Wednesday 15 July 2015

Brighton Kite Festival

Brighton Kite Festival occupies a special place in our kiting hearts. It was the first festival that invited us to fly in the arena 3 years ago, and so it's the festival we've flown most often at. On top of that, it just has a very pleasant atmosphere. Our fourth attendance as invited flyers offered us two very different days. On Saturday, it was wonderfully sunny, with winds gradually increasing during the day.


On Sunday, it hardly ever stopped raining or drizzling, and the wind was extremely variable and all over the place. I guess the pictures really show the difference!


Also invited, as usual at Brighton, were Team Spectrum. And rather than show a few pictures of them flying, I thought I'd do one better, and embed two videos of Bryan and Carl flying as a pair; one from Saturday:


And one from Sunday:


I do admit to shirking my usual ground crew duty to make these two videos ...

Normally, Team Spectrum and us provide the dual-line precision-flying, but this year, Brighton saw a dual-line team in the arena in the shape of L-katz! Yes, L-katz is back flying at a festival, as a 3-man formation, with Neil in #3 position. I have to admit to being a bit sneaky in making this a reality: Neil had said he'd come and watch on the Saturday, so I phoned him up Friday evening asking him whether he'd be ok with flying an improvised 3-man routine in the arena, given he'd be there anyway; just bring your kites .... It was an offer "he couldn't refuse" ...


L-katz flew twice on Saturday. First run was rather shaky, especially because Neil had to fly several patterns in a mirror image compared to what he's used to when we fly with four (and he flies in #4 position). Second run went a lot better.


Hopefully, this is the start of the return of L-katz to festival-flying (and who knows what else ...).

Because of the bad weather on Sunday, the large inflatables (including the dragons), fighter kites, etc couldn't fly, so Team Spectrum and Flying Fish flew more slots than usual, just to make sure there was usually something happening in the arena.

Did I mention dragons? Smorg, Angalor, and BKF's as-yet-unnamed blue dragon all flew on Saturday:


More pictures of the triumvirate of dragons, who didn't always get along nicely, and other kites, are here.

Picture credit of us flying as Flying Fish and in L-katz: Carl Wright (Team Spectrum).


2 comments:

  1. From an audience point of view, Brighton 2015 was particularly special. Beautiful weather on Saturday was: ‘kite flying for everyone day’ - Hot bright weather brought out huge crowds. Took 30 minutes to drive through the queue at the entrance. Lots of families were enjoying the displays and flying their own kites. It was the same during the drive along the coast afterwards – more kids and parents with kites.

    Sunday was the extract reverse: ‘kite flying for die-hards day’. No queue to get in, and including the surrounding coffee and burger stall owners, there were perhaps 30 people watching the arena by early afternoon. The single line flyers didn’t want to demonstrate, so special thanks to: Alex, Irma, Tim, Team Spectrum, the lady with the Midi-Sandpiper and the two trick flyers from London for filling in the schedule and keeping on going in front of such small crowds.

    I’m impressed that the Flying Fish have their logos printed even on their wet weather clothing.

    The two outstanding highlights for me: 1) Carl (Team Spectrum) doing a succession of square corners while testing the wind by flying a dual line kite one-handed. 2) In the middle of Sunday’s squalls and rain, Paul McCartney and Wings’ “Live and Let Die” came on the tannoy and Dave (from London) tricked in perfect time to the music. :-)

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    Replies
    1. Glad you enjoyed the festival! Unfortunately, we can't control the weather, but, as you will have seen (I hope), we tried to do the best we could under the difficult circumstances on Sunday.

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