Monday 28 September 2015

Flying Fish goes quad

Flying Fish is a dual-line pair, and we have no plans to change that in the foreseeable future. But that doesn't mean we can't add something a little different to what we can do at festivals, does it?

You may or may not be aware that we have a Flying Wings VampDevil quad kite in our quiver. Not as precise as a Revolution, but a fun kite to fly, with a really great presence in the sky. We actually flew a little 'off the cuff' demo with this kite at Malmesbury Kite Festival two years ago. What has always been in the back of my mind was to get a second one, so we could fly them as a pair. VampDevils come in many different colour schemes, and ideally we'd want one which is the mirror image of the one we already have, i.e. red where ours is black, and black where ours is red.

To make a long story short, we finally succeeded in getting exactly that VampDevil, with thanks to Karl Longbottom.

So here's our second VampDevil! Isn't it a cutey?


For pair-flying, we decided to swap the tails around. Increases the contrast of the kites, and so the presence in the sky. They really look fantastic together!


As I said above, they're not as precise as Revolutions, but we had no problem flying simple patterns with the two: follow-ons, infinities, parallel circles, wraps, synchronous wingtip turns, etc.


Windwise, their official wind range is 2-15mph, but I'd say they do need at least 4mph to have decent drive.



We're not planning on choreographing a specific routine for them, at least not for now. But the plan is to fly them at festivals, as and when the wind allows, and making up the routine as we fly. And the music we want to use for them is The Love Crave's cover version of 'Thriller':


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