Double PP with PP!

Puzzling title, eh? Read on, and all will become clear ...

It's been been well over three years since I posted on pair-flying Peter Powell kites. Main reason is that we haven't added any new PPs to out pair quiver since then. Checking the Peter Powell Kites web-site, I realised that I never did anything when Paul and Mark added the 'Bubblegum' kites to their stock a while ago. And as Flying Fish is a dual-line pair, I ordered a pair of these. Matching the pink centre panel, I felt that pink tails would be appropriate for these kites.

So here they are, on the ground and in the air!

Now, PP kites with a clear pink aspect .... doesn't that make you think of something else, with the same initials??

Exactly ...

And the Pink Panther is known to be a kite flyer; check out this "Sky Blue Pink" short movie:

Towards the end of the movie, after many mishaps with his kite, the Pink Panther finally manages to soar through the air, suspended from his kite:

Now let's bring this back to Peter Powell kites ... I can pretty much recreate this particular scene, with a PP cuddly toy suspended from a PP kite!

Now we have two of these 'bubblegum' PPs, don't we? As it happens, we also have two cuddly PPs (long story ...).

The Pink Panthers were quite exhausted from their first flight ...

I don't think anyone has ever flown a pair of Peter Powell kites with Pink Panthers suspended from them. So this is a first in the 13+ billion year history of the current universe .... 

The weight of a PP-carrying PP nearly doubled, and that was very clear when flying them. Slower, less nimble when turning, and needing more wind. And, of course, there is only one piece of music we can ever fly this pair of PP-manned PP kites to if we ever fly them at a festival:

A different version of this blog post is posted simultaneously on my Peter Powell Kites Collection blog.

'Kites Connect' Festival

Back at the Dunstable Downs, for our second appearance at the 'Kites Connect' Festival, following our debut here last year. 

Focusing, as always in my festival posts in this blog, on the sport kite arena, the pairs and teams performing were basically the same as last year.

Kicking off the day was Fracture, flying Fulcrums as a pair (Josh and Harry).

Add a few more quad flyers (Matt, Chris, Simon, Graham, Phil), and you have The Quad Mob. 

Switching to dual-line kites, Simon Franks performed again as a one-man kite pair. I really like the "Come fly with me" cover by Ruelle that he flies one of his routines to ...

Of course, a kite festival at the Dunstable Downs wouldn't be complete without the Airheads! Like last year, they flew as a 4-strong team (Pete, Vee, Keith and Doug).

Especially their tail routines are always a delight to see (although I normally see them from below, being one of their regular ground crew).

And then us! We flew as part of a 3-strong L-katz (sadly, Lisa couldn't fly with the team this festival).

Finally, of course, we flew as Flying Fish.

We mostly flew make-it-up-as-you-go-along routines, to a range of music tracks. But I do want to highlight one specifically. Years ago I had the idea of creating a routine to 'Bolero', inspired by Torvill & Dean's ice dance routine from the 1984 Winter Olympics. For all kinds of reasons, this idea never progressed, but we decided to finally make a start. We didn't have any choreography so just made it up as we flew, to test out whether we could fly to it in principle. The verdict after the weekend was a clear 'yes'. Next step is to choreograph a routine with moves and patterns that are inspired by ice dancing. The 'Bolero' track we flew to is the same edit that Torvill & Dean used in Sarajevo in 1984, by the way.

If you have the Airheads, Flying Fish and L-katz together at a kite festival, a mega-team is pretty much a given (and we were joined by Simon Franks on Sunday).

In all, we flew 26 routines during the weekend (12 with Flying Fish, 12 with L-katz, plus twice in a mega-team). My brain was ever so slightly frazzled at the close of the festival! 

I want to conclude this blog post with a lovely random encounter we had Saturday evening. We'd gone to dinner at a Thai restaurant near our B&B, still wearing our Flying Fish shirts. When we left the restaurant, a girl of maybe 10 years old came in with (I presume) her mom. As the girl saw us leave, she said: "Excuse me, did you fly kites at the Downs today?". "Yes, indeed we did." we said. And with bright shining eyes, she said "I saw you fly, I really liked it!". Reminded us of Violet at Minchinhampton Kite Day years ago. Ultimately, that's why you fly at kite festivals, isn't it?

Picture credits: Simon Hennessey (L-katz); John Saberton (L-katz); 'Facebook' (Flying Fish); 'Instagram' (mega-team)

Dorchester Kite Festival

A new flying field, a new festival! So many kite festivals have fallen by the wayside in recent years, so it was great to see a new one appearing on the calendar. As soon as I became aware of it, I offered the participation of Flying Fish and L-katz, if they wanted sport kite displays in the arena. They sure did ...

So off to Dorchester we went, and set up our base, with all banners, on the Great Field in Poundbury, Dorchester.

The main arena was situated on a cricket pitch; first time we'd fly in a fully circular arena!

We were given three half-hour slots through the day, to fill as we saw fit, and that gave us the opportunity to do a bit more than standard pair and team ballets.

We started each of our slots with a demonstration of how to fly a sport kite and the basics of team-flying, with me commentating. First Irma flying a kite on her own: How do you launch a sport kite? How do you fly basic shapes? Then Pea joining Irma, demonstrating the basics of team-flying (infinities, synchronised figures). And then, given that I was using a hands-free head-set microphone, me joining them for some more team-flying, calling moves and flying at the same time.

This demonstration was then followed by a pair ballet from Flying Fish ...

... and a team ballet from L-katz.

Although the weather was gorgeous, the wind was very variable through the day, which was challenging. For the last of the three team ballets I wanted to give the public just a bit more and gambled on flying with tails. Unfortunately, the wind switched off halfway through, and tails got tangled .... Wrong call in hindsight, but at least the public saw team-flying with tails (and I heard some applause behind me as we took off in a starburst launch).

In-between our sport kite slots, we also participated in 'trilobite' and 'marine creatures' slots.

This new Dorchester Kite Festival was a one-day event. Loads of people attended, and I sincerely hope that the success of this one day was enough to put Dorchester firmly on the agenda next year, and (fingers crossed) for a full two days.

Picture credit of us flying: Dorsetbays

Flash Angels, in triplicate

In 1991, at the National Championships on Blackheath in London, the Decorators flew a set of four Rare Air Flash Angels:

Recently I became aware that three of those four Flash Angels were looking for a good home (the whereabouts of the fourth is currently unknown). Needless to say I expressed an interest in giving them that good home as well as air time in a pair and team setting. 

To make a not very long story even shorter, the Flash Angels ended up in my possession, on the understanding I would donate an amount of money of my choice to a charity of my choice.

More on that charity donation at the end of this blog post; let's fly the kites first! First up were the 'yellow-tailed' and 'red-tailed' kites.

Minimal bridle adjustment was necessary to match their drive and pull. They fly slow and steady, almost serene. Good tracking, easy refuels, but they don't particular like to (half-)axel. Of course, 1990s team kites weren't designed to do that. 

And then time to add the third ('pink-tailed') Flash Angel and fly them with our L-katz team.

Once again, it required a small bridle adjustment to match it to the other two. Flying them in team formation again showed their good tracking and general 'team kite flying characteristics'.

As I mentioned, we got the kites basically 'for free', but on the proviso of a donation to charity. Which charity to donate to wasn't difficult for me to decide. As some of you reading this are aware, I underwent emergency spinal surgery two years ago, to avoid ending up in a wheelchair. I have been fortunate that I've largely recovered from the spinal injury, but others aren't that lucky. So I decided to donate an amount of money that I would have been happy to pay for the set of three had they been up for sale to the Backup Trust, a small charity that offers support to people suffering from spinal injury. 

Flash Angels, with Championship experience, coming to a field near you!

Streatham Kite Day

It's been three years since we last flew at Streatham Kite Day. In 2024, I was in hospital, recovering from spinal surgery, and last year, the event had to be cancelled at short notice. So it was good to set up base camp again on Streatham Common!

The arena schedule of the day was basically a 'rinse and repeat' of the usual gang. Several more fliers and teams had been invited, but were not able to come to Streatham, for various reasons. 

First, Carl Wright of Team Spectrum, doing his best to deal with the typically Streatham wind (bit more on that later in this post) while performing his usual routines flying two or three kites.

And then Flying Fish. We flew in three slots, three routines per slot ("Carmina Mix" > "Rise like a Phoenix" > "Adiemus"). While testing the wind prior to the event being officially opened, we decided to fly with our T5 Taipan V1 kites. 

It turned out through the day that that was the right choice, with an important caveat .... I already mentioned the wind being, shall we say, rather challenging ... Changing from 4 mph to 20+ mph in seconds meant that, on average, the V1s were the right kite to fly with, but most of the time they were either underpowered or overpowered, in equal measures ... An additional problem with the wind was that we often could hardly hear the music, and that made it rather difficult to fly to music and land right at the end (it basically meant continuing to play the music in my head and then call for the landing at my best guess of when the music stopped ...). 

But we did what we could under the circumstances, even if our routines were far from the most polished ones ever. Several members of the public told us afterwards that it was really impressive and they enjoyed it. And that's ultimately what it's all about!

Quite a few people coming up to us between our arena slots, asking us advice on getting their kites to fly. This really only happens at Streatham, and, of course, we were happy to help out where we could.

A few more pictures, including Keith 'Nasaman' Warner, are here. But I do want to highlight Alexander Wright, Carl's son, who got his own arena slot, with PA announcement, flying a dual-line kite. The future of Team Spectrum seems assured!

Picture credits of us flying: Carl Wright, Marie Coombs