The Grounded Eye - and a "Kiteful" Year
Carlo Didier
No
KAP this month. Why? No time! Mike's deadline was very short because he
wanted some vacation too (which I fully understand and support) and I
was very busy, together with my colleagues, to make a dozen NT servers
and some 470 PCs ready for the year 2000. So I won't speak about KAP
this time, but I wanted to talk about this year from my personal point
of view. Why? Because it was, believe it or not, my first kiting year.
Fact is that my main hobbies before February 1999 were:
Photography, Scotland, Science Fiction (books) and Isaac Asimov. How did
I become a kite flyer? Well, this is where KAP comes back in. While
discussing photography with a friend of mine, the subject of aerial
photography came up and we spoke about the limitations and high costs of
using aircraft or hot air balloons. Then I remembered having read
something about kite aerial photography in a French photo magazine
(Chasseur d'Images, the best in Europe). I quickly searched for the
issue with the article and showed it to my friend. Soon we decided to
give it a try. While we started planning the rig, I gathered lots of
information from the Internet, mainly from C.Benton (http://www-archfp.ced.berkeley.edu/kap/).
Then we thought about the kite. Our choice went for a Rokkaku. So we
went the local kite shop where we were put into contact with a kite
club. The club's president build a custom Rokkaku for us and after
finishing the rig, we were into KAP!
But by then, I had gotten interested in kiting in
general and I
bought my first dual-line stunter (an Active People
1-2-3). Now I was hooked … Over a few months I added a small 0.9m2
foil, a big 2.4m dual-line Stunter, a 3m2 traction foil, an indoor kite
and finally a buggy. In the mean time I went through a kite construction
course, organized by our club, and build a 4-liner and copied my indoor
kite.
While all this happened, I couldn't avoid spreading the
kite-virus to my 6-year-old son. Quickly (meaning much faster than I) he
learned how to fly with 1, 2 and 4-line kites and foils. Oh, he doesn't
any tricks yet (neither do I), but he gets them into the air and they do
what he wants. Together we visited some kite meetings and he even 'won'
a trophy and a small Rokkaku, just for being the youngest flier on the
field. Imagine how proud he was! (Yes, OK, I was probably even more
proud than he was…).
But the best thing happened another weekend. A hot air
balloon championship was being held and the organizers had asked our
kite club to show some kiting action during the weekend afternoons as
the balloons would only fly in the morning and late afternoon. Although
there was very little wind, we built more than 100 simple sled kites
with the children and the local television was covering the event with a
3 minutes feature in the evening news (3 minutes about the kites!). Now
imagine my feelings if you know that half of these 3 minutes consisted
of an interview with my son Michel while he flew a kite! Here's a short
version of the interview:
Interviewer: Can you tell us what you are doing?
Michel: Kite flying!
Interviewer: And can you explain us how this works?
Michel (after 10 seconds of reflection): That was a good
question!
(That sent me lying on the floor and holding my aching belly because I
was laughing too much)
Interviewer: You seem to be the only one to fly with this little
wind (all the others had given up…). Are you some sort of super kiter?
Michel: YES!
Interviewer: What is your secret?
(While Michel thinks about this question, the second joke is approaching
in the person of his younger sister Sonja, 3 years old.)*
Sonja: Here, Michel, your banana!
Michel: Sonja! I have to fly my kite now!
The situation was VERY funny to see!
*This needs some explanation. My wife and me were in the
club's tent, some 50m from where the interview was taking place. We had
given a banana to Sonja and there was another one for Michel. We hadn't
noticed that he was being interviewed and so we sent Sonja to bring him
his banana.
It wasn't before late that evening, when we saw the TV
broadcast that we knew what had been spoken during that interview. We
rarely laughed so much!
The reason why I am telling you all this is the
following: I like kite flying in all its variations. I'm not interested
in competition of any kind and I'm having a real good time everytime I
fly a kite because I'm doing it just for fun and with a lot of nice
people around me. What happened to us this year proves that anybody can
have fun flying (and building) kites at any level he wishes without
being forced to do things he doesn't like (like competition). Even if
you really want to compete, do it for fun, not to win. The fun you have
is the biggest prize you can ever win.
So let us all join Allen Stroh's club SUAFYKC, because
that's what I am going to do now: I'll shut up and fly a kite… 
Carlo Didier
Kitecam@kitemail.com
P.S.: Happy New Year !
