KiteJan

The first "official" trip out of 2008! This was advertised as a weekend fly in at Harewood House organized by the Northern Kite Group as was for the opening of the 2008 Harewood House season. When I mentioned that there would be a flyin at Harewood my family was interested.... not for the "kite" part, but for the "visiting a stately home" part. And so with that in mind we organized ourselves to visit on the Sunday - which turned out to be a good call as Friday night was damp with no wind and Saturday was damp with lot of wind. At least Sunday wasn't too damp and did actually have wind - after a fashion.

As well as a general fly in there was also a dual line "better flying" day organized, which obviously attracted a fair number of the dual line trick fliers. I had intended joining in with this but in the end I just did my own thing and had fun.

Anyway upon arrival I wrapped up warm, parted company from my family, and went to see what the flying site and wind was like. Well it's a medium sized field, but is tree lined on three sides with the house on the fourth so perhaps not the best site in some ways - but a very pleasant location none the less (very nice having the house as a backdrop). The wind was very gusty and blowing from different directions, which of course would have influenced my feelings about the flying site somewhat :-) So I started off by getting the Custom Revolution 1.5 out and after chatting to another chap with a Revolution we tried some basic pair flying - but the wind, the mismatched lines (a 10m difference), and our inexperience meant it wasn't a totally satisfactory experience to say the least! I did try to change to my 40m lines, but by the time I had it sorted it was lunch time. So pair Revoluton flying will wait for another day. 

After lunch I tried my hand at some dual line flying with the Benson Minigem, however I really found the gusts hard to anticipate so it was an even more dispiriting experience than usual - but I tried! Would have liked to go and get some flying tips from the other dual line fliers but I chickened out in the end. Next time perhaps.... I did however meet a couple of people. Stuart spent a while trying to describe the difference between a "Fade" and a "Turtle" (which I still can't remember which one is which), along with what happens to the kite during a  "Half Axel" (which I think I got). Eventually I got out the Freevol LX which does handle strong wind and gusts pretty well (if you are careful at the extremes of the wind window) and had some fun doing the fast spins that it's so good at. Because the Freevol is such an unusual quad line kite I got  few people asking me about it - it really is a shame that it's no longer available.

Anyway as the day wore on I had my first proper go with a Revolution Shockwave, a kite I have always fancied having. It was excellent fun in those strong gusty winds - but you really have to have good reactions! Sadly Steve wanted his kite back so I had to go and fly something else. It's definitely on my "To buy/to make" list now.

Eventually my family came back after looking around the house itself (which, apparently, is very nice and well worth a visit - "better than Chatsworth" was the verdict) and it was time to pack up. Once everything was packed, which always takes ages, and just about everyone else had gone I noticed that one of the Park's deers had come onto the field and would allow us get quite close. My children were really pleased by this (as the number of photos on daughter no 1s phone camera will show).

All in all a nice day - and good to get out and meet some other fliers, so in this respect its a good venue since it's good for lots of areas. We will certainly be back.