Flash Angels, in triplicate

In 1991, at the National Championships on Blackheath in London, the Decorators flew a set of four Rare Air Flash Angels:

Recently I became aware that three of those four Flash Angels were looking for a good home (the whereabouts of the fourth is currently unknown). Needless to say I expressed an interest in giving them that good home as well as air time in a pair and team setting. 

To make a not very long story even shorter, the Flash Angels ended up in my possession, on the understanding I would donate an amount of money of my choice to a charity of my choice.

More on that charity donation at the end of this blog post; let's fly the kites first! First up were the 'yellow-tailed' and 'red-tailed' kites.

Minimal bridle adjustment was necessary to match their drive and pull. They fly slow and steady, almost serene. Good tracking, easy refuels, but they don't particular like to (half-)axel. Of course, 1990s team kites weren't designed to do that. 

And then time to add the third ('pink-tailed') Flash Angel and fly them with our L-katz team.

Once again, it required a small bridle adjustment to match it to the other two. Flying them in team formation again showed their good tracking and general 'team kite flying characteristics'.

As I mentioned, we got the kites basically 'for free', but on the proviso of a donation to charity. Which charity to donate to wasn't difficult for me to decide. As some of you reading this are aware, I underwent emergency spinal surgery two years ago, to avoid ending up in a wheelchair. I have been fortunate that I've largely recovered from the spinal injury, but others aren't that lucky. So I decided to donate an amount of money that I would have been happy to pay for the set of three had they been up for sale to the Backup Trust, a small charity that offers support to people suffering from spinal injury. 

Flash Angels, with Championship experience, coming to a field near you!

Streatham Kite Day

It's been three years since we last flew at Streatham Kite Day. In 2024, I was in hospital, recovering from spinal surgery, and last year, the event had to be cancelled at short notice. So it was good to set up base camp again on Streatham Common!

The arena schedule of the day was basically a 'rinse and repeat' of the usual gang. Several more fliers and teams had been invited, but were not able to come to Streatham, for various reasons. 

First, Carl Wright of Team Spectrum, doing his best to deal with the typically Streatham wind (bit more on that later in this post) while performing his usual routines flying two or three kites.

And then Flying Fish. We flew in three slots, three routines per slot ("Carmina Mix" > "Rise like a Phoenix" > "Adiemus"). While testing the wind prior to the event being officially opened, we decided to fly with our T5 Taipan V1 kites. 

It turned out through the day that that was the right choice, with an important caveat .... I already mentioned the wind being, shall we say, rather challenging ... Changing from 4 mph to 20+ mph in seconds meant that, on average, the V1s were the right kite to fly with, but most of the time they were either underpowered or overpowered, in equal measures ... An additional problem with the wind was that we often could hardly hear the music, and that made it rather difficult to fly to music and land right at the end (it basically meant continuing to play the music in my head and then call for the landing at my best guess of when the music stopped ...). 

But we did what we could under the circumstances, even if our routines were far from the most polished ones ever. Several members of the public told us afterwards that it was really impressive and they enjoyed it. And that's ultimately what it's all about!

Quite a few people coming up to us between our arena slots, asking us advice on getting their kites to fly. This really only happens at Streatham, and, of course, we were happy to help out where we could.

A few more pictures, including Keith 'Nasaman' Warner, are here. But I do want to highlight Alexander Wright, Carl's son, who got his own arena slot, with PA announcement, flying a dual-line kite. The future of Team Spectrum seems assured!

Picture credits of us flying: Carl Wright, Marie Coombs