I like to post, and this is my last chance before I leave for Colombia in the mourning. I saw this awesome sight as soon as pulled up to park our car for a day at the beach.! Little did I know after flying that strangers stack of Trlbys on the beach in Cape May NJ, that I would be doing what I am doing today! My wife thought it was kind of dumb at first. Flying this guys kites all day. And even dumber the next day when I was trying to get her to release $18 of our vacation money so I could spend hours and hours flying flying my own kite on the beach. But she did, and after about a 3 years, she was flying and competing with me. Cheers, Dodd Gross

At the Westport Washington Kite Festival, a group of us were being roasted by the campfire and got to talking about how we became involved with kites as adults(using the term adult loosely Some of us were given kites as gifts and some saw the neat kites on the beach and just had to have one(this led to a discussion on the first time you saw the prices of big kites, but I digress). This led me to wondering how you all became hip-deep or deeper into kites? So What's your story? see you at  WSIKF Rob Pratt This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Let's see.... a little less than 3 years ago my wife and I were in Lincoln City celebrating our anniversary and bought a 6 foot delta in a gift shop.  Took it for A walk on the beach and really enjoyed it.  A couple of months later we discovered Catch The Wind.  I bought a 3 pack of Trlbys and I was hooked on dual line flying.  The rest as they say is history. The kite bag keeps getting bigger and the trips to the beach more frequent.   The latest aquisition is a Stratascoop 4 limited edition Stars and Stripes.  Flew it Tuesday on the beach at Gearhart for the first time. What a beautiful kite it is. Can't wait for Long Beach.  See you there. Rodbuggy

  This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it (Rob Pratt) writes:  At the Westport Washington Kite Festival, a group of us were being roasted  by the campfire and got to talking about how we became involved with kites  as adults(using the term adult loosely Some of us were given kites as  gifts and some saw the neat kites on the beach and just had to have one(this  led to a discussion on the first time you saw the prices of big kites, but I  digress). This led me to wondering how you all became hip-deep or deeper  into kites? So What's your story?  see you at  WSIKF  Rob Pratt   This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it         About '86 or so I was doing a 9 month job in Savannah, when I happenned upon a lone kite shop on River St.   Sails and Rails it's called.  Jeeeezzzz...didn't know they made Kites like these.  So I bought a three pack of Trilbys, went to Tybee, and flew them all afternoon.  I was hooked!  Went back to Sails, bought a Hawwaiian Spin-off, and it's been all downhill ever since.                                         regards;                                                 rick New Light Inc. - elctrically inclined.  LIVE & in color                   This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

This led me to wondering how you all became hip-deep or deeper into kites? So What's your story? Well, here's mine: At some point 8 to 9 years ago a friend talked about kiting with 2 foil like kites on the beach.  Never saw them, but probably small Flexi's.  The connections with that friend faded, but that kiting stuff stayed. A year later I was in Brighton (G at the beach and saw this guy flying kites, from that moment on I knew I wanted to do that as well. After that I started gathering info on kites, mainly from Vlieger-Op in Den Haag.  My first kite was (off course) a Speedwing, built it myself. It needed about 6 Bft. to just lift the weight (used 10 mm very heavy fiber rods).  After that it just went better, a number of Speedwings later they actually flew without noise and with a lot power.   At some point in history I remembered making a Rev I type of kite (my first 4-liner), and used 45 m. of Skybound line (dacron with a kevlar, thick and heavy) to fly it.  At that time I wondered why anyone would fly something like that !!!  Now I know you should use 'some other type' of flying line. I still think the thrill of kiting includes also designing and making them yourself.  My favorites are high aspect delta's and foil's, and of course buggying (yep also home-made).   I now start to think about making the really big flowforms in al sorts of animal shapes. aoxomoxoa Emiel