Portsmouth Kite Festival

Some of you will be aware that, due to medical reasons, we couldn't fly at Portsmouth Kite Festival last year, but this year I felt ready to return! Slightly anxious as to whether I would be able to cope with two full days at a kite festival, but only one way to find out, right?

Tent and banners are present on Southsea Common again!

As always, my focus in this blog is on the pairs and teams performing in the main display arena. 

Let's do quad-liners first.

New to Portsmouth was the French Is'Air pair, giving polished performances:

Then there was The Quad Mob:

And Evolver was back in a kite festival arena after many years of absence, flying their Fulcrums in a completely new routine!

Of course, Portsmouth wouldn't be Portsmouth without The Decorators:

On to dual line pairs and teams!

Carl Wright, the one-man-pair/team (aka Team Spectrum) was of course present. 

Back again from across the Channel were our Dutch/Belgian friends from Fenix Pair:

Fracture showed why they are the reigning dual-line team National Champions:

Last but not least (I hope!) Flying Fish! Throughout the weekend, we flew our B-2 kites to "Carmina Mix", "Rise like a Phoenix", "Ivo" and "Can't Stay away from You" (the latter of which we normally use for L-katz performances):

Of course, both days concluded with the customary quad-line mega-team:

I was utterly exhausted at the close of the Festival, despite my initial apprehension, but I did manage a full 2-day kite festival again! It was great to be back on the kite festival scene; as if we've never been away ....

More pictures of the two days can be seen here.

Picture credits of us flying: Marian Linford, Franca Perletti, Carl Wright

Airdynamics Dark Stars

We have been flying a full set of Airdynamics T5 kites for well over 10 years, and we really like flying them. At the UK Nationals last month (we didn't compete, having retired from competition) we were given pair of earlier Airdynamics kite: Dark Stars! Thank you, you know who you are ...

Obviously, we couldn't wait to try them out, but had to wait for suitable wind (the spars suggest them being ultralights or maybe light standards). That wind came soon and we were out with them.

Their flight is easy and graceful, just as I'd expect from an Airdynamics kite.

Of course, the next step was to fly them together.

No bridle tweaking was required to let match their relative speed, drive and pull. They showed good tracking, and felt very similar to our T5s (no surprise, given who designed and built them).

The previous owners insisted we fly them with tails as well, and who are we to deny this request from the people behind the kite?

We had some 30m ribbon tails, in lilac and pink, and these should provide a good colour match with the kites themselves.

Very happy with our Dark Stars, and they now have their rightful place in the kite bag that contains the T5!

Picture credit (Dark Stars flying with tails): Piyush Patel

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 ...

And should we ever fly these Lithiums at a festival, this is the music we'll fly them to:

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!

B-2

It's been well over a year since my last post in this blog. The main reason for that is that I was out of action for quite a while for medical reasons (this is not the place to go into more detail; if you know, you know). And that meant no competition in 2024, and no Flying Fish performing at kite festivals.

I'm only now slowly getting back into pair-flying, as well as flying in our L-katz team; I definitely don't have the stamina yet to fly as long or as much as I used to, but things are very slowly improving.

So there hasn't been much to report for quite a while, except for one thing ... 

And that one thing is that, since the last blog post in September last year, we acquired a new set of team kites, called B-2, and made by Adam Pallas. For the last few years, we have been closely involved in the development of these kites, flying prototypes, providing feedback to Adam, etc. Here are some pictures of these prototypes:

Standard

Vented

Light

I must say, it was good fun testing out these prototypes, finding out their upper and lower wind limits, playing with bridle settings, etc! Note that the upper spreader goes through the sail and a t-piece behind the spine. Upper spreader and spine being connected like that results in a very stiff frame.

As we very much liked the way they flew, slow and steady, with easy (half-)axels, we ordered the full set for Flying Fish! Each set has three kites: light - standard - vented. The light goes as low as our T5 Cubans, and the standard has quite a wide wind range: we flew it together with both our Impulse UL and Impulse Mid-vent and it coped fine with both. The vented kite comes with both icarex and mesh patches, four of each per kite, and can also be flown without any patches. This makes it a very versatile kite, it essentially being five kites in one, from a heavy standard to a mega-vented, and so able to deal with a very wide wind range. So, with only three B-2 kites, we cover the full wind range we'd ever fly in. All kites also come with weights to add to the spine or wing tips, and the leech line is adjustable.

As you can probably imagine, lots of discussion on the colour patterns! In the end, we decided to go with mostly black kites with a swash of our individual colours, as black kites look really sharp in the sky. 

So here are Flying Fish's B-2s!

Light:

Standard:

Vented:

And in case you were wondering, yes, L-katz also has a full set of B-2s ...

Of course, testing the single prototypes doesn't give any direct information on how they perform in team formation, but they definitely fly together, in pair and team, as we were expecting them to. Here's to many more hours flying our B-2s!