Category: Kite News

Five At Once

My acquisition of new kites has continued.  I obtained two more White Bird dragons on eBay this week.  Months and months go by and White Bird kites are hard to come by.  Then there is an influx of them as people empty their kite bags for one reason or another.  So the latest additions to my collection are a 25 ft. Rainbow dragon and a 25 ft. Sun Face dragon.

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White Bird Sun Face Dragon
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White Bird Rainbow Dragon

The Rainbow dragon completes a set of Rainbow dragons of varying sizes.  Putting them up at one time should look pretty impressive in the sky.  The Sun Face adds another unique sail design to my collection.

The hard part about getting new kites is not being able to fly them when they arrive.  We had house guests for the weekend and we missed the weekly kite club fly at Fort Macon State Park.  This seems to be happening more and more often lately.  Though I’m not complaining, I do have to get my kite fix or suffer withdrawal.  So this afternoon I went to the beach and flew all of my latest White Bird additions.  Five dragon kites in the sky.  What a wondrous sight.

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Five At Once

The two on the left are the latest additions.  The middle kite is the White Bird Golden Gate dragon.  The two on the right are both White Bird Friendly Dragon dragons.  I think of them as the brothers and, true to form, they fought in the sky, tangled their lines and brought each other down.  I had to separate them.

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White Bird Friendly Dragon Dragons (The Brothers)

It was a great day at the beach.  The wind was not too strong and the temperature was not too hot.  I would have liked to stay longer but I was given a dinner invitation that I couldn’t refuse.  It meant I didn’t have to cook and I didn’t have to do the dishes.  And if you’re wondering how one person flies five kites at once.  Here’s our secret (which is not really a secret at all).  Sand bags made from inexpensive nylon backpacks.

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Fair Winds All.

New Kites And Other Things

The weekly Carolina Kite Club fly didn’t go very well this week.  There was no wind, lots of heat and humidity and way too many “no-see-ums”.  For those of you who don’t know, the no-see-um is an extremely small flying insect that has a big bite.  They are annoying and persistent.  Where there is one, there are a thousand and no bug repellant seems to keep them away.  They can make a beautiful day miserable.

There has been kite activity in the past couple of weeks.  Most of it did not involve flying however.  Some hours were spent doing line maintenance.  Specifically the untangling of a rat’s nest of a quad line set.  At first it looked hopeless but with a little persistence and patience, I now have a line set ready to use.  As long as I was working on quad lines, I rewound two other sets in order to reduce the possibility of future tangles.  Less time untangling, more time flying.

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Friendly Dragon
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Golden Gate Dragon

There were some additions made to the kite bags recently.  I managed to add a couple of White Bird dragon kites to my collection.   One was the Golden Gate Bridge dragon, a pattern I hadn’t seen before and one not found on their catalogue pages.  The other is a Friendly Dragon dragon.  I already had three Friendly Dragon dragons in different sizes.  This one gives me a complete family.  The purchases bring my White Bird dragon collection up to a total of eleven.  My ultimate plan is to put every dragon I own in the air at the same time.  A festival of White Birds.  There will be pictures when I do it.

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A Family of Friendly Dragons

Fair Winds All.

I Couldn’t Wait

This week I am missing the Carolina Kite Club fly.  But I had just finished the pigtails and train lines for a Revolution kite stack and really wanted to get out and try it.  Yes, lately it seems I’ve been “stack” crazy.  I stacked my Dream On and my Little Dreamer and added to my stack of Goblins.  Now, I’m stacking quad line kites.  I had seen stacks of Revolutions on photos from some of the large kite festivals.  They looked like fun and a challenge.

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Kites Unlimited Custom Kites by Revolution

Not being an expert flyer, I decided to start with a small stack.  I have two kites that have the same sail pattern, the Kites Unlimited Custom Revolutions.  One is a full sail and the other is a vented sail.  So I went out one evening when the wind was about 10 mph and the temperature had gone down to something bearable.  My mind was picturing tangled lines and ugly crashes.  instead I had a wonderful time.  The two kites flew as one with just a slight pull on the lines.  The only time things got wobbly was close to the ground where the wind got a little light.  And, even then, it was controllable.  I’m looking forward to taking these out again.  And again and again.

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Kites Unlimited Revolution Stack at Fort Macon State Park

Fair Winds All.

The Future Is Here

It’s been well over a year since I saw the Little Dreamer and the Dream On, dual line stunt kites by Skydog, flown as a stack.  That stack was made up of the black versions of those kites.  I knew that sometime in the future, I would have a stack like that, only with the white versions.  Well, the future is here.  Two weeks ago I purchased the Little Dreamer at our local kite store and obtained the proper train lines and pigtails.  This past Sunday at the weekly Carolina Kite Club fly, I put the white stack in the air.

Little Dreamer & Dream On by Skydog

The wind was around 10-12 mph and the temperatures had decreased to a tolerable level.  The sun peeked out from behind the clouds at random intervals.  In other words, a perfect day to fly.  The best word I can think of to describe the flight of my little stack is “SWEET”.  The two kites flew as one with hardly any pull to speak of.  Loops, dives, figure eights, low-level flight and high; it was almost euphoric.  And the rainbow colors stood out against the light gray clouds and the patches of blue sky.  I may never fly those kites singly again.

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A Matched Set

I was lucky in that there were friends of mine there that were more experienced flyers and could handle my stack while I took the images seen here.  The one problem with flying a stack is that the flyer doesn’t get to really see what the stack looks like.  He only sees the kite closest to him, not the ones behind.  Only by having someone available to fly your stack for you can you really appreciate the spectacle it provides.  So I was doubly lucky.  I not only got to fly the stack, I got to see the entire stack in flight.

What The Flyer Sees
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Don From Kites Unlimited Showing His Skill

The morning was even better in that there were quite a few kite flyers on the field with me.  The weekly fly brought out people of all ages and experience.  Early on it was mostly dual line stunt kites but later arrivals brought more single line kites to put in the air.  There was quite a show on the beach this day.

Fair Winds All.