Chief
02-25-2008, 07:59 AM
Yesterday the wind was up again, and since I was still in vacation mode from last week, I decided to go flying down on the atletic field at Wy East Middle School, my usual spot.
I decided to fly my big Japanese Rokaku kite, it's 8' tall, 6' wide and is hexagonal in shape. The frame is from bamboo sticks and it was bridled with 130' test braided dacron. I stuck 2 50' streamers on it for stability, and up she went on 500# test flying line...
It flew for about 15 minutes, then the wind gusted pretty hard, and something in the frame moved slightly on one side, and the whole kite did a very graceful peel-off right onto the top of the school...
Remember those old WWII movies, where a B-17 gets hit by flack, and does the death dive off to one side....that's what this looked like, without the firey crash..
Anyway, the kite's still there. It's snagged on something on top of the building, and there is no way to just drag it off (I tried) . All I could do was stretch the flying line down as tightly as possible, and cut it as high as possible. The loose end recolied up on top so it's not dangling.
I have a call into the Custodian this morning, offering him my assistance to go retrieve it from his roof...
So it goes...
::)
I decided to fly my big Japanese Rokaku kite, it's 8' tall, 6' wide and is hexagonal in shape. The frame is from bamboo sticks and it was bridled with 130' test braided dacron. I stuck 2 50' streamers on it for stability, and up she went on 500# test flying line...
It flew for about 15 minutes, then the wind gusted pretty hard, and something in the frame moved slightly on one side, and the whole kite did a very graceful peel-off right onto the top of the school...
Remember those old WWII movies, where a B-17 gets hit by flack, and does the death dive off to one side....that's what this looked like, without the firey crash..
Anyway, the kite's still there. It's snagged on something on top of the building, and there is no way to just drag it off (I tried) . All I could do was stretch the flying line down as tightly as possible, and cut it as high as possible. The loose end recolied up on top so it's not dangling.
I have a call into the Custodian this morning, offering him my assistance to go retrieve it from his roof...
So it goes...
::)