A week that can best be described as "interesting"

Well last week was an interesting one for flying, but b awful for KAP. I was off work all week so hoping to find some time to get airborn. My only real opportunity was late Wednesday afternoon when I had a spare hour so decided to take the Trident for a spin at a local field. This turned out to be a complete waste of time. The wind was awful, swirly turbulent, bumpy, all of the things you really want. So after half an hour I packed u and went home in disgust.

Thursday evening I met up with Alexis from Crystal Palace. He'd posted a plea for help on Cris Benton's KAP discussion site. HIs kit and kite had arrived from KAPShop, but he had no idea where to start. So a couple of hours later we had the line on the reel, the tail on the kite and the KAP rig ready to go. He seemed very pleased as he left, and sure enough I got a text on Satruday to tell me he had been up to Blackheath and as the kite had been rock steady in the breeze, he'd put up the rig and got some photos. Apparently they are all self portraits as he is using an auto Gentled, but hasn't got any means of turning the rig. I've had soe thoughts about that so if you're reading this Alexis, we will meet again and get the rig to move.

Saturday afternoon I got a couple of phone calls from guys who had goe to Capstone, to test conditions for the festival on Sunday. Apparently the feild was deserted, but the wind was ideal, blowing across the field.

And so to Sunday and Kites over Capstone. When I arrived, the first order of the day was to get my new gazebo erected to provide some shelter. We'd just got the thing up when the first heavy shower (downpour) arrived. Interesting, whilst it kept most of the water out, it let through a fine mist, bit like being in the tropical houses at Kew. I spoke to a few other people with the same gazebos and all had the same experience! Anyway, bakc to kites, and guess what the wind had turned through 90 degrees, and was blowing in from across the tree line. Anyone who knows capstone will know this makes flying conditions in the main field almost impossible. The arena and childrens flying areas were OK, but the rest of the field was useless. So there were very few display kites flying throughout the day. Fortunately Paul Brookes had managed to get a huge delta up into the cleaner winds, and offered to let us use it for teddy dropping. So an afternoon of dropping ensued, during which we managed to melt one of the pulleys on the drop rig! However we did come up with a 3 point attachment system, that allows the kite to be managed indepeendently of the dropping gear and seemed to work very well, another Andrews special!

I think, all in all a pretty good time was had by all, all we've got to do now is get things dried out. It was good to have the scratch bunnies and flying squad entertaining the normal people. Thanks to Paul for the loan of his kite and ground anchors (available from Kiteworld for all you people with huge kites to hodl down). It was also nice to meet up with the Essex Kite Group again. We must organise a combined fly-in one day at a mutually convenient site. Next stop is Leeds Castle in early September, Dieppe in mid-September then Bewl at the end of September. Hope to meet some people there.