Double Swallowtail!

A number of years ago, through eBay, I got my hands on one of Tim Benson's earlier creations: a Fizz Swallowtail. I really liked the way it looked in the sky, with the large 'tail fin'. We do have something with kites and tail fins, don't we?

Anyway, due to our increasing focus on pair-flying, the Swallowtail didn't leave the kite bag very often. There is, of course, a very simple way to remedy this: get a second one, so we can fly a pair of Swallowtails! These kites are not exactly common on the 2nd hand market, so I asked the one person in the UK who would know where I might be able to get my hands on a second Swallowtail. To make a pretty short story even shorter: said person was willing to sell one of his own (almost unflown) Swallowtails, knowing where it would find a home. Thank you; you know who you are!

So here's our pair of Swallowtails:

The blue-green kite is the one we already had, and will usually be flown by me; the pink-black kite is our new one, usually to be flown by Irma.

You have to admit they really have presence in the sky, don't you?

Spin-Offs galore (Hawaiians part 2)!

Recently, I posted on the rapid increase of Hawaiians in our pair quiver. Well, that blog post was only part of the story .... keep in mind that the Top of the Line Spin-Off is officially called Hawaiian Spin-Off!

Our collection of Spin-Offs started off quite innocently, with two early 'plain sail, no stand-offs' kites.

That allowed us to fly Spin-Offs as a pair, which we have done on our own, but so far never at a festival:

And then I got my hands on a unique pair of Spin-Offs, custom-made for and originally flown by Ron Reich. You can read the full story on these kites here.

Again we had a pair of Spin-Offs to fly, and this time we did fly them at festivals, with their UK debut at Portsmouth in 2016.

Things were quiet for a while on the Spin-Off front, until I was basically given another (plain) Spin-Off, this time with a pink sail, ...

... followed by a (plain yellow) Spin-Off sail ...

... which, of course, was duly framed.

Having four plain Spin-Offs, in four different colours, enables us to fly them with our L-katz team (I'll take some pictures when all four are in the sky together).

Now if you thought that was 'it' in terms of Spin-Offs, think again, because things didn't stop there ... Completely independently from each other, and almost at the same time, I was asked if I was interested in a Spin-Off, in excellent condition. These two Spin-Offs were of a later version, with a more elaborate sail design and with stand-offs, and they were a very good match in terms of colours: they were identical ... what are the chances of that happening?

Fellow kite-flyers around the world, we do have enough Hawaiians now, both Hawaiian Team and Hawaiian Spin-Off. So not looking to add more to the pair/team quiver. Until the next one with an unusual sail design and/or sail colours pops up. Then all bets are off. Just don't tell Irma, ok?

Gibson Girls

Any kite flyer reading this will very likely have heard of the 'Gibson Girl' kite. A single-line box kite which was part of the survival kit on board war planes during WWII. In the event of an accident, the kite, carrying an antenna, could be launched, and the accompanying radio could then be used to request rescue. More information on the Gibson Girl kite can be found here.

Gibson Girls pop up on eBay quite regularly, often in very good shape, and at some point in the past, I felt I ought to have and fly one. Here's our very own Gibson Girl, on the ground, and where she belongs.

The kite, being quite heavy, needs a good breeze to fly properly, but is very happy especially when the wind goes north of 20mph.

Gibson Girls on eBay vary a lot in their asking price, with some listed for well over £100. I wasn't at all planning to get a second one, but when one popped up with a Buy-It-Now price of £15, my finger decided for itself ....

So Flying Fish now has a pair of Gibson Girls!

Of course, being single-line box kites, they're not suitable for any sort of choreographed routine, but they do offer the option of something different to fly for Flying Fish at festivals, in an appropriate single-line slot.

By the way, in case you're wondering: the origin of the name 'Gibson Girl' lies with the American graphic artist Charles Dana Gibson. The Gibson Girl represented his ideal for feminine beauty, with a strong emphasis on curves.


















The reason that the name got attached to the kite was due to the radio transmitter. It had some of the 'hourglass' curves of the real Gibson Girl.

So the name 'Gibson Girl' went from actual women to the radio transmitter to the kite, losing all curves in the process!

Hawaiians galore!

As you may be aware, the Top of the Line Hawaiian Team, usually simply referred to as 'Hawaiian', was essentially the kite which established the sport of team-flying. So, obviously, we had to have at least a pair of them. Our first Hawaiian was not an original Top of the Line, but one made by Chicago Kite, with Skyshark spars and modern connectors. The clear link with Top of the Line was that the sails were sewn by the same people responsible for the original Top of the Line sails.

Pretty soon afterwards, we did get our hands on an original Top of the Line Hawaiian ...

... so we had a pair of Hawaiians to fly! There is a clear weight difference between them (460gr for the Chicago Kite Hawaiian; 582gr for the original Top of the Line kite), caused by the yellow original Hawaiian having thicker heavier spars, but with some bridle tweaking we managed to get them to fly (almost) the same.

It then was a bit quiet at the Hawaiian front, until I was basically given another original Top of the Line Hawaiian ...

... which, of course could be flown with another of our two Hawaiians. This one had lighter spars than our earlier yellow Hawaiian, giving it a weight of 429gr, and it flew best together with the modern black rainbow kite.

And then all Hawaiian hell broke loose ... first of all, we were given a pair of Top of the Line Hawaiians on indefinite loan.

Striking sail colours, and they look fantastic in the sky together.

Very shortly after that pair, I was asked if I was interested in buying a set of three 'old skool' kites, one of which was a Hawaiian. Is the sky blue? Does a Rev have four lines?? This particular Hawaiian had a simpler sail design than all the others we had, with just green and blue panels:

Interestingly, those same green and blue panels were also present in a Hawaiian owned by a team member ...

... which made me think that the two together would be perfect for a 2-stack. To make a not very long story even shorter: said team member hadn't flown his green Hawaiian for ages, and was quite happy selling it to me. So we had a Hawaiian 2-stack!

The two green Hawaiians look and fly well together, and the pull is a bit less than I expected (which may actually say something about my expectations rather than the actual pull)

And, of course, following on from our earlier experiment flying a single kite together with a 2-stack, we also have that opportunity now with Hawaiians!

As far as Hawaiians go, this wasn't the end of it. I was again offered a Hawaiian to buy, and it would have been rude to have refused, wouldn't it? So here's our latest Hawaiian, which is another 'heavy' one with thicker spars, virtually identical in weight (578gr) to our yellow Hawaiian, and also more or less the opposite to that one in terms of colours:

And you have to admit that the two look pretty good together, don't they?

Going back to the early days of Hawaiians and team-flying, here's the classic "Battle Hymn of the Republic" routine of the Top of the Line team; enjoy, whether you've seen it before or not!

Festival League

Competitive sport kite flying, whether individually, as pair, or as team, is a pretty small sport in the UK. Numbers of competitors at the National Championships since we started competing have been in the single figures (though this year saw a clear increase again). In order to grow the sport and get more people interesting in flying sport kites at a competitive level, it's important to bring competitive sport kite flying more to the attention of the general public. And where do you get the highest number of people who are generally interested in kites together? Right, at kite festivals!

As you may be aware, competition flying in the UK involves compulsory figures, a technical routine, and a ballet to music. Of these three elements, compulsory figures certainly don't fit at kite festivals; they're not very public-friendly. On the other hand, the ballet to music is by far the most appealing to the general public. And that is basically what is already happening at kite festivals ...

Clearly, for any competition to occur in a festival arena, it's crucial to have festival organisers on board. Keeping that in mind, STACK has been thinking about a way to integrate competition flying into kite festivals in such a way that those kite festivals run basically the same and festival organiser would not have to change anything to be part of this (i.e. no time or arena space required for compulsory figures and/or the technical routine). And from that thinking emerged ..... the STACK Festival League.

Here's how it is envisaged to work. At participating festivals, all sport kite flyers (individuals, pairs, teams, dual-liners and quad-liners) will be asked if they are interested in their scheduled ballets being scored for the Festival League. The PA will briefly explain competition flying, and the existence of a Festival League, so the public is made aware there is such a thing as 'competitive sport kite flying'. One or more easily visible and identifiable STACK judges will then come into arena and score the ballets of all those interested in being part of the Festival League.

The winner at that festival is then simply the competitor who has the highest score, with individuals, pairs, teams, dual-liners and quad-liners all competing against each other (so not in separate disciplines as happens at the Nationals). Scores are announced by the PA, so the public gets a sense of a competition happening. At the end of the festival winner receives a 'Festival Winner' trophy. Again, this shows the public that there is something to be won.

Festival winners are only half of this; we're talking about a League, right? The idea is that results from individual festivals are collated to arrive at an overall Festival League Champion at the end of the year. How to 'translate' results from different festivals, under different wind conditions, and with different judges, into a common and fair scoring system needed a bit of thought. First of all, to allow for differences in wind condition and different judges, all scores should normalised by taking the highest score as 100% and recalculating the other scores against that. If then only the best score is counted, this will result in all festival winners sharing first place at 100%. Also, just taking the highest score doesn't fit with the idea of a 'league', which typically involves gathering points over a period of time, with the winner being the competitor with the highest number of points at the end of the year or season. Turning normalised scores into league points is straightforward: the winner gets a certain number of points, the runner-up fewer than that, the third place again fewer, etc. All points are then added up at the end of the season, and, presto, you have the Festival League Champion! That also has the advantage of having a developing G(eneral) C(lassification) table throughout the season, which the PA can allude to ("Next in the arena are the Spitfire team. They are currently in second place in the GC, but a good performance here could see them top the table!"). Again, this will create the impression of a dynamic competition taking place, not just at that particular festival, but across the entire season.

Two ways of allocating points to placings: top-down and bottom-up. Top-down means that first, second, third, etc place always get a fixed number of points. The downside of that is that if there happens to be only a single competitor at a festival, they would get maximum points without having to do anything for it. This does not happen in a bottom-up format. Under this format, the number of points the winner, second, third, etc place gets depends on the 'size' of the festival, where size is determined by the number of competitors. In other words, winning a festival with two competitors will get you fewer points than winning a festival with half a dozen competitors. And 'winning' a festival where you're the only competitor will just get you a single point. Under this format, the likely winner is one who regularly scores high, and just winning a single festival is unlikely to be enough to become overall champion. Equally, just attending lots of festivals will not make you the Festival League Champion. So the decision was made to use a bottom-up format, and some playing around with numbers of points resulted in the following: 1 - 3 - 6 - 9 - 12 - 16 - 20 - 25. So that means, for instance, that if you win a festival with three competitors, you get 6 points; if you come second in a festival with six competitors, you get 12 points, etc. Another way of looking at this bottom-up format is that you get more points the more competitors you leave behind you.

STACK used 2018 as an experimental year, just trying out some things, with ballets being scored at three festivals: at Basingstoke scoring was done from outside the arena, just to see how scoring during a festival would work (so nothing was said on the PA). Following on from that, Exmouth and Portsmouth had judges present and scoring inside the arena, and results were announced on the PA. Flying Fish won Basingstoke, Ex-grads won Exmouth (with Flying Fish coming second), and Viento Sur won Portsmouth (with Flying Fish again coming second).

Putting all scores across the three festivals together results in the GC table:

Flying Fish, being the most consistent high scorers, top the Festival League table at the end of the season and are the winners of the inaugural STACK Festival League!

Thanks to the organisers of Exmouth and Portsmouth for allowing STACK to try things out during their respective festival. For next year, we obviously want to expand the number of participating festivals. Besides availability of STACK judges, key is to get festival organisers on board with this!

Picture credit: of Flying Fish at Basingstoke: Carl Wright.

The Beach Kite Fest @ Berrow Beach

Our final kite festival of 2018 was one at a new (for us) venue, and one not organised as usual. The venue was Berrow Beach. Weather on both days was fine (more cloudy on Saturday, more sunny on Sunday), and the winds were deliciously smooth, coming off the water: up to 17mph on Saturday (Airdynamics T5 Taipan Standards first, V1s later) and 15-22mph on Sunday (Taipan V2s all day).

Unlike other festivals we fly at, there was no formal arena schedule. We basically had the 'team-flying' arena to do with as we saw fit, taking turns putting on displays. Two official pairs were present, as well as members of two other teams. Starting with the pairs, they were:

Twisted Bridle, really enjoying flying Peter Taylor's V1s in that smooth wind to Aerosmith's "Fly Away from Here", the routine they've been using at festivals throughout the year ...

... and Flying Fish ...

... flying our "Chariots of Fire" routine ...

... and our "Ruthless Queen" routine.

As our "Ruthless Queen" routine is basically our technical routine set to music, and given we've been working on a new start to that technical routine, we decided at the last moment to try out that new start in a festival arena setting. And it worked pretty well!

Marcus Twidale also flew his Peter Powell single kite and triple-stack:

And Jeremy Wharton had fun dog-staking:

As mentioned above, several members of Flame (Barry Savell, Fran Burstall) and Airheads (Peter Taylor) were also present, and that resulted in a variety of 3-strong, 4-strong and 5-strong mixed teams flying in the arena, occasionally with tails..

The culmination of those ad hoc teams popping into existence was, of course, to combine everyone (plus one guest flyer, Dom Early) into an 8-strong mega-team.

Flying in the smooth winds at Berrow Beach was true aoxomoxoa at times; winds that you dream of, but rarely ever get!

More pictures of the festival are here. And the inevitable aftermath of flying on a beach with wet salty sand ...

Picture credits: Lisa Daubney (Flying Fish), Valerie Hancorn (3-/5-team containing Flying Fish); video credits: Piyush Patel (Flying Fish), Jeremy Wharton (mega-team)