UK National Championships 2015

The 2015 UK National Championships at Dunstable Downs June 13 & 14 threw up an interesting challenge: fog. Besides the weather alternating between drizzle and rain, there were times when it was near-impossible to see the kites at the end of the lines .... Despite this rather challenging weather, there were still two full rounds of the dual-line individual, pair, and team; and quad-line individual and pair competitions, plus a single round of multi-kite flying (on Saturday) and a single round of freestyle flying (on Sunday).

To a large degree, the winners from last year retained their titles: Tony Shiggins won dual-line individual, Phoenix (Tony + Fran) won dual-line pair, and Flame (Tony + Fran + Barry) won dual-line team. So another triple for Tony!

The only 'other' winner compared to last year was Bryan Beasley, who took the freestyle title.

Multi-kite flying saw its début at the Nationals, with four entries, and the first UK Champion in this discipline is Graham Lockwood.

Quad-line flying was back at the Nationals after a number of years. Josh Mitcheson became the UK Champion in quad-line individual, and Tall & Small (Josh + Ellie Eades) secured the national title in quad-line pair. So a double for Josh in his debut to flying national competition!

And how did Flying Fish do? With only two entries in dual-line pairs, no surprise that we came second, like last year, and retained our Experienced Class title. Our scores were essentially the same as last year, and we are aware that we need to do something different for our ballet to improve our scores. This will almost surely include more flying 'to' the music than we're doing in our current competition ballet, which is essentially a number of patterns and figures flown with music in the background.

The above would have essentially have been the content of this blog post, if it hadn't been for an unexpected twist .... At the pilot's meeting on Saturday morning, it was clear there was only one entry for dual-line team. In order to make sure Flame at least had to work for their essentially inevitable title, we were asked by Keith Griffiths of the Airheads whether we were up for forming a 3-man scratch team, quickly dubbed 'Fisheadz'. Obviously, we'd never practised the team compulsory figures together, and even more obvious, we didn't have a ballet ... As Keith had experience with the figures, he'd call these, and I'd then switch with Keith to the #1 position to call the ballet. We decided to use our Adiemus music, and string together some elements of our Adiemus routine with some elements of the routine we flew with Airheads at Exmouth Kite Festival a few weeks ago. We also decided at the last moment to try and include our 'double catch' ending, and it worked, under competition conditions! Only on Saturday; we didn't manage it on Sunday. Even though Fisheadz is officially the runner-up dual-line team in the UK in 2015, we were far far behind Flame. Don't think we dishonoured ourselves, though, and Andy Taylor was very enthusiastic about our double catch ending, referring to it as a rare novel move in dual-line flying.

And as we're back with teams, here's a video of Flame flying their ballet on Sunday:

I don't know if pictures were taken of Flying Fish or Fisheadz while they were flying, but if any such surface, I'll update this blog post. Because I was mostly either line judging, ground-crewing, or flying, I didn't have the opportunity to take many pictures myself, but what I took is here. The full results are available on the STACK web-site.

Credit of the picture of one half of the 'double catch': Andy Taylor

Basingstoke Kite Festival

Our third successive appearance at Basingstoke; we're gradually becoming part of the furniture! Weather was nice and mostly sunny, but the wind was challenging, on both days, but for different reasons. On Saturday, the wind was variable and blustery, full of random holes, bumps and brick walls. We coped, but our routines that day certainly weren't our best ...

We flew our standard Airdynamics T5 kites, not because the wind was perfect for standards, but because the standards gave us the least worse compromise between needing an ultralight and a vented within seconds.

On Sunday, the wind was much lighter, but now had a tendency to drop away completely at times. And of going thermal, turning around the arena so you had no idea where the wind was coming from. T5 Cubans were the obvious kite of choice this time. We almost pulled of another 'double catch' at the end of our first Adiemus routine on Sunday. Irma had caught my kite and I was within inches of catching hers, when she turned her kite around and I was left running across the field trying to grab the kite before it hit the ground. I failed ...

Besides Flying Fish, there were several other pairs and teams present. Team Spectrum flew their usual 'Carl flying two kites' - Carl & Bryan flying a pair routine' - 'Carl flying three kites' set. And the first 'Carl flying two kites' routine on Sunday was to Chi Mai, my favourite Team Spectrum performance (as long-time readers of this blog will know!)

The Airheads were present as a pair (Keith and Vee) on Sunday only (work prevented them from attending on Saturday), and they also flew T5 Cubans.

I mentioned above that we were struggling with the light-and-sometimes-absent wind on Sunday, but all the dual-line pairs had their kites fall out of the sky at least once due to lack of wind ...

Moving from two lines to four lines, The Flying Squad was present with a 4-(wo)man team (Stephen, Susan, Helen and Simon), showing off their skills, and not appearing to be bothered too much by the challenging wind conditions.

Whereas The Flying Squad have been regulars at Basingstoke for many years, I'm very glad to see young blood come into the sport of pair/team-flying (and the UK really needs that!). This young blood comes in the form of 'Tall and Small', a new quad-line pair, consisting of Josh and Ellie. They did fantastically well, especially given that Ellie only took up flying a Revolution a couple of months ago! I look forward to seeing much more of them at events this year and in the years to come.

And not only did 'Tall and Small' fly a pairs routine, they also joined in with The Flying Squad and a few others for a 9-kite mega-fly.

Lots more pictures of the weekend are here, but I do want to highlight one exceptional kite flown at Basingstoke: Christian Baden Powell's Taranis. A truly magnificent creation, and I'm very glad to have seen it fly for real (after having seen photos and a few videos), and to have helped launch it!

Flying Fish pictures credit: Gayle Woodul

Exmouth Kite Festival

Exmouth Kite Festival was one of many 'firsts' for us. The first 'first' is that this was our Exmouth debut. We'd heard good things about the festival, and certainly weren't disappointed. Weather was a mixture of sun and clouds on Saturday, with much greyer skies (and occasional drizzle) on Sunday. Windwise, we started off with very little wind, which increased substantially over the course of Saturday, whereas Sunday saw very strong winds (up to around 28mph) throughout the day. That did mean that this was the first time at a festival ('first' #2) we went through our entire set of Airdynamics T5 kites, from Cubans to ultralights (on Saturday) to standards to venteds to superventeds (on Sunday), Highlight in terms of our own performances was probably (no, surely) the double catch at the end of our Adiemus routine on Saturday morning, the first time we pulled this off ('first' #3)! It certainly created a bit of a talking point amongst the kite flyers present. Scariest moment came in our first Saturday afternoon routine. We flew our ultralights when the wind all of a sudden increased massively. I really wasn't sure whether we'd break a line or a kite first .... but we managed to complete the routine with only a snapped bungee on Irma's kite. Keith and Vee, of the Airheads, had seen what was happening, and made sure that their standards were ready for us to quickly switch to between our two routines; thanks guys!

Sunday, the flying was actually easier, because although the wind was a lot stronger, it came over the estuary, and so was much more consistent. And this allowed us, for the first time at a festival, to fly our Adiemus routine with our pair of Peter Powell kites ('first' #4). The Peter Powell boys seemed very pleased with us flying their kites in an official festival routine; happy to be of service, Mark and Paul!

Who else were there in terms of pairs and teams? I already mentioned the Airheads, flying routines both as a pair (Keith and Vee) and a 3-man team (Peter, Keith and Vee).

Sky Symphony was present with four people (Graham, Dave, Alan and Chris). They flew most of their team routines with Airdynamics T5 kites, but their final routine of the festival was flown with four 5-stacks of Rhombus Sky fox kites.

The flag of Rev-teams was kept flying by the Decorators, who delivered their usual solid performance.

In contrast to the Saturday arena programme, there was quite a lot of mega-team flying on Sunday. Flying Fish combined with the Airheads and Sky Symphony to form a 8-man mega-team (first time we flew together with Sky Symphony; 'first' #5!). This combination was first dubbed 'Fish Head Symphony' by Paul Reynolds, the commentator, which then quickly turned into 'Fish Soup', and then finally became 'Bouillabaisse'. The strong wind made it challenging to fly in an 8-man team, but we survived without crashes or other mishaps.

The other 'combination team' in the field consisted of Flying Fish together with the Airheads (referred to as 'Air Fish'), flying five kites, each with the Airheads' signature tails. Although we have flown with tails as a pair, we'd never before flown tails in a 5-man team ('first' #6!). On top of that, we were flying several patterns we'd never flown before, which were only explained to us by Peter shortly before we started ('first' #7 for the "Very Swiss Roll", 'first' #8 for the "Dandelion", and 'first' #9 for the "8-0-8"). Although the patterns certainly weren't perfect, we got through without any tail catches or other mistakes, and we felt really chuffed about that!.

And here's a video of the 5-man tails routine of Airheads and Flying Fish, made by Valerie Hancorn:

Keith and Vee must have been happy with our performance, because we were made honorary members of the Airheads!

More pics we took during the festival can be found here.

Picture credit of Flying Fish, "Fish Head Symphony", and "Air Fish": Valerie Hancorn

Weymouth Kite Festival

Traditionally, Weymouth Kite Festival is the opener of our festival season, and this year it was no different. The forecasts leading up to the festival were pretty bad, and Sunday saw the most horrid and evil winds we've ever flown in at a festival. Brick walls, sudden gaping holes, extreme turbulence, strong gusts, you name it, we got it. We flew T5 Taipan standard kites, not because the wind was suitable for them, but because they were sort of in the middle of the sudden lulls (when you needed a super-ultra-light) and strong gusts (when you needed the mega-vents). We tried to fly our Ruthless Queen and Adiemus routines, we survived, although it was far from pretty ...

Monday was a lot better: wind a lot lighter, and coming off the water (as opposed to rolling over the hotels on the Esplanade, as it did on Sunday). T5 Cubans were the weapon of choice, and I think we pretty much nailed our routines.

Two other teams were present: Flame, the current UK dual-line team champions (including the pair Phoenix), and the Airheads, flying both as a 3-man team and as a pair.

And with three dual-line teams (and Barry) present, there is no way a mega-team doesn't happen. Seven kites this time, and we can truly say this was the most difficult mega-team flying we've ever done, due to the extremely blustery and turbulent wind. It really was a case of not losing concentration for even a fraction of a second ...

And in case you're wondering: no quad-line teams were present this year, as Weymouth clashed with Cervia.

In order to bring competition flying more to the attention of the public, STACK had decided to try out a fun competition: teams and pairs competing against each other, each flying one particular figure during their warm-up, and then flying one or more routines. Judging was done by the flyers of the other pairs/teams. So nothing too serious, but simply to give the public a bit of a taste for competing in pair- and team-flying. Phoenix won, with a total of 84 points, just pipping Flame to the post. Although Flying Fish finished fifth and last, we're very happy with our score of 70 points, which was only 7 points behind the Airheads, which finished fourth; not a million miles away from the UK top!

More pics of the festival, including Serpents, Swallows, and Smorg, are to be found here.

Picture credit of us flying as Flying Fish: Genoveva Martinez; of us flying in the mega-team: Valerie Hancorn

Double Martinelli!

Sometimes you just stumble across some kites, and the offer is such that you simply can't refuse ... I have to admit I'd never heard of a kite builder called Ron Martinelli, and had never seen a Martinelli kite until I saw a pair for sale at Windswept Kites, for a price equivalent to around £18 ... That's £18 for the pair! They looked like a smaller version of a Top of the Line Spin-Off, and they looked like they would be a hoot to fly as a pair when the wind picks up. Needless to say, the pair is ours now, and here they are at our primary pair-flying site:

I googled around, trying to find more information on the kites, at the very least the model name, but drew blanks all over. Until I got in touch with Ron himself, who told me that the kites were made in the 1980s, that only something like 15-20 were ever made (one of which is in the Weifang Kite Museum in China), and that they didn't have a specific name. So without knowing it, I got my hands on a pair of pretty rare Martinelli kites!

So what about their flight characteristics? They look like small Spin-Offs (wing span is 1.91m, as opposed to 2.47m for a TotL Spin-Off), and they fly like a Spin-Off ... on steroids. As you might expect, they do need a decent wind to get going, but once the wind goes above, say, 12mph, they are really in their element.

And what about flying them as a pair? Fast, noisy, and a hoot to fly together! A really fun pair of kites to pull out on a windy day, at the end of a practice session, and just have pure, unadulterated, fast and furious FUN!

Double Skynasaur!

Few years ago, we got ourselves a Skynasaur Aerobat. Dating back to the 1980s, it's a small-ish and relatively heavy kite, which has the typical Rogallo shape when it flies. No stand-offs, though: the Rogallo shape purely comes from the pressure of the wind on the sail. It's a fun nippy kite to fly, but it does need a decent wind, both because of it being rather heavy for its size, as well as because it needs the wind to create the Rogallo shape.

Recently, we got our hands on a second Skynasaur Aerobat, via Windswept Kites. Same size, different colour, and bridled in a different way (second, orange Skynasaur has a control bar, which our first, red one lacks)  Now we're a kite-flying pair, we got a pair of essentially the same kites, so why not try and fly them together?

Turns out it works pretty well! The kites look rather small at the end of 40+5m lines, given that we're used to seeing kites with a wing span of around 2.40-2.50m at the end of our lines, and the Skynasaurs measure just over 1.30m. But they're pretty responsive to input, and simply fun to fly. We went through several figures with them, and even managed a few refuels! The one thing they don't like is anything that takes the wind out of the sails, even for a second. So they're not keen on boxes or any other sudden changes in direction. And they're really not keen on the edge of the wind window. All a result of them not having stand-offs, and so needing the push of the wind to maintain their shape.


So Flying Fish has another pair of kites to add to their team quiver! Not a pair we will use for official routines at festivals or competitions, but a pair to have fun with at the end of a practice session on a windy day. They're in our team bags now!

Anyone for a taste of team-flying?

Dual-line pair- and team-flying is not exactly a big sport in the UK, and it could really do with some fresh blood. But how to get people make the step from flying a kite alone to flying a kite as part of a pair or team? Even if someone is excited from seeing a pair or team display at a festival or practice field, it's not so easy to give that person a first taste of what it actually feels like to fly patterns and formations together. Simply because it's not a case of asking that person to take his or her kite and just join in. Very likely that he or she has a different kite from what the team is flying. Very likely that he or she flies on 25-30m lines as opposed to the 40+m lines required for team-flying. Different kites will fly and handle differently, and line length will influence the speed of the kite. And whereas experienced team-flyers can deal with different kites being part of a formation, for someone keen on getting his or her first taste of team-flying, it's pretty essential that the kites are all the same, and the lines all of the same length.

With that in mind, we wanted to add one kite to our wide range of paired team kites, so that we would have a trio, and so could offer anyone interested a first taste of team-flying: kite's there, lines are of the right length, so all ready to go!

Question: which kite? Actually, we didn't have to think about that for very long. We have a pair of Dream On kites, which really are perfect for a first introduction into team-flying. They're a bit smaller than a typical team kite (2.21m wing span as opposed to the usual 2.40-50m), are very easy to fly, and don't pull much.

And not only do we as Flying Fish have a pair of these kites, the other members of L-katz also have one each, and we regularly fly them with the team, especially if we want to try out something new. Because of their smaller size, they provide just that wee bit more space in the sky to test out new patterns and formations.

So decision made, we got an extra Dream On via Kiteworld, and here she is, in the sky together with our earlier white one.

We also made a set of lines and leaders at the correct length, so it really is a case of kite and lines being ready to go. We can take someone along with the two of us for flying in a team of three, or go up to a team of six, if all other members of L-katz join in.

Extra Dream On and associated lines will always be standard in our team bags from now on. So if you are able to control a dual-line kite and want to get a first taste of team-flying, what are you waiting for?