan).

This was my favourite pair/team routine of the festival, again with typical 'Hoath' touches, but done in a very different way, given how differently dual-line and quad-line kites fly.

Bridging the gap between pair/team-flying and individual flying: Carl Wright!

As always, he flew routines with two kites ...

... and with three kites. 

From Carl, seamlessly on to individual sport kite displays. And that's because Alexander, his 7-year old son, flew a sport kite routine in the arena for the first time!

He did really well, and I wonder how long it will take before there is yet again a Team Spectrum father-son display ...

Staying with individual sport kite displays, we had appearances from Jesse Kapsten, over from the US, ...

... Chris Goff (who needs no further introduction), ...

... and Carl Robertshaw. His routine to Sinead O'Connor's "Troy" was by far my favourite individual routine. Because of his amazing control of the Fulcrum, he captured both the slow and the angry parts of the song perfectly.

And then of course us: Flying Fish (last, but not least, I hope ...). We flew a total of 10 routines over the weekend, and, similar to Dorchester Kite Festival, we also did a 'how to fly a sport kite' demonstration ahead of our second slot on both days. As to our routines, we're definitely pleased with how we flew at Portsmouth. Overall, this was our best festival this year, especially our Sunday routines (we really nailed "Rise Like a Phoenix" (it's not a choreographed routine, we follow the music), with a solid two-point landing of both kites exactly on the music.

We also flew a special routine, in memory of Jerney Kaagman. We only tried it out once before, and it didn't have a written choreography; it was flown totally driven by the music ("Hazy Paradise"). Prior to flying it, I briefly explained on the PA that Jerney was the lead singer of Earth and Fire, that their music has been with me for more than 50 years, and that when the news broke of her passing about a month and a half ago, I wanted to fly a tribute to her. 

I will admit that I felt a bit emotional at times while flying it, as this was much more of a personal routine than any other we've ever flown at a festival. We decided to keep this routine as a unique one-event tribute to Jerney, with Portsmouth being the first festival we attended after her passing, and so not fly it again in coming years.

Enough of my reminiscences for now and back to some other displays. Of course, Portsmouth had a quad-line mega-team (it wouldn't be Portsmouth without one)!

16 quad kites formed the number '100', in celebration of Portsmouth's 100th year anniversary as city. 

On Sunday, the programme finished with a Serpent Mass Launch, which is always a 'Kodak moment' (as Paul Reynolds on the PA rightly said).

Lots more pictures (including single liners, from art kites to large inflatables) are here and here. But I do want to briefly highlight one single-liner. Portsmouth customarily has an arena slot to fly Spirits, in memory of people lost. During the Spirit Fly on Saturday, I had the opportunity to very briefly fly this 'Flame Spirit', and did so in memory of Jerney ....

Picture credits: Alan Pinnock (pilot's meeting); Carl Wright (Flying Fish in action)

Mini bootcamp

A few weeks ago, I got an email from Natalia Bykova, asking about 'kite-flying lessons' for her husband Alexey. He normally enjoys flying his HQ Crackerjack kite on the beach, and is eager to get to 'the next level'. She found us through the interview we gave to BBC Russia when flying at Streatham Common Kite Day in 2016:

I told her we could easily give Alexey pointers as to how to improve his flying, and, if he is interested, give him a first taste of team-flying. That sounded perfect to her, so we arranged a mutually suitable date to meet up at our flying field at Stokes Bay, which was this past Sunday. And, as this was done with a STACK banner flying on the field, I guess it can be called a 'mini bootcamp' ('mini', because done for one person, for one day).

Alexey's Crackerjack is not currently in Britain. but as we happened to have a Crackerjack ourselves (which used to belong to a former team member who sadly passed away a number of years ago), we brought that, and asked Alexey to fly it for a bit, so we could gauge his level of flying.

Turned out Alexey had good basic control, so not much we needed to do there. I noticed that he snap-stalled the kite regularly, but then never did what I expected him to do, which is to axel it. When I asked him, he said he didn't know what an axel was, but given he can snap-stall the kite, teaching him how to fly axels seemed like a logical step. 

Alexey learned really quick, and within an hour-and-a-half or so, he managed to axel the kite repeatedly, and on both sides of the wind window!

He obviously needs to practice more, to make sure he consistently gives enough slack (he had the occasional tip-wrap due to not giving enough slack), but he definitely notched up his flying skills!

Time for lunch ...

Following lunch, we set up three of our Skydog Dream On kites, to give Alexey his very first taste of team-flying. After some initial pair-flying to get him used to the kite, the longer lines and to explain the basics, we threw him right in the middle of the team.

Starting with flying infinities, we went to boxes, ladders, jumps and team wraps. Stick practice was used to clarify additional figures such as threads and cascades. 

For someone who has never flown in a team before, Alexey did amazingly well. Of course he made mistakes ("Alexey, the other left!"), but he never panicked and never took the whole team down.

As we packed up, Alexey said that team-flying was so much more fun than solo flying! I think the mini bootcamp we organised really got him bitten by the team-flying bug; Natalia told me that he was buzzing all the way back home!

Picture credit of us in stick practice: Natalia Bykova

Cosmic tribute to Jerney Kaagman

This blog post starts off at a tangent, but bear with me: kites will feature a bit further down!

Earth & Fire was one of the most successful bands in the Netherlands throughout the 1970s. They had a string of hits in that decade, including two chart #1s ("Memories" and "Weekend"). The band broke up in 1983, followed by a brief return (and final album) in 1989.

The very first LP I ever bought as a (11 or 12 year old) boy, in the early 1970s, was one of Earth & Fire; I still have it!

Jerney Kaagman, the lead singer of Earth & Fire, passed away about a month ago, aged 79. 

Earth & Fire's music has been with me for more than 50 years now, and hearing of Jerney's passing really hit me. As the first band I ever bought music from, Earth & Fire always remained special to me. Also, I readily admit I had a big crush on Jerney as a young teenager in the 1970s (together with a high proportion of the Dutch male population then!). 

On to kites ... To try and channel my feelings upon hearing of Jerney's passing, I wanted to find an appropriate way to fly kites in her memory. Mentally going through our quiver of kites, looking for something that would 'fit', I came to our pair of Kitehouse Cosmic kites, one dark brown, one gold-orange. These seemed perfect for a 'Jerney tribute flight', with the brown Cosmic representing 'Earth' and the gold Cosmic 'Fire'.

The music we flew these Cosmics to was "Hazy Paradise", released in 1970 as the B-side to their first single ("Seasons"). No choreographed routine; simply fly, guided by the music.

In a couple of weeks time, we will be flying at Portsmouth Kite Festival, and, if circumstances allow, we intend to fly one of our routines to "Hazy Paradise", as a public tribute to Jerney Kaagman.

Jerney, RIP and thank you for more than half a century of music in my life.