One Aer-o-bat, two Aer-o-batses ...

Some of you reading this blog will know I'm very interested in early dual-line kites, and am trying to build up a bit of a collection of these kites. Quite recently, I spotted an Aer-o-bat on eBay, and managed to get my hands on it for very little dosh.

Taking it out for a spin showed it to be a kite which is pretty fast when the wind picks up, but handles reasonably well.

Not long after, at Minchinhampton Kite Day to be precise, a very generous fellow kite-flyer gave me an earlier version of the Aer-o-bat to add to my collection (thank you, you know who you are!). This kite has an aluminium frame as opposed to the fibreglass of my first Aer-o-bat. Although used, it only needed some minor TLC on a few tears in the sail.

In terms of flight characteristics, the aluminium Aer-o-bat handled very similar to its fibreglass descendent.

Of course, having two Aer-o-bats, we had to fly them together!

Wasn't easy flying them together (and definitely wasn't easy to take a half-decent picture while flying!). The kites are quite fast, and not as easy to control as, say, a Peter Powell, So I don't think we'll fly them as a pair too often, but they do make a very nice addition to my 'museum' of early dual-liners!