The Problem With ‘Hanging Out’ At The Kite Shop

It seems we just can’t catch a break. After a few days of cold temperatures, it warmed somewhat but the warmer air brought rain the for the weekly club fly. The morning broke with gray skies, an ugly misty rain and little to no wind. By the time we got to the beach, the winds had come up strong. Or as is said around here, “blowin’ a gale”. And there was standing water on the sand. I did have my Flexifoil with me and could have flown it in those winds but I don’t particularly like putting my bags or kites down on wet sand. So we headed to the kite shop to spend some time and chat.

The problem with hanging out at the kite shop is that you are on site when boxes of kites are opened for inspection. In this case, a shipment of long-awaited Hyperkites arrived. I currently have three stacks of Hyperkites. A vintage stack of six in rainbow colors with the original wooden dowel frames. I have never flown this set and I know it is going to need some work before it is flyable. The second one is a nine stack made up of berry, wine and slate colored kites. The third is a six stack of gold, green and blue. I have been toying with the idea of enlarging the last two stacks but the colors have not always been available. And that was a good excuse not to. However, when this box was opened, there were the colors I was looking for. I made a quick decision to enlarge both stacks while I could as you never know when another shipment would come in.

NineStack — Nine Stack of Hyperkites Guarded by The House Supervisor

So I ended up buying six new Hyperkites, tails and necessary train lines to add them to my stacks. Now I have to remove the bridals from the new kites and add them to my current stacks with the new train lines. Not a hard task but tedious. I may end up taking the old stacks apart in order to update the order of the colors to accommodate the new kites. We shall see.

So the problem with “hangin’ out” at the kite shop is it costs money and gives me another task to do in my “free time”. Oh well, maybe the weather will be cold and wet a little longer so I am forced to stay indoors and catch up on all those little kite tasks I’ve been putting off and the new ones I’ve just gained.

Fair Winds All

Our Last Fly of 2015

Christmas Day dawned warm and foggy. So foggy, in fact, you couldn’t see the ocean from the boardwalk. So the kite fly was canceled. The day after Christmas was just about the same, although the fog did burn off a little earlier in the day. We went for a quick fly in the late afternoon. The wind was about 2 mph so not much would fly. However, we did anchor a Skate and fly the Black Dog UL. It wasn’t much but it made up for the previous day.

The Sunday morning kite club fly at Fort Macon State Park turned out to be glorious. The temperature was unseasonably warm, the sun was out and the clouds came and went. The winds were a little stronger than the day before with the best winds up high. This made getting things launched harder but once they were up, they stayed up. We put up a couple of Skates and I got out my Black Dog UL and my Wisp II.

Several of the usual club members were there and were joined by a couple of new families. It looked like a festival when everyone got their kites in the air. There were several smaller deltas, a Ghost Delta, a couple of Walas, our Skates, a Plutz, a Laima and a Rokkaku. One newer flyer was trying to fly her Skydog Dream On stunt kite. The wind was a little too light for it, so I had her try the Into The Wind Wisp II. She took to it right away. Then she proceeded to pass it on to two other new flyers and we both gave them some instruction. The little Wisp was a hit for all who tried it.

The company and the day was so great, the club fly lasted well into the afternoon. Only hunger drove us off the beach. As the afternoon wore on, the wind picked up and we all went to the Atlantic Beach public access to join some more of our flyer friends and put up some more kites. And, again, it looked like another kite festival in progress. Kites in the air included a Rokkaku, a Sky Skimmer, a Conyne Delta, a Ghost Delta, a Fled and various smaller deltas. The sun was setting when we finally pulled in the lines and headed for home.

So went the last kite fly of 2015. It couldn’t have ended better. Now we look forward to 2016 and a year filled with old friends, new friends and new kiting adventures.

Fair Winds All and Happy New Year!

What A Kite Flier Does …

… when there is no wind.

Once again it is a weekly club fly day and, again, there is no wind. It is a shame because weather-wise it was a beautiful day. Sunny and warm. So one drives to the flying field in the hope that a wind, any wind, will blow.

And we stand there looking at the empty beach. Wanting to put some color in the sky but unable to do so. There is no wind.

Then there is the repeated glances at the flag on the flagpole. Surely it will move soon. Even just a little bit. But, no, there is no wind.

Back in the parking lot, the kites are in their bags. Standing forlornly at the back of the truck. There is no chance they will go much further than that. There is no wind.

So what does the kite flier ultimately do?

Well, we head to the local kite shop, Kites Unlimited. Once there, we visit, commensurate about the lack of wind, browse the store to see if there is anything new and catch up on some of the kite gossip.

And make those repairs that we’ve been putting off for far too long.

This is just another no wind day.

Fair Winds All.

Oh, What A Beautiful Morning

The weekly club fly started out to be somewhat “iffy”. Chilly, gray, foggy. But we few intrepid flyers showed up at the beach with the intent of putting color in the sky no matter what.The winds ended up being stronger than expected which cleared away the fog and the clouds and made for a beautiful morning. The temperature warmed up nicely.

I grabbed a couple of kites I hadn’t flown in a year or more; a Willi Koch mesh diamond by Premier and the HQ vented Obsession II dual line stunt kite. When we got down to the beach I found I also had two Sutton 4s in my backpack. So I ended up having a slightly larger display than I thought.

A good friend put up his HQ Flowform 7.0 and added a couple of spin socks to the line. This kite was visible in the sky several miles away to motorists passing by.

Then he attempted to fly a Toki Edo kite by Into The Wind. It’s a beautiful kite made as a traditional edo but with flat fiberglass spars. It take s a while to assemble as the spars are held together flat metal ferrules, screws and wing nuts. And then there is the bridle. It has thirteen lines and is rather long. The majority of the morning was spend untangling it. After several adjustments to the kite, it flew and flew quite well. It is a beautiful kite.

Another kite in the sky was the red-white-blue Levitation Delta. It provided a some excitement. While everyone’s attention was on the edo, a gust of wind pulled the stake that the delta was tied to out of the ground. Five hundred feet of line unwound from the spool and it bounced down the dunes until it caught on a dead tree branch. I was checking on my mesh diamond when I noticed the speck above in the clouds. We were lucky it caught on the branch and that the line was tied to the spool. It takes quite a while to rewind 500 feet of line. We never did find the stake.

To complete the show, the most unusual kite in the air was a custom Flake kite. It is a multi-faceted cellular kite that loves bigger wind. In this case, it is all black and one-of-a-kind. It was made by Jeri Dixon at Kites Unlimited kite shop for a good friend of ours. Rumor has it that she is making an all white one for him too. We’ve decided he has a sort of ying-yang thing going on. Can’t wait to see both of them flying side by side.

I never did get the stunt kite in the air. Oh, well! It was a beautiful morning and the company was good. What more could you ask for?

Fair Winds All.

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