by Adam Grow
President, American Kiteflier's Association

We are back after a bit of confusion about who is supposed to write this column. (What else is new?) Our past AKA President, Richard Dermer did a fine job authoring this column. Now, I hope to expand it a bit by inviting all of the AKA Board of Directors to contribute their thoughts, ideas, and stories to the AKA column in KiteLife.com. After all, isn’t the AKA is an association of many? It’s never been a one-person act.

In this regard, I have something that deserves the “Quote of the Month Award” – “The AKA is you and me, simply an organization of fliers, staffed by volunteers who are doing their best to give all of the help they can to the rest of the membership.” – Mike Gillard in response to a comment that AKA must be neglecting some aspect of its over all membership and mission. Talk about hitting the nail on the head – and dead center too! Mike did it.

The AKA is just what it says, it’s an association -- a group of people united in a relationship having some interest, activity and purpose in common. The AKA is not a business trying to gain market share. However, we would like to have more people join us in sharing our enthusiasm for kites. The AKA is not an authoritative enforcement unit. But we do have common interest groups which collect the thoughts of fellow kitefliers about the best and fairest ways to do things. These have been written down and agreed to as rules and processes for all of us to go by in an effort to make kite activities more uniform and easier to understand, so we all can get along better. And, while we are a non-profit organization, we are not a big powerful monied endowment fund. 

The AKA operates on a tight and limited budget that purposely keeps our membership costs low in hopes not to exclude anyone who is interested in kites. In fact, the AKA is the most inexpensive association that I know of. The AKA depends upon volunteers to do almost everything, but there are a few things volunteers can’t be expected to do, like answer daily inquiries from the membership and general public, plan budgets, keep up with bills, maintain records and tax statements, edit and publish a regular news magazine, manage a complex convention, etc. For things like these, the AKA has to contract out for services. At kite festivals all over America the AKA is represented by its membership, but the AKA does not sponsor these events nor does it contribute monies to them. However, the AKA does provide means for kiting communications and a way for sponsors to secure some form of insurance coverage at kite festivals, as diverse as they might be. It’s a small part but it’s significant.

Kiting really can be fun and rewarding in many ways. Think about it for a minute. What other hobby/sport allows you to do just one thing or get involved in every aspect of it that you can imagine? You can just plain fly kites for fun, or put on a public exhibition with them. You can fly kites to relax, or exercise, or you can fly competition and stress yourself to the heights of your abilities. With a little will power, experience, and self determination you can make any of hundreds, if not thousands of kite designs. You can be creative and artistic with kites up to any level you desire – either by yourself or as part of a team. You can fly or display kites indoors or outdoors almost anywhere in the world where you are guaranteed to make many new friends. Kites and kiting can be the simplest of things to make and fly or they can be complex, highly involved, and take years to master. The smallest kite almost needs a microscope to be seen, the largest one can hold a couple of semis inside it. Kites may be used as toys, art displays, scientific instruments, or powerful wind-engines, and with just a little thought the list of ideas about kites goes on and on and on and on . . . Kiting is enormous in scope and embraces a deluge of diverse disciplines. Once again, the AKA is you and me united by our common interests and activities involving kites – helping each other the best we know how. The AKA doesn’t make kites or put on kite events, it provides an open knowledge base of kiting to make and do things better.

A final note. After several years of trying to find a suitable field to fly kites on without soccer games, baseball, and the like, the Maryland Kite Society now has a county park devoted to kites. It came about by its members forming an alliance between the kite club and the county parks and recreation department. Howard County Maryland has a lot of public park land to take care of on a limited budget and MKS wanted an open site to fly at. An ideal location was Carrs Mill Park which sits high atop an old sanitary landfill closed in the 1960's, capped over, and planted with grass. It is a limited use park, hence, few funds are available to keep it clean or free of brush. The kite club has agreed to help take care of a park and keep it clean for two years in exchange for a place to fly. The county is happy with this arrangement and so is a group of kitefliers. The Maryland Kite Society’s name is on a new sign at Carrs Mill Park put there by Howard County to prove it!