KiteJan

Another year, another Calke Abbey Kite Day. For the previous couple of years my family have accompanied me to this Midland Kite Flier event in Derbyshire, which works well as they enjoy the house, and I enjoy messing about flying some kites and catching up with people I haven't seen for a while. And that was the plan this year up until we saw the weather forecast - which was (to say the least) rather poor. Therefore everyone opted to stay at home (in the warm) leaving me to go and get nice and cold at Calke. So off I set to Calke down the M1 in bright blue skies. "Good the forecast was wrong", I thought. But as I was driving towards Birmingham I started to notice a rather a lot of snow on the ground,  on trees, and stuck to road signs. Hmmm. But thankfully Calke was snow free - and still had that bright blue sky.

After parking I made a tour of the arena to see what was going on, then went and set up on the field outside the arena since it looked like there was lots going on in there. The wind was light but seemed the perfect weather to try out the new toy - the Carl Robertshaw Fury 0.85 (purchased a week before from the Fractured Axel forums). It flew reasonably well, but you could tell it needed a little bit more wind to be totally happy. I swapped over to my trusty Custom Revolution 1.5 SUL which was easier to fly in that wind then ended up flying the Synergy Deca 1 for a little while. Shortly after getting the kites out the "bright blue sky" I had started with ended up an "angry grey cold damp sky", and sure enough we got bouts of snow & hail throughout the day. I had a couple of nice chats with people, including one guy flying a Firebee traction kite who had spoken to me the previous year about Revolution Kites and had now bought himself a Revolution Blast (want one, want one!).

After a lunch taken on the field I went to spend some money at the Highwaymen stall (I had a shopping lists of spares and repairs - including two Revolution spars which of course meant it wasn't a cheap trip!). After the usual (good natured) banter with the "Highwaymen" I grabbed a cup of coffee coutesy of Gilli (thanks Gilli - it seems to be your job to give me hot drinks in cold places :-) ) and went off to fly in the arena now it was quieter. The wind in the afternoon was much lighter and variable than the morning which meant it was much more, er, challenging to fly. Generally it was just the Custom Revolution 1.5 SUL I flew, with occasional attempts with the HQ Shadow. I made some attempts to fly with another Revolution flier in the arena, but it just resulted in a bit of a mess - the wind was just too light to be fully in control (that's my excuse). Eventually I gave up and packed up the (now) wet kites for the return trip back to Sheffield. 

Feeling like I should be helping my fellow Midland Kite Fliers do "stuff" I offered to help roll up the new arena tape that was being used (this was a rather posh yellow plastic tape with "Restricted Area Authorized Fliers Only" printed on it). This took ages to sort out, and ended up being quite a team effort for a group of us. Good fun, in a strange kind of way.

All in all a nice, but cold day. Although quite a few members of the public had made the effort to attend to fly their kites it was much quieter than the previous years. Obviously the poor forecast had put some people off.