I am a kite flyer. I own a lot of them. I love to fly them. I don’t wait for the wind to be perfect to get out there in an open space and be at the end of the line. I put up a kite that I feel like flying, and if it doesn’t cooperate, or argues with me, I roll it up, and back in its bag, it goes. Then I think about it and pull a kite out of my big black bag of kites that will enjoy the shifting, blustery wind that is blowing around me.

This morning is an example of the need to switch kites. The first one up, before I ate breakfast, was a Chinese copy of a Robert Brasington-designed kite called a Triptych. Mr. Brasington has a thing for geometric shapes, triangles, diamond shapes in a group, and paper airplanes (a kite that I own as well). The Triptych, also known by us kite flyers who own one, as the 3D, which is short for three diamond kite. The two outside ones are long at the bottom, and the one in the middle is not. We fly it with very long tails, two of them. I use 90-foot black and red striped ribbon tails. They are very long but very light and shimmer in the sun. It was the first kite of the day and I got it to go up. It was stubborn but eventually went high enough to lift its tails off the ground, but it didn’t want to stay in the sky for long. I packed it up, which takes a bit of time to roll up two 30-meter tails and put up another Chinese kite, a Centipede, that looks like a red Earwhig. It is ugly and meant to be that way. It is a flat kite that has a ten-meter sewn-on tail, the body of the earwig, with lots of black legs.

You have to understand that I am not a causal kite flyer. I own over 40 kites and have lots of tails and other things like wind socks, spinners, and such to go with them. Plenty of nylon eye candy in my bag of kite tricks. I combine kites and tails to make a bigger and more attractive display up there. If possible I fly multiple kites at the same time. The wind has to be pretty good, blowing between seven and nine miles per hour and steady. There are a few places where I fly my kites that provide those conditions. All are on a beach somewhere with the wind blowing off the water, not the other way around.

I usually fly alone. It is not an activity with any other folks currently up here in the mountains participating. It would be fun to have a couple of other people standing nearby flying, but I am still fine on my own. Most of the time I prefer it that way. I don’t have to keep my eyes on two kites instead of just one that is moving all over the sky. Now when I attend a kite festival, the more the merrier! It is cool to see a hundred kites or more up in the air over a white sandy beach like the one on Treasure Island Florida. I love going even when the wind conditions are not that great. I and some friends made it to three kite fly-ins there this last season.

Kite flying, more specifically single-line kite flying, is a great pastime. It makes me feel like a kid, and it is technical enough with today’s kites to make it even better than in years past. The materials are good, ripstop nylon and polyester material, as opposed to paper or vinyl, carbon or fiberglass fiber spars instead of wood, and many different designs. It has become more of an adult hobby than something kids want to do. I say that is because kites don’t have buttons to push and no headset jack to throw noise at you. You can hear the wind when holding the line against your ear, however, and now and then a bird will take a ride on your line. That is a very neat thing when it happens.

Well, I am sitting here writing and watching the wind beat up my coach patio awning, so excuse me while I step outside and retract it before it becomes a kite….

Now that I have done that, I can tell you about the different types of kites, you may want one to fly yourself. The easiest flyer and the kite that has the most designs, colors, and sizes to choose from is the Delta. It is usually easy to assemble, with a couple of edge spars, and a cross spar. Sometimes it only has one cross spar. Premier Kites, HQ Kites, Prism Kites, and Into The Wind, all make a great selection of deltas. I have bought many of mine from Picture Pretty Kites online store. They carry all the brands I mentioned. My largest delta has an eleven-foot wingspan and it is one of the better flyers in my bag. There are box kites, and cellular kites, including stars, some easier to fly than others. I have many para-kites, no spars to worry with. The kite stuffs into a bag, easy to fly when you have enough wind to fill it up. The best ones that I own were purchased from Fullfar Kite’s Amazon store. I own four of them, three are close to two meters across and one is just one meter. They are very well made and the sale price of each makes them all a great value. The larger ones also serve as lifters, they can carry line laundry on their lines.

This was just a spur-of-the-moment blog post. I put up a couple of kites, and the wind gave me grief so I had to quit flying, but my kites were still on my mind so I figured why not write about them? So I did and maybe it will make you think that becoming a kite flyer might just be a fun and healthy thing to do. I have added a small slide show to show off some kites.

Derrick.