SuperBees!

Recently, I wrote about possible plans to develop a routine around our Micron and Micron 5-stack, our smallest dual-line kites, for future festivals. Prism Microns have a wing span of 98cm, and weigh 58gr; one reviewer described them as 'bumblebees on amphetamines'.

Given the size of the Microns, I was really intrigued to see an announcement on Facebook by Ocean Shores Kites. They were in the process of producing an even smaller dual-liner, the SuperBee! With a wing span of 93cm and a weight of 43gr, it beats the Micron by 5cm and 15gr.

You (probably) know me: I couldn't resist and pre-ordered two SuperBees in the yellow-black colour scheme (they also come in other colours, but yellow-black appealed to me most). And yes, it is unusual for us to have paired kites in the same colour (eh, Simon?).

Once they'd made the journey across the Atlantic, we could have a closer look at what are now the smallest dual-line kites in our potential festival quiver. I must say that they look very well made, and the quality of the stitching is top notch. Time to set them free on Stoney Cross Plain!

We first flew them singly, and on the ~15m lines the kites came with.

These SuperBees are very fast, requiring only very minimal input, hardly more than finger movements. Initially, being used to 8-footers, we gave way too much input, resulting in massive oversteer, uncontrolled spins and, often, a crash (don't worry; they're very sturdy).

Once we got a bit of a feel as to how to fly and steer our 'Bees, we moved to the next stage: fly them together.

We first flew them on the lines they came with, and then experimented with line lengths up to 35m. To us, they flew best together on 25m lines. 

They really are fast and furious, but we had a blast! It will take practice flying them smoothly together, though. 

Final stage: remove the tails .... this makes them truly mental to fly when the wind picks up (highest gusts were just short of 19mph). And sorry, no pics of them flying without tails; they were way too fast to fly and take pictures! 

Music to fly them to? Just has to be 'Flight of the Wounded Bumblebee'!

Red Arrows, again

Some time ago, I posted about our pair of Red Arrow kites. Or, rather, about our three Red Arrows, as one came originally as part of a stack. Recently, I got my hands on a fourth Red Arrow, which prompted me to create a pair of 2-stacks. And here they are on our regular flying field in the New Forest:

Wind was quite variable, but we managed to get both stacks airborne.










And of course we had to fly them together!

As we had both stacks in the air, I heard the noise of approaching jet planes behind me. When I looked around, I saw the real Red Arrows fly past (as it later turned out, on their way to Bournemouth for their next show). What are the chances of flying Red Arrow kites just when the Red Arrows fly past??? Fortunately, I had my camera in my hand!

And mea culpa, I really couldn't resist photoshopping the two pictures together .... This is what it would have looked like if the Red Arrows had passed in front of us rather than behind! 

OK, back to our Red Arrow kites, you may have noticed in the first picture that there is a colour difference between the kites, with two being slightly more red and two slightly more orange. Here are the front kites of the two stacks again, side by side. 

The kite on the left clearly sports the Mettoy brand, whereas there is nothing indicating a brand name in that same location on the sail (or anywhere else, for that matter) of the kite on the right. 

And this is not the only difference between the kites. In each pair of photos below, the Mettoy kite is in the left, the unbranded kite on the right. And, by the way, the two kites within a stack are identical in every aspect. 

The tail end of the Mettoy kites have a strip of red tape reinforcing it, which is absent on the unbranded kites.

The diameter of the red circle in the wing emblem is larger (5cm) on the Mettoy kites than on the unbranded kites (4cm).

The leading edges of the Mettoy kites are not connected to the spine, whereas on the unbranded kites they are.










And the cut of the sail around the wing tip is different between the Mettoy and the unbranded kites.










So what's going on here? Are we dealing with two different versions of Mettoy kites, one of which does not carry a brand name? If so, why not? There is another possibility, though. One kite book mentions the Red Arrow kites first made by a company called Schofield, and later by Mettoy. So are the unbranded kites the earlier Schofield products, with Mettoy making changes to their design when they took over production? Flying them side-by-side showed that the Mettoy kites do fly a tad better, especially at launch. That would support them being a later, improved design.

But I'm purely guessing now. Does anyone reading this know more about these kites?

Back to basics

When we started flying kites, now almost 9 years ago, our very first dual-liner was a HQ Yukon. At the time, we weren't sure whether we'd like flying kites, so went for a relatively cheap kite which got good reviews as a starter kite.

As you're probably aware, things have moved on from those days and that very first Yukon .... Recently, we were thinking of ways to get the public interested in trying out pair-flying. Now I gather that one hurdle might be that people watching us fly at festivals think you need expensive kites in order to fly as a pair or team, and that that stops them in their tracks there and then. So how about showing the public that pair-flying can be fun with a basic ~£50 kite, and that you don't actually need £200+ professional 8-footers? In other words, given that Yukon sells for around £50, how about getting a second Yukon, and develop a simple routine for them to fly at festivals?

One problem quickly revealed itself: although the Yukon is still very much available, the 'cool' colour scheme is no longer produced. Pity, as flying kites with similar or identical graphics just has more of a visual impact. A call on Facebook for another Yukon 'Cool' quickly led me to HQ, who still had one in their warehouse and, when I explained my intention with the kite, were happy to let me have it (thanks guys, and also thanks to Chris Matheson, who put me in touch with HQ in the first place).

So here we've got both our Yukons together on our flying field in the New Forest!

We made no changes to the kites, but added double blue and purple Prism ribbon tails for increased visual impact (tails always appeal to the festival public). Also, we flew them on 35m lines (25m plus 10m leaders) to give us a somewhat bigger window to fly in as a pair than we would have with the 20m lines the kite comes with.

With both in the air, we only needed some minor bridle adjustments to make them fly at the same speed.

Obviously, they are not as precise as our ~£200 T5s, but we can do most things we normally do with them, including axels and half-axels. And that at roughly a quarter of the price.

So we now have a pair of decent basic kites, to be flown with music appropriate to the kites and hopefully connecting with especially the younger members of the public, and with a commentator explicitly explaining pair-flying is not only fun but can also be affordable.

I must also admit that it's appealing to have our very first kite now in our festival team bag!

Web-site!

You may have seen the announcement on Facebook already, but if not, I've decided to create a simple web-site for Flying Fish. Not to replace this blog or our Facebook page, but to serve as a portal for access to both, and as a platform for more static information which tends to get lost in more dynamic platforms such as a blog or Facebook page.

As I have zilch expertise in creating web-sites, I followed the example of our friends from Team Spectrum and created a basic free web-site through weebly.

For some reason, blogger doesn't allow me to create a clickable picture, but you can see the new Flying Fish web-site here. It currently has basic information on us, including pictures from most of the festivals we flew at over the years and an overview of the kites we've flown at events. There's a bit about our competition flying and us flying as part of larger teams. It has an overview of our 2017 events, with links to blog posts, and of confirmed 2018 events. And it has a few videos. No doubt more will be added over time, and the current content and layout will be tweaked as I get a better feel for what is and isn't possible with free weebly web-sites.