A special pair of Lithiums

This is a L'Atelier Lithium, which used to belong to Roger Backhouse, a former member of our L-katz team, who sadly passed away a number of years ago.

This is a L'Atelier Lithium, which used to belong to Tony Vella, a former member of our L-katz team, who sadly passed away a number of years ago.

Roger and Tony also flew as a pair, under the name 'Wings on Strings'.

And, as a pair, they flew a range of team kites, including these Lithiums.

Over time, and via different routes, both these Lithiums managed to find their way to our kite bag ....

... and yesterday, we had them on our lines for the first time!

Lithiums work well as team kites: good tracking, no oversteer, easy (half-)axels, and relatively slow speed.

But, much more important than their handling and flying characteristics is that, even though Roger and Tony are no longer with us, their Lithiums are now back together again.

And that makes these Lithiums a special pair of kites for us: we will always fly them thinking of Roger and Tony, meaning they're never really gone ...

Credit of the pictures of us: Piyush Patel

Flexifoil Matrix, x 10

Early last year, we were given a set of five Flexifoil Matrix kites (SUL to Super-vented), as well as a set of CR Matrix kites, and, obviously paired them up (see here, and further links therein). Once you're known to have an interest in older team kites, they seem to gravitate towards you .... Late last year, another full set of Flexifoil Matrix kites came our way, for free. Clearly, we had to fly the two sets of Flexi Matrices together!

We did make a start on that soon after receiving the second set, but, as you may know, life didn't go to plan, so it's only now that we have flown all five Flexi Matrix pairs together. Here they are, from SUL to Super-vented.

SUL:

UL:

Standard:

Vented:

Super-vented:

As you might expect, The pairs of Flexifoil Matrices together are better matched than when we flew Flexi and CR Matrices together!