Flying Kites

Stories & Photos—Including Kite Loss!

Anyone who's been out flying kites will have a story or two to tell. Particularly, it seems, if a favorite kite managed to find its freedom!

Also, in this age of cheap and convenient digital photography, plenty of good kite imagery has been taken. Some of it ends up online on sites like this one. And that's not to mention plenty of personal Facebook and Pinterest accounts! 

There are a few real gems to be found among the tales of flying kites and photos people have already added to this site.

These real-life kiting stories and photos accumulated for some years, particularly during the heyday of this site—the tenties. :-)  (2010–2019)  It's mainly single-line stuff, since this site reflected my personal preference for flying kites on one line. However, contributions from multi-line flyers were always more than welcome!

Recent contributions used to be posted on this page. But periodically I would shift the posts off to their most appropriate categories. Follow the links in the titled sections below to find many pages of visitor-contributed tales and images!

 

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Kite-Loss Stories

Kite-loss stories! Oh yes, but don't laugh too hard. Something similar just might happen to you one day.

You couldn't make this stuff up, honestly. Like the self-destructing dowel-and-plastic light-wind kites tearing up the sky during an extremely windy day at an Austrian kite festival. And then the last one managed to take out a couple of exquisite (and expensive) retail kites, sending them into the Blue Danube. But you've got to read the whole thing; it's quite a yarn!

Or how about a young lad, many decades ago, who managed to lose his box kite into an air intake on a landing military aircraft. I kid you not.

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Kite-Flying or Kite-Making Stories

Here are all the other single-liner stories, but there are still some nice ones in here.

I guess the keyword here is variety: from night flights to snowy weather flights into cloud, to high-altitude excursions over sea water, to Sunday School outings. I don't think any two stories here are remotely like each other.

If you're into flying kites, do yourself a favor and read some of these.

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Pictures of Kites

A whole range of amateur kite photography is on show here. It's mainly single-surface single liners, but there are some magnificent exceptions!

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Stunt-Kite Stories

Stunt-kite stories was a category designed to collect reports of incidents or other interesting happenings either during a sport kite's flight or perhaps at its abrupt termination!

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Aerial Kite Photography (KAP)

KAP was another category, for anyone who had ever hoisted a camera with the aid of a kite. Even now, you might like to view the results of people doing that.

It seems that everyone had their own spin on flying kites to get a different photographic perspective on their surroundings. Some of the results were really intriguing, whether obtained with a featherweight camera and ice-cube shutter release, or more modern concepts in radio-controlled KAP rigs.

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Other Stories

Are you looking for something you posted earlier, but can't find it? Stories were left via other pages on this site as well. In particular, see the step-by-step kite-making pages. Below, I have listed links to where those stories have been left. So you don't have to trawl all around this site looking for them. :-)

2-Skewer Box

There are also a bunch of other visitor-submitted stories under the Kite... | Festivals menu item. Here's a link so you can go straight there:

Kite Festivals

 

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