OSOW 2009

After some sunshine on Saturday and the promise of more sun next week, Sunday 11th October was met with cloudy skies. But never mind, its OSOW time to go out flying! So around about lunchtime I headed off to Singleton Environment in Ashford where Kent Kite Flyers had scheduled their OSOW meet.

When I got there, the clouds were fairly high and there was a good stiff breeze. Lots of flotail deltas in the sky, so I decided to join in and soon had one of my own flying high amongst the rest.

Time to set up for some KAP. As the breeze was brisk, I chose to use a 56 inch rokkaku. This is a nice kite when the wind is up a bit. I launched the kite and pegged it down and went back to the car to get the camera rig. With the rig set up and attached to the line, time to try to KAP the visitor centre. Now I know I'm a bit dumb at times, but I had a funny feeling that the camera was not shooting. Of course it helps if you enable CHDK and start the USB script! So having been clicking away for a while, I recovered the camera, and enabled the script. Slightly more confident, I let out line, but we now seemed to be in a lull in the breeze, Still I managed to get high enough to get some photos.





As the wind had dropped a bit, I brought the camera and kite down and decided to have another go with a flowform 30. It was a bit troublesome to launch but soon gathered wind and climbed. By the time I was ready to attach the kite again, the wind had picked up a bit again, and the kite was pulling a bit. This time, I made abso9lutely sure that the camera was working before letting it climb!



So I launched with some confidence. But the kite was not flying with any stability and it really wasn't a very pleasant experience. I did manage to get a couple of photos that weren't too blurred, but the rest were rubbish.



Recovery became the next issue, as the wind was up, the kite was dancing a bit and the line was tight. But with the kite firmly anchored, it was a case of walk down, pull in and tie off until the camera was low enough to take off. The first spots of damp started to drizzle down.So I concentrated on geting the camera put away, and a couple of bits back to the car, leaving the flowform lifting a pig and the flotail flying. While at the car, the wind suddenly dropped, and two flotails suddenly appeared above. One (mine) landed in the trees, and the other (Gerties) settled over the fence in the school playing fields. Both being soaking wet, I retreived Gert's flowtail, and moved the line out of the road, then retrieved my own. Both were sopping wet.

So walking back to the field, I found my flowform had also landed in the hedge and the pig was also resting in the bushes. Bill volunteered to reover the kite, while I recovered the pig. Again, both were saturated! With the kites and laundry recovered, it was time to wind in line and help others recover their kites and line beofre heading for home. So tonight, there is lots of material hinging up to dry in various parts of the house much to my wife's annoyance.