Camber, another windy day

Gemini, originally uploaded by Pitprops.

Today saw a few KKF members visit Camber sands near Rye, for ritualistic kite abuse. I arrived in the beach car park at about 1pm, and on getting out of the car, decided that another layer of clothes was required. It was a bright sunny day, but the wind was bitter, and blowing hard. I wandered down to the beach to meet the guys, who were playing with various high wind kites. From the KAp perspective, things didn't look promising at all. So being a natural born coward, I decided to follow standard KKF procedure and go an eat!

Suitably sustained for the afternoon, I headed out on to the sand and took with me a 2.4 radsail. Severla of us played with this for a short while before the bridle tags were torn from the sail - OOPS!. OK so everyone now decided to go and partake of coffee to warm up.

Leaving the cafe a little later, the wind seemed to drop to a mere gale. i wandered up onto the dunes to see if it could be true. Well it did seem to be, so out came the camera and and a selection of small rokaku kites. wandering down to the beach again helped by Andrew, but when we got there, it did seem that the wind was still pretty strong. I put up the rok, and brought it down a couple of times to adjust it, but it was still fidgetty, so eventually, it had 50 feet of tail attached, which seemed to dampen some of its more manic moments. To try or not to try...?

Well frustration is a wonderful thing, and I was still looking for my second successful KAP flight, so I decided to brave whatever the conditions threw. With Matt and Andrew managing the kite, I prepared the rig and we let it climb to about 50 feet before clicking away. There was one really scary moment when the kite decided to nose-dive. But Andrew made a stunning recovery just before the rig hit the ground - thanks mate. So we fired off a few shots, and this one is pretty pleasing. Everything was very difficult to control as the rig was being thown all over the place by the wind. In fact, at times it was almost impossible to get any pan as the wind resistance of the rig couldn't be overcome.

Having scared myself whitless, we brought the rig down and examined the results. Given the conditions, they were very pleasing, and can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/pitprops/ This one is a favourite of mine, as it shows Bill's mini-gem from slightly above with the cafe building in the background. Hopefull conditions will calm down a bit and I'll get out again next week.