Kites: Index > Festival Gallery > 2001 Gallery > Southampton

Southampton International Kite Festival,

23rd & 24th June 2001

My 'home' festival  :-)

Rob, Alan and Terry all arrived with their tetrahedrons - the largest turn out for the Tetrahedron Flyers so far - plus my parents and  all our other kite friends.

Saturday dawned bright and breezy - good weather for the STACK UK event and kite flying generally.
I flew a 64-cell construct, but due to turbulence could not anchor it and ended up hand flying it most of the day.

After lunch, a charming couple - Sara and John - came over for a chat and ended up buying 3 kites in the end; I think they may be hooked, may they enjoy many more years flying kites together when they get married later this year.

Unfortunately, the breeze disappeared with the sun, leaving Mike (SKF) with his Rok and Rob with my new BP to run around the main arena to try and get some lift. Both Mike's and my kites have been specially built for night flying, with a number of LED's set in them. Apparently we made the local news with our escapades.

Sunday dawned sunny, but virtually windless. Many flyers were trying their ultra-lite kites, and the altitude sprint was nearly over before it started as the wind disappeared entirely. Luckily it picked up during the second record (the timing was 'two tracks') and kite were definitely breaking the 500ft altitude limit - the picking of the winner was not easy (not from directly below the kites anyway), and although I was named after the kites had settled, I wasn't the highest when time was called.

The SKF kite workshop ran out of bits to make the kites around 3 p.m.; probably to the welcome relief of the volunteers who ran the workshop - it was hot in that tent. Although I did a stint in helping in the tent, my 2 ¹/₂ hours was nothing compared to the time they worked in there.

Later in the afternoon, we were asked to bring the tetra's into the main arena, to see if there was a suitable puff of breeze to allow them to be displayed - no such luck, but we spent a pleasant hour or so chatting with Heleen and John and their Wind Gallery.

Tetra's and Wind Gallery
Terry, clowning around as usual!	Spot the trick in the image on the left...
John (AKF) and his fantastic Flamingo

 

John and Heleen Valkenburgh's  Wind Gallery

All the above images courtesy of Ray Broad

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