saturday, january 20... high clouds, 45f, winds 0-5k with gusts to 10 from s,n,e,w... a true kite hill fly in january.
as I climbed up the hill, the first thing I noticed was ed's red veri-fighter zooming across the sky... but this one had four evenly spaced holes in the skin following the line of the bow... a really nice visual... you all remember the veri-fighter... the high-tech design ed put together because his frugality demanded he find a recycling use for his daughter's retainers)... turns out it was a half-veri... ed said he is experimenting with weight loss, so the first thing to go was all the dental rubberbands holding the bridle together (we think he's just running out of his stash of pre-used retainers)... even though he left the veri's carbon spine torture-racking mechanism, this kite looked almost normal... and flew pretty darn well, too.
about halfway through the morning, art pulled out his first fighter-building result... a finely crafted and devilishly-looking lambert slowdog design with transparent blue center and white orcon wings... ron, patsy and art had gotten together for a fighter-building session last week... the result was at least one hot looking kite for art's box... not quite enough wind for it, although after ed and ron tuned it a bit, it had a couple window-edge to window-edge runs that looked perfect... please add art to your "quality" list of kitebuilders.
fighter fliers are really smart... didn't take us long at all to figure out that whenever any two fliers decided to get some serious points accomplished, the wind suddenly dropped to minus zero... so we spent most of the day flying for fun... and talking fighter designs, experiments, and where the heck is the fat kid and his little brother.
larry had the result of his second attempt at buka-building up and
zooming across the sky (his first attempt last month crashed on initial
launch and every other launch afterward no matter who tried)... but this
one flew beautifully... which made steve vent... steam... out of his ears...
because steve can't build a buka that will fly better than an average 3-year
old oklahoma cowpie ( steve builds indians with exquisite lines which fly
beautifully, but alas, no bukas ). leaving tom and larry as the
best buka builders in the northwest.
oh, and a warm bonfire... weenies and wasabe... art's homebrewed beer... ron's cookies... steve's cheetos... a picnic table... good friends...
rick showed up for his second nfka flying lesson... geez, everybody was so surprised he came back after how we treated him the first time... we decided it must be because of our congenial ( congenital ? ) personalities and so several of the brotherhood gave him kites, some backseat driving instructions and much encouragement.
king brian, prince charles and d. put together a rough nfka 2001 season flying schedule... brian will research the festivals then post the schedule on the fighterkites.org site soon...
advance notice... february 17 fly is planned for elma... we decided that, since rich wasn't here to defend his honor, we would have to travel to him... rich, will you set up the field for the 3rd Saturday, please.
that's all... except that we missed those who cowered and didn't show.
grins.
d.