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.
White Bird Sun Face DragonWhite 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.
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.
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.
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.
Friendly DragonGolden 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.
After a long string of windless Sundays and some low temperatures thrown in, we have sunshine, mild temperature and WIND! We joined four other kite fliers to celebrate the gorgeous day. I decided that rather than haul everything out to the field (a job which seems like it takes a small moving van) I would selection a few kites to fly and leave the rest home. All the while hoping I make the right choice and have the right kites for the right wind. I put in my bag some kites that hadn’t seen the sky in a year or two. They definitely needed the air time.
I first put up my twin tail dragon. The last time it flew was about a year ago and the wind was so strong I didn’t get the tails wound up neatly, they were just stuffed in the bag. So my initial job was to untangle and untie the tails. Lesson learned – no matter what, roll up your tails before packing away a dragon kite. Once in the air, it flew beautifully.
George Peter's Twin Tail Dragon by Into the Wind
The next kite I put up was my mesh diamond with roses. This kite was given to me a couple of years ago as an anniversary present. My husband gave me roses that will never wilt. One of which is a yellow rose, my favorite. It really is a shame I don’t fly this one more often. It is easy to assemble and flies great. It just hangs in the air for all to see. Must mention that this kite is no longer available. Maybe that’s why I like it. I should try to remember and fly this one on each wedding anniversary. Must make a note on my iPad.
Wili Koch's Mesh Diamond by Premier
My husband flew one of his latest acquisitions, a Premier powersled. He got the largest powersled with the optical illusion/quilted pattern in rainbow colors. The powersled is a real “puller”. We found that out as we watched the large kite anchor being pulled across the sand. And there was a lot of sand already in the anchor. That’s one reason we really like sand bags and sand anchors for our single line kites. they may get dragged a bit but they don’t fly away or run the risk of injuring a passerby. We got out the shovel and added sand and the kite stayed put for the rest of the morning.
Powersled 24 by Premier
The rest of the sky had color from several of our friends kites. Including one unconventional training of a Sky Flake and a Firefly 2. Both of these kites are made at Kites Unlimited in Atlantic Beach, NC. Both will hang in the air like they were pinned there. But they will dance and bob around if you give their lines a tug now and then. Neither of them like to fall to the ground and will rise before hitting the ground when the line is pulled and released. It makes a good show for spectators as they think the kite is falling and it magically rises up again. I’m not sure if they ever had been trained together before but it worked pretty well and they both behaved themselves.
Sky Flake and Firefly2 by Kites UnlimitedVamp Devils by Flying Wings
At last my Vamp Devil did not fly alone. Usually I’m the only one flying this quad line kite. And, quite often, I think I’m the only one who really likes this kite. But on this day, another Vamp Devil was in the sky. It was the one from the kite shop, Kites Unlimited, and the owner had it out to give another quad one flier a chance to try it out. Luckily, I had mine with me and we flew together for a short time. Also, luckily, I had the camera and a photo assistant with me so we could get photos of the two. It was fun. Next time, we will have to have lines the same length so we can interact more. That means I will have to untangle my longer lines which right now look more like a bird’s nest than a set of kite lines. Ugh!
Freedom In The Sky - A Kiter's Blog 