Bolero

Now that the competition and festival season is behind us, we can start looking ahead to 2023. What are our plans for competition next year, and what are we going to focus on for festivals?

Let's start with competition, as that's the 'easiest'. Basically, we are not planning to create either a new technical routine or a new ballet, but will continue to tweak and polish the routine and ballet we flew during competition in 2019 and 2022 (of course, due to covid, there was no competition in 2020 and 2021). One major reason for wanting to keep both technical routine and ballet is that we have never been able to fly either in 'nice' winds; it's always been in strong, blustery and really challenging winds. So we strongly feel we haven't been able to show the judges what we can actually do with them.

And then festival routines. After a few years of mostly flying our technical routine to a Carmina Burana mix and a make-it-up-as-we-go-along routine to 'Rise Like a Phoenix', we want to make a few changes. 

First of all, we intend to write more of a choreography to 'Rise Like a Phoenix', so it's less random and, hopefully, a bit more interesting. It won't be a very 'hard' choreography in that every single beat in the music is captured, but more of a 'soft' choreography in that we write specific moves for key parts of the music, and have a number of elements we can use for in-between those key parts. 

Secondly, we want to have a new (to us) piece of music for a 'make-up-as-we-go-along' routine. Not yet decided on what music to use for that, but we have some candidates, and are keeping our ears open for anything suitable (happy to receive suggestions!).

Thirdly, we are considering resurrecting our very first proper competition ballet (to Chariots of Fire). We haven't flown it for a number of years, and it does make a pretty good and fully-choreographed ballet to fly at festivals when the wind is right. Curious to find out how much of that is still in our muscle memory once we start flying it again!

And then, finally, we are thinking of creating a routine that I've been wanting to create for many years, but never really got around to, because it will be very challenging ... In order to explain what that routine is all about, I need to take you back to 1984, to the Olympic Winter Games in Sarajevo, and specifically to the ice dance final. On the ice came Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, and this was their free dance:

38 years later, I still remember seeing that dance as if it was yesterday. They did away with all the conventions back then around the structure of an ice dance, and cleverly played the system regarding some of the rules. Needless to say they won gold, with a perfect score of sixes.

Ravel's Bolero is something like 17 minutes long, way too long for an ice dance routine, which is set at just over 4 minutes maximum. Torvill and Dean got the full 17 or so minutes composition edited down to 4 minutes and 28 seconds, which made it almost fit into what's allowed for the maximum length of a free dance (to make it fit, they were clever; if you don't know what they did, watch the first 20 or so seconds of their routine!).

Now 4:28 is also a good length for a kite routine, right? So here's the idea I've had for many years now: Create a routine inspired by their ice dance and to the shortened Bolero track they used (which I have managed to get my hands on). Of course, skaters on the ice and kites in the sky are two totally different things, and can and can't do different things, but it should be possible to come up with a number of kite patterns that are similar to what they did on the ice. As an example, Torvill and Dean skating away from each other, and then skating towards each other again, grabbing each other and then pirouetting around each other can easily be done with kites, ending up in a wrap. Refuels capture them skating in a line or curve in close contact with each other. Etc. I hope you get the idea? 

Without giving too much away, refuels will surely feature prominently, but whether we can come up with enough ice-dance-inspired moves and patterns to fill a 4+ minutes routine remains to be seen. 

We'll surely have fun trying! So, maybe coming to a kite festival near you next year ...

Bognor Regis Kite Festival

And so we've come to our final kite festival of 2022: Bognor Regis! Last time we flew there was before covid hit us, in 2019, and this year it was back on the festival calendar, again as a 3-day festival. So off to Bognor we went with a car full of kites and kite stuff!

Weather was sunny with variable amounts of clouds, and with virtually no rain (just a wee bit of drizzle on Sunday), so that was nice. The wind, however, was rather challenging .... very little of it on Saturday, and while there was more wind on Sunday and Monday (rarely ever into the double figures, though), it was very flaky and variable all through the bank holiday weekend. 

If you follow this blog, you will be aware my focus when writing posts is on pair- and team-flying, but, as usual, I will provide a link to more photos (including some single-liners and large inflatables) at the end of this post.

Let's start with a one-man sport kite pair, Simon Franks.

I really like one of the music tracks he uses: Ruelle - Come Fly with Me! If he wasn't already using it, we would for sure ...

From Simon, it's a small step to the team he is part of: Team Firefox. The team flew as a pair (Simon and Matt Constable), obviously using their 3.3m wing span Firefox kites (more on those kites a bit later in this post ...).

Staying with dual-line pairs, our sister pair, Twisted Bridle, flew their 'Fly Away with Me' ballet.

Second festival for them this year, following Seal Bay. Good to see them back flying as a pair again. 

And then Flying Fish, of course. We flew our 'Rise like a Phoenix' and 'Carmina' routines, using T5 Cubans on Saturday and KiteTec Impulses (standards and, briefly, mid-vents) on Sunday and Monday. 

One of our 'Rise like a Phoenix' routines was the best we've ever flown to that music, repeatedly stalling the kites just before the fast 'rises', and landing them simultaneously rock solid exactly at the end of the music. Feels great when you pull that off!

Put Twisted Bridle and Flying Fish together, and you get L-katz! We flew our usual set of 'Can't Stay Away from You' and 'Targaryen Theme' routines, again using T5 Cubans and KiteTec Impulses.

The flaky wind did create some problems, especially when it just died in the middle of our compound wrap ... still, we kept the show going, and that's what counts at a festival.

In terms of quad teams, there was just a 'scratch' quad team performing in the arena.

Now I said I'd come back to Firefox kites, didn't I? It just so happens that we had brought our own Firefoxes to Bognor .... At first we played around with them a bit, attaching a pair of the bunnies that were used in the teddy bear drop. As if the bunnies were hang-gliding!

That was just for giggles, but that meant that Team Firefox realised we also brought Firefox kites, and they had a third Firefox with them .... with five Firefoxes among us, we obviously had to form a Firefox mega-team!!

We deliberately didn't fly to music, because (1) we wouldn't really be able to hear the music; and (2) the kites created their own 'music': the roar of five Firefoxes is truly epic! On Monday, the five Firefoxes were joined by a North Shore, which looked quite small compared to the Firefoxes. A video of the Firefox mega-team on Sunday is here.

After we first flew our pair of Firefoxes a few years ago, I said in an earlier blog post, referring to the noise they make: "Imagine four or five of these flying together in team formation!". Well, I don't have to imagine that any more!

Bognor Regis Kite Festival marked the end of our festival season (Streatham being cancelled), and it was a good one. Over the three days, we flew a total of 26 routines (12 with Flying Fish, 12 with L-katz and two as part of the Firefox mega-team), so I feel we went out with a bang (or, rather, with a roar). 

And, as promised, some more pictures of the festival are here.

Picture credits: Marian Linford (Flying Fish, L-katz), Piyush Patel (Flying Fish, Firefox mega-team)

More No Fear ...

A little while ago, I posted on us getting our hands on, and flying, a pair of No Fear kites. And I also wrote that, to the best of my knowledge, there are at least six different sail designs of this kite ...

Well, you may have seen this coming, but I managed to get my hands on two more!

In terms of flight characteristics, these two are identical to the earlier two .... let's just say they're not the best sport kite ever put on the market ...

2 + 2 = 4, so we do have enough of these kites now to fly them with our team ...

Portsmouth Kite Festival

The kite festival scene is gradually emerging from the covid era. From no festivals for us in 2020, and one festival for us (Portsmouth) last year, we are lined up for three this year (Brighton and Streatham were sadly cancelled recently): the inaugural Seal Bay Kite Festival in June, Portsmouth last weekend, and Bognor Regis at the end of this month.

Weather over the weekend was generally cloudy (with most of the sun on Saturday). Wind came over the water and was 'standard' on Saturday (mostly 7-13mph) but much stronger (up to 22mph) on Sunday. And no rain!

As always in these festival blog posts, I focus on the pair/team-flying, but of course a lot more happened, from art kites to large inflatables (and a gorgeous dragon, which I'll briefly mention at the end of this post). 

Fracture was present, flying both 2-line and 4-line routines, with Fury and Fulcrum kites, respectively. 

Carl Wright (Team Spectrum) flew his usual 2-kite and 3-kite routines.

Switching to 4-line kites, the Dunstable Downs Old Gents (aka DDoGs) performed in the arena. 

And, of course, Portsmouth wouldn't be Portsmouth without The Decorators!

And then Flying Fish, of course! Using T5 kites (standards on Saturday; V2s on Sunday), we flew our 'Rise Like a Phoenix' and 'Carmina' routines in each of our slots (the 'Carmina' routine is basically our current technical routine to music).

On Sunday, when a few of the scheduled slots couldn't happen due to the wind being too strong for the focus kites, we flew two extra routines: we joined Fracture for a 4-strong off-the-cuff routine as 'Fractured Fish' on Sunday morning ...

... and 'Fractured Fish' was further joined by Alan Poxon and Dave Morley for a 6-strong mini-mega-team ('Foolish Fractured Fish Symphony') in the afternoon.

Of course, there was also a proper 4-line mega-team, comprising The Decorators, DDoGs and several others.

More pictures of the festival are here. As I mentioned above, a gorgeous Balinese Dragon was flown on both days, and we helped launch it and bring it back down again.

Picture credits of us flying: Carl Wright, Helen Ribchester

No Fear? No Fear!

No Fear is an American clothing, sports, and lifestyle brand. As part of their promotional activities, they have in the recent past marketed a dual-line 1.90m wing span sport kite. I have flown one once, and it was an awful kite to fly: the far-too-flexible fibreglass frame makes it shudder rather than fly. 'No Fear' kites really have taken on the status of 'worst kite ever' among the UK sport kite community. I know of one member of that community who bought one at an auction, purely for the satisfaction of then stamping on it and chucking it in the bin ...

So why oh why am I blogging about 'No Fear' kites??

Well, if you have followed our blog over the years, you know that we like to try out pair-flying kites which really aren't designed for pair-flying. Just for the fun of it! And as 'No Fear' kites regularly pop up on eBay .... you see where this is going, right? Would Flying Fish be brave enough to pair-fly 'No Fear' kites? Or would we fear 'No Fear'?

I reckon you know the answers to those rather rhetorical questions ....

Here's our pair of 'No Fear' kites! Of course, putting them on the ground next to each other and taking a picture is one thing; flying them quite another. We flew them on 30m lines, thinking it might give us a bit more control than on our usual 45m lines.

They're not exactly team kites! As I said above, the frames are very flexible, and they really don't like anything sudden. Flying sharp corners just doesn't work as the frame flexes too much. Try to fly an axel or half-axel, and you can almost hear the kite scream "What? How am I supposed to ...???" before flapping down to the ground. We flew them in 7-12mph winds, and as soon as the wind speed reaches double figures, the wing tips start shuddering quite badly. 

But we did it; we pair-flew 'No Fear' kites!

Two things: first of all, there is a slightly more serious angle to this: you don't need £200+ custom-built team kites to have fun flying pair; you can do that with much cheaper kites (as we showed with HQ Yukons), and even with the 'worst kite ever' (though I certainly wouldn't recommend the latter). Secondly, Flying Fish is part of the L-katz team, and there are six different 'No Fear' sail designs that I'm aware of ... Has any sport kite team in the world ever flown 'No Fear' kites? I expect the answer to that is a resounding 'NO', and for very good and obvious reasons. Still, it has to be done ..... watch this space!

UK National Championships 2022

The last time the UK Nationals were held was in 2019, and then covid happened .... But, after an absence of two years, the UK Nationals are back in 2022! Probably no surprise that this return happened at the Dunstable Downs.

The wind conditions were very difficult throughout the weekend. Extremely variable (down to well below 10mph, up to well above 20mph, and that often within a minute) and blustery, especially on the Sunday, and this affected everyone. I'll say a bit more about that later on.

Both 'indie' classes, dual-line individual and multi-line individual, were contested by three competitors: Josh Mitcheson, Harry Neale, and Dan Hoath. Unfortunately, the reigning dual-line individual champion couldn't defend his title as a result of catching covid ....

Only one team competing this year: Fracture in dual-line team. For several reasons, L-katz wasn't able to compete this year, and there was no multi-line team entering.

Also there was no multi-line pair. 

And then finally to dual-line pairs. Three pairs competing this year: Fracture ...

... SkyTracks ...

... and Flying Fish.

On Saturday we few Airdynamics T5 V1 kites. This definitely was the right kite on average, but never actually the right kite: during our technical routine, the kites either threatened to fall out of the sky and we had to walk backwards almost until the 'yellow' line, or raced across the sky, making them very difficult to control. Sunday, with the wind stronger, we flew V2 kites, again really struggling to control them when the wind picked up. Let's just say we have flown figures, technical routine and ballet much better than we did this weekend ...

I mentioned L-katz not competing this year, but Pea and Lisa did come to Dunstable Downs on Sunday, and we flew our technical routine as a demo. Because of the horrible wind, it wasn't our finest performance ....

As traditional, there was a mega-team on Sunday, combining Airheads, SkyTracks, L-katz (Flying Fish and Twisted Bridle) and Fracture.

Almost surely there won't be another round this year, so the titles were decided based on just a single round. Josh took both indie titles: dual-line and multi-line individual, and Fracture the dual-line pair and dual-line team titles. In addition, Harry bagged novice titles in the two 'indie' classes, and SkyTracks won the experienced title in dual-line pair. Full results are available here. 

Oh, and one final thing: you may have noticed me standing next to the field director (Vee Griffiths) in the first two pictures in this blog post. That was because I acted as shadow field director for most of the competition (except when flying or crewing), with the idea of Vee and I sharing field directing between us at future championships. 

Picture credit (Flying Fish, mega-team): Andy Taylor

Seal Bay Kite Festival

Following our flying at the jubilee celebration in Croughton earlier this month, we had our first kite festival last weekend! Some time ago, we were asked if we were interested in flying at the inaugural kite festival at the Seal Bay Resort in Selsey. Is the sky blue? We went there earlier this year to try out the field and for some promotional photos and videos, and it's great to see a new festival come on the calendar, given how many we lost over the last number of years. 

Seal Bay Resort provided static caravans to invited flyers, and with Flying Fish's caravan and Twisted Bridle's caravan being across the road from each other, ....

... sticking for the L-katz routines took place Friday evening, lubricated by some fermented grape juice. 

Saturday morning, it was a case of putting up tent and banners, and deciding which kites to use. The weather turned out to be cloudy all weekend, with some rain or drizzle and winds varying a lot, especially on Sunday. 

The festival was split over two sites within the resort: a large field with an arena mostly for pair and team flying, and the pebble beach for large inflatables. I'll say a bit more about Flying Fish's and L-katz' performances later in this post, but who else was performing in the arena?

First of all our sister pair, Twisted Bridle. Due to several reasons, they had hardly flown together for quite a while, so it was great to see them back in action again!

Then there was Fracture, flying as a pair this weekend. Excellent routines, as you would expect from the reigning UK champions. 

The DDoGs added quad-flying to the schedule, and flew their usual calm relaxed routines. 

Simon Franks added multi-kite flying to the weekend, with some of his routines featuring tails. 

And then Flying Fish. We flew Airdynamics T5 kites for our pair routines, which included our 2022 technical routine flown with music, and our latest competition ballet. On the Sunday morning, due to the fast-dropping wind, we had to switch from standards to ultralights, and then again to Cubans, before we could actually complete our ballet; third time lucky .... We really nailed our final ballet of the festival, though!

With our L-katz team (Flying Fish + Twisted Bridle), we used KiteTech Impulse kites, and flew our technical routine with music, and our old ballet (for several reasons, our new ballet is still far from being finished). Our last performance of the weekend was hampered by kite problems developing during the routine (mostly bridle-related), so we had to finish as a pair; the show must go on!

Saturday's evening programme on the beach added illuminated kites to the festival. Sadly, due to the strong wind, the searchlight-flying (in which we would have participated) was cancelled, but at least we were present on the giant screen at the entrance to the beach!

And of course, both the Saturday and Sunday schedule included mega-team flying! Flying Fish joined with Twisted Bridle, Fracture and Simon Franks (plus, briefly, the DDoGs on Saturday) for some fast and furious flying to AC/DC.

More pictures of the festival weekend, including some from the illuminated kite flying, are here.

Picture credits: Alan Pinnock (Flying Fish and L-katz), David Caulfield (mega-team)