In terms of pairs and teams present, first of all of course the 'home team', The Flying Squad.
Second quad-line team in the arena were the new UK multi-line team Champions, Wey Aye Quad (with Stephen Hoath as guest flyer).
Moving to dual-line pairs and team, Team Spectrum was of course present, flying their usual set of three routines.
The Airheads flew their usual 3-person tails routines.
Twisted Bridle appeared in their second kite festival, following their debut at Brighton.
And then Flying Fish, of course!
Besides flying two 'normal' routines, using our Airdynamics T5 Taipan V2 kites, we also took advantage of the strong blustery wind to fly one routine with our Peter Powells and one with our Dunford Flying Machines. These vintage kites (~45 years old) had their festival debut, and brought back memories to several of the invited flyers. Music these were flown to? Had to be 'Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines', of course!
I don't know if any pictures were taken, but will update this blog post if any surface.
And then there was Sunday ... forecast was for persistent rain all day, and for very strong gusty and blustery winds (up to 40mph) .... forecast turned out to be spot on ...
After a pilot's meeting, it was decided that the festival would not be cancelled, but that no schedule would be used and that people would simply do what they felt able to do under the circumstances.
For the Airheads, Twisted Bridle and Flying Fish, that meant one thing, and one thing only: mega-team! Up to eight Airdynamics T5 Taipan V2 kites in the air together, occasionally slowed down a bit with nappy brakes.
More pictures of the festival are here. One kite really summed up the Sunday: Josh Mitcheson took a Rev frame, and added a few strips of electrical insulation tape. It flew, and that tells you all you need to know about the winds we had to deal with on Sunday ...
Picture credit of us flying: Helen Ribchester; of the mega-team: Jeremy Wharton
No comments:
Post a Comment