Our official banner for Flying Fish consists of (at the moment) five 'fishy' windsocks, but for L-katz, the team we're also part of, we didn't have an official team banner. Up to now, that is, and here we proudly present the official L-katz banner!
Made by Roy and Hayley of Kites Up. And I must say they've done a really professional job on this. The sturdy pole consists of three parts that lock into each other, and the whole comes in a well-designed bag, with extra pockets for the stake and a hammer. And talking about the stake to be driven into the ground: this is not your average ground stake, but a very professional one, which allows the banner to turn with the wind.
Weymouth Beach Kite Festival is our usual opener of the festival season, but this year there was one crucial difference: in previous years, we had come for one day, to watch, talk to people, and maybe ground crew and help fly some single-liners. This year, we were officially 'invited flyers'! So obviously, we stayed over for the whole weekend, using the Fairhaven Hotel overlooking the Esplanade and beach.
Winds were light during the entire festival. On Sunday they were prone to dropping away completely, whereas Monday's winds started off riddled with holes, and ended sweet and smooth. Flying our AirdynamicsT5 Taipan SUL (while having our T5 Cubans and T5 Taipan Standards on standby, just in case), we flew four times, with the worst performance on the Monday morning, when we kept hitting holes and ended up with Irma's kite going through my lines, forcing us to abandon. Best performance was that same afternoon, when the winds had become sweet and smooth, and we really hit our routine. Glad to go out on a high!
Airheads was also present, as in previous years, mostly flying their T5 Cubans (with tails, pretty brave decision in the fickle winds!)
Flame, back from the World Championships, where they came 10th, flew their trademark Fury kites.
And the final dual-line team/pair was Close Encounters, with Peter Taylor from Airheads standing in for Marilyn. Pretty impressed with how quickly he adapted to the two routines they flew, given that he and Allan had only practiced once or twice together!
The quad-line teams present and performing were The Decorators, who have been coming to Weymouth every year recently ...
... and Fusion, who had their Weymouth debut. Both teams flying Revolution kites (what else?), and both teams giving a solid performance, even though they were at times struggling with the winds (if Rev flyers walk backwards, you know there is a problem with the wind ...)
And, of course, if you have two or more Rev teams together at a festival, a Rev mega-team is unavoidable. The Decorators and Fusion duly obeyed this law of nature!
With the Rev-flyers going mega-team, the dual-line flyers couldn't stay behind, and it's also unimaginable to have Barry Savell of Flame present at a festival, and then not have a dual-line mega-team. Flame teamed up with Airheads, and seemed happy to let us join them.
A video of the first three minutes of our Sunday mega-team popped up on youtube:
As always, the focus of this blog is on pair- and team-flying but lots more happened, and photos can be found here (for instance, Paul Thody was again present, flying his stack of 24 Flexifoils). I do want to pick out one person appearing at the festival and that is Peter Powell. Without him, who knows what the kiting world would have looked like, and I was lucky to be able to have a brief chat with him. As you may know Peter Powell kites are back on the market again. We tried to fly our customised Peter Powell Mk III kites, but the wind was too light for them. The Powell boys are developing an UL version, with a carbon frame, and flew a prototype.
Back home, still buzzing from a great festival, the last task was to hose off the kites, because the fine powdery Weymouth sand gets everywhere ...
Credits for the pictures showing us flying: Roger Backhouse
As you may know, Flying Fish's 'banner' at festivals is a pole with fish-shaped windsocks. Up to recently, we had three fish flying from our pole. A few weeks ago, I managed to get my hands on a windsock in the shape of a yellow angelfish (made by Skydog Kites; I got mine via Kiteworld). And at the Weymouth Kite Festival last weekend, this new addition to our 'banner' got to fly for the first time:
Now the sleeve around the pole does have two more attachment points, and on Monday, I did see a windsock in the shape of a clownfish flying from one of the kite stands on the Esplanade ... To make an already short story even shorter, we now have five fishy windsocks:
One more to come?
By the way, photos of the festival are here, and I'll write a blog post about our personal experiences soon. Watch this space!
After having flown our T5 Taipan V1 and V2 kites, the only pair in the full set we hadn't flown yet were the T5 Cubans. Of course, for that we needed a day with (virtually) no wind, and today was that perfect day.
Wind at Stokes Bay was mostly 0mph, with occasional gusts up to 1-2mph. We flew them on 40m, 25kg lines, and without leaders.
These kites are SWEET to fly! Slow, of course, but very responsive, and even at 0mph, we could keep flying infinities and wraps, as long as we kept walking back and forth. And the kites show no hint of flaring when walking forwards.
Anyone seriously interested in team-flying will be aware that the World Championships took place in Berck this past week. Line-up consisted of 14 teams from around the world: Japan, China, Malaysia, USA, Colombia, Russia, Lithuania, France, and, of course, the UK, represented by Team Flame and The Scratch Bunnies.
And if you're interested in the World Championships, you already know that The Scratch Bunnies won the title, for the third time in a row, which no other team has ever done. Congratulations, guys!!
Thanks to Facebook, and to the many updates, score sheets, photos, and videos posted by competitors and others, as well as on the official WSKC Facebook page, we could stay up to date of what was happening, including the challenging winds on days 1 and 2, and the 'Goldilocks' winds on the final day. When the results were announced in real time via the WSKC Facebook page on Friday night, we had the iPad in my lap, refreshing the page every 20 seconds or so, as the placing of the teams, in reverse order, was made public. Every new placing was duly shared to the Flying Fish Facebook page, and a big shout went up when it became clear that the Bunnies had taken the gold!
A video of the Bunnies' final ballet (made by Helen Ribchester of The Flying Squad fame) is here, and a video of the ceremony (also made by Helen) is here.
Following our acquisition of a full set of T5 kites, which got their own dedicated team bag, we wanted to add a set of kite stakes especially for this set of kites. Do we need those? No, of course not, as the old screw drivers we've been using do absolutely fine. But it's just nice to have something special for our full set, isn't it?
Looking around the internet showed that a few kite companies sell kite stakes, but none of these looked especially nice. Until I stumbled across LS Kite Accessories. They make really nice-looking kite stakes, and the price, including shipping from the US, was very reasonable.
And here they are!
They look even better than on the pictures, and come complete with holsters and carabiners.
Blue ones for me, red ones for Irma; and dark ones for on a beach, lights ones for on grass. Really nice set of sturdy and well-made stakes. And the cherry on the cake was that the parcel escaped the attention of HM Revenue & Customs!
In a previous blog post, I talked about the Air-o-bian fighter kite, which was on the market in the 1920s and 1930s, and my plan to try and turn a modern box kite into a dual-line-controlled Air-o-bian. But of course, in order for that to happen, I first needed to find out how this Air-o-bian actually worked. Enter this wonderful web-site, Kite patents! It indeed had the original patent for the Air-o-bian, and here is the crucial page showing the construction of the rudder:
So, once I had this patent, I ordered two box kites from Spirit of Air, and the aim now is to add a rudder to these box kites, making them steerable in the same way as the Air-o-bian was.
