We had a great time building Rokkaku kites in Baddeck last month! I met some wonderful people and I learned a lot! The room was full of all skill levels, but I am pretty sure no one had built a kite before, so everyone was being introduced to the strange world of spinnaker nylon, dacron and adhesives. It was a bit of culture shock for some of the quilters I think!

Day one started with everyone cutting the fabric and sewing the main sail together. The rest of the day and most of day 2 was spent on applique. A lot of great unique designs and approaches came out of this process. The latter part of day 2 was spent adding reinforcements, pockets, and framing.

By Saturday morning we had almost all the kites in the air at Beinn Bhreagh. The winds proved a bit too much for us so we decided to pack it in and head up to the “Kite House” for a great spread of meats, cheeses, salads and sweets. Thanks to Jeanne and Hugh Muller for hosting us, it was great way to cap off an excellent few days in Baddeck.

Special thanks to Scott Ferguson for stepping in as an instructor, your help was greatly appreciated! A big thank you to Sharon Morrow for organizing and hosting this event, and of course thanks to Anne Morrell, fabric artist extraordinaire and my partner in this workshop! Hopefully we will put on another workshop next year.

I posted a ton of pictures on Flickr including pics of all of the finished kites flying…

Saint Honore 2009 Day1-1

Originally uploaded by wdrwilson.

Saint Honore was fantastic! The people are wonderful and put up with my non existent french skills. Friday was fantastic with near perfect winds. Saturday brought strong winds up to 50 km/h, but that didn’t stop AWITA from flying (and ripping) their PL giant inflatables. Sunday was light wind but was flyable almost all day!

This picture was taken on the road to the B&B we stayed at, a wonderful view of the airport where we were flying. I have never flown kites at a working airport before… we even had a visit from a CF-18, that was pretty incredible. I will post more pictures later, right now we are on the ferry between St. Simeon(sp?) and Riviere-du-loop.

Kite Stack

Originally uploaded by Meanest Indian.

Looks like the International Kite Festival held in India this past weekend was a big success. Over 31 Countries represented.

Check out the deshgujarat.com for some great photos and some more links to past events.

Even some great shots of good friend Cliff Quinn with his amazing double start facet kite.

Lot’s of great pictures on flickr, try searching for Ahmedabad Kite Festival. That search turned up the picture in this post which is from one of my favorite photographers on Flickr.

Fled MKIII -2

Originally uploaded by wdrwilson.

Managed to get out at lunch today to get a few pictures of my newly constructed Fled MK III. I am working with Steve Ferrel from the kitebuilder.com forums to put together an online Fled kite building workshop.

This kite is scaled up from the original slightly to more easily handle the 32.5 inch spars that I use. I chose white as I will be primarily using this as a kite for Kite Aerial Photography. It should make a nice, hopefully not so distracting, platform for taking photos.

Thanks to Brooks Leffler for putting the plans together…

KiteFenzy.com pic of a custom kite for Dwarf8

This is a really cool series of photos showing what it takes to build a custom kite-surfing kite.

Here is an example from a fantastic natural refresher drink called Dwarf8, http://www.dwarf8.com/ from Switzerland but based in the kite mecca of Europe, Tarifa, where best to have a custom kite? They ordered an 11m Sport 2 in all white sail with the logo sewn on.

Fridge Kite

Originally uploaded by nolacat.

Saw this photo on Flickr, it’s painted on a wall in New Orleans. Speaks for itself..

flying tent

Originally uploaded by fdrizo.

Not quite a tent, but it’s Nylon with a fiberglass frame… and it flys.

Apparently a tent took off in a brief gust and hit some power lines causing an outage at the Maker Faire.

See the whole story on the Make Blog

Boondock’s Tables - Fisherman’s Cove Dartmouth, NS

Originally uploaded by wdrwilson.

Fellow KAPper Rob Huntley from Ottawa and I spent Sunday KAPping around the Halifax area. We had good sessions at Fisherman’s Cove in Eastern Passage, NS and Peggy’s Cove. The wind was light at the dock’s but it quite happily lifted my 6 ft Rok with my 1+ pound rig. The winds at Peggy’s Cove were perfect, probably around 15 km/h, and off shore.

This is one of the shots fomr Fisherman’s Cove, it’s the picnic tables, and baord walk at Boondock’s restaurant.

There are more on my photo stream at Flickr, and of course you can see more KAP photos on the Flickr Kite Aerial Photography group.

IMG_4215

Originally uploaded by dougish1954.

Ha I knew someone had proof. Looks like Doug Isherwood got a pic of me flying at the Buffalo train station.

Thanks Doug!

Finally have put my photos together from Niagara, I have missed a few of the days as I left/forgot my camera back at the hotel a couple of times.

Bill’s Photos
Don Brownridge’s Photos
Ted Shaw’s Photos
David Gomberg’s Photos
Carlos Simoes’ Photos
Pete Rich’s Photos
Lucy Jonkman’s Photos
John’s Photos

Man that’s a ton of photos..