Musings, from November KiteLife
I don’t disagree with anything much that Elain had to say. I believe kite festivals are best served by having the most accessable displays. That means lots of big single line stuff and maybe some ballet flying. Figure flying and freestyle/trick stuff is just way too inpenetrable for the un-initiated. Kite festivals are there to draw in the public so stick to what works for them. I recently organised the sponsorhip deal in which Demon Internet sponsored the Bristol Kite Festival. I actually looked at several festivals – but the only one that I felt could justify our sponsorship in the UK was Bristol. Why? Because they shift 80-100k people through the gates over the weekend. I need that level of attendance and the associated PR to make any kind of corporate success out of the event. Bristol festival gets the bodies in and it does that by having huge single liners in the air – that means the people of Bristol turn out.
I really don’t feel that festivals are an effective show case for freestyle & trick flying because these types of flying always look better ‘on location’ rather than in a field. The best way to promote this aspect of flying is video because you can mix flying, location and music – Flexifoil currently leads the field in this area.
My two penneth.
Ade Brownlow
Kite Plans
I think you should add a section for kite plans. If you have one already I can’t find it. I like the new layout of the site.
Kevin
Thanks, Kevin. This issue has two plans in it, we hope to continue this in future issues. Readers, send us your plans!
AKA Convention Coverage
Nice report, but gee, guys. Nothing on the trains.
Joel Brown, That’s My Line
Sorry, Joel. There was so much going on, it was impossible to get everything. We’ll try harder this year!
AKA Pictures
Hello Mike-
How are things??
I was wondering if I could reprint a few pictures from Kitelife.com for the San Diego Kite Club newsletter. We would of course give full credit and a link to your site.
Thank you.
Ron Despojado
Sure Ron, always glad to help out great clubs like SDKC.
BORK Credits
Nice to see the review that I wrote again. I am pleased that you felt it worthy of inclusion in your “best of…” slot.
Would it be good practice to at least name the involved parties when you “reprint” these articles ? As it stands no-one can tell who wrote this review.
Mike Emery.
We believe in giving credit where it is due. We will ensure to include this information for future BORK pieces.
AKA Photos
Many thanks for the photo’s.
Hopefully @ next convention more photos out on the beach of Sport Kite flyers, with their kites and friends. Single liners stole the show at the convention.
With the increasing numbers of kiters with digital cameras, we should be able to feature a wider variety of images from this year’s convention.
Problems with Snagging
I have tried to grab the entire content of the nov/dec issue twice without getting the whole thing with this tool. I dont understand why it wont work now when it was for previous issues. Since there is so much (great) content I would prefer to yank down the whole mess and then read it offline.
Can you make a zipped version of it avaiable, or look into why site snagger hits a snag? Thanks for all the work time and energy you all are putting into this activity. I hope you feel it is paying off. I do.
John Biggs
Thanks for the kind words, John. We are having a lot of fun doing KiteLife. I believe the problem that you had with snagging the November issue lies with the size of the issue… 888 image files alone! Offering zipped versions is something we hope to do this year.
’99 AKA Convention
Hi. Read your post in rec.kites. I am a competing sportkite pilot who lives in Bloomington, Indiana (about 2.5 hours south of Muncie) and am a member of the Hoosier Kiteflyers Society. There are some really great kiteflyer/maker stories in Indiana. Ansel Tony, Merritt Beck and Dave Debolt, just to name a few. I am on a personal mission to promote sportkite flying in my area.
I have made contact with a TV journalist in Indianapolis for FOX Television, and he seems very interested in covering the Muncie event. I hope to be solidifying this by Jan-Feb of 99. Maybe there are some ways to get Kitelife.com involved? I know I speak for the majority of our members when I say that we are ready to show the Kiteworld that Muncie will be a great event. I have personally seen the site and let me tell you it will be very close to perfect. This area of Indiana is very flat and very conducive to good wind conditions. Not to mention, competition will be conducted on grass not sand. Please feel free to E-mail if you would like to talk in more detail about this.
Finally, I would like to thank you and your team for Kitelife. I’ve read each issue since it started and it is just fantastic! I would like to contribute some writing eventually, but this next year I’m going to dedicate myself fully to competition in Intermediate Precision and Ballet, as well as all the projects the club has planned for the season and the AKA event in Muncie.
I plan on doing some sort of presentation for the above mentioned three kitemakers/flyers and maybe more since the members are helping out too. I’ve already talked to Al Sparling (our regional AKA dir.) about this and he seems to think it should be ok for us to toot our Indiana horn a bit.
But who knows? Perhaps we can combine efforts.
-Mark Kunoff
Thanks for the kind words, Mark. We share your enthusiasm for the Muncie site, I think it has the potential to be the best convention in recent memory. We applaud your efforts, and would be glad to assist you in promoting the event in any way we can. Best of luck in competition!
Search Engine
Do you plan to offer a search engine? I’d very much like to be able to look up references in back issues.
An index page for things like kite reviews would be another option.
What about downloadable issues? Archive each issues files for off-line viewing and text search.
Keep up the good work!
Allen
Thanks, Allen. We are currently trying to program a search function to span all issues. If that doesn’t work out, we will compile an index of all articles to make research easier. Many readers are using offline reader programs to “snag” the entire issue for reading. Try www.tucows.com to find such programs.