Monday, 26 November 2012

Flying Fish goes indoor!

For several reasons, we didn't do much pair/team-flying the last few weeks, but we did do something we'd never done before: indoor flying! Karl & Sara Longbottom had invited us to join them for an indoor single-line kiting session at the St Joseph's Catholic College in Swindon. As we'd never flown kites indoor before, that sounded like fun to try, and a good opportunity to fly the few glider kites we have under the conditions they were really designed to fly in.

So how did our first ever indoor kite-flying session go? First of all, it was fun! And much more different from 'flying outside without wind' than we thought it would be.


So, first of all, we flew our own gliders (a Flying Wings Wala, two Prism Zero-Gs, and of course our new Longbottom Pterodactyls).


Fortunately, we were also able to borrow some other gliders to try out, such as a Flying Wings Emong, iFlites (made by Patrick Tan in Singapore), and several more Longbottom kites (large Pterodactyl and 6-81). Especially the two iFlites we flew (iFlite and iFlite II) were so light that they just floated on the air.


And one glider isn't necessarily the same as another glider. For instance, flying an Emong asked for quite a different technique than flying a Zero-G, which reacted differently again compared to the Pterodactyls (and the large Pterodactyl flew differently from the smaller ones, which is probably not too surprising). Knowing when to give the kite line, when to haul line in to make it turn at the right moment and not hit the floor, when to walk backwards, etc. We still have a lot to learn about indoor kite-flying. Sara mentioned another session in January: we'll be there!
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2 comments:

  1. Marcy Marchello26 November 2012 at 23:23

    Fun! I would love to try this! I think gliders would be great outdoors for those days you want to fly but no wind. Neat to hear it was more fun indoors than you expected.

    I almost bought a Zero-G this year. How did you like it? I have my eye on buying a Skate - were there any there? What was your favorite glider?

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  2. flyingfish27 November 2012 at 08:26

    Really like the Zero-G, but it requires a different way of launching than the others. Basically, you throw it away from you like a paper plane, let line out, and then, depending on which way the nose turns, you pull it around 180 degrees in that direction. Then haul in line quickly so it soars up; getting better at it!

    Can't really say what my favourite glider was; it was fun to find out they required such different techniques. Zero-G needs to be allowed to float freely a lot, whereas the Pterodactyls need a little bit of tension on the line most of the time. And no Skates; closest were a few Walas (one of ours and one brought by someone else). There were a few Laimas as well, and I'm now really tempted ...

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