How Not to Get Started in Kite Flying

by John
(Australia)

When I was a young boy living in the U.K. I belonged to the Cubs and Scouts movment. Each week they choose a subject for us to do which fitted the weather.

Now my father who was a very clever man but had little or no patents thought that he would attempt to get involved in this particular project.

It was summer and we had some of our meetings outside on the playing fields. We all had to make a kite and take it along with us to the next meeting. My father first went down to his workshop for a few hours. He came back with the biggest Hex kite you ever saw and proceeded to instruct me in building another one based on this.

After many tears I did in the end manage to build one that he thought was good enough.

Come the evening of our Cub meeting it was a very overcast one and looked like rain at any moment. However, he took me down to the playing fields only to find nobody else had turned up. This was a good thing as the kite flew very well but needed a stake driven into the ground with a pulley on it to pass the line through. Otherwise, there was no way you could hang on to the thing once it got in the air! Even my father who was a big man, could not hold it very well, so if I had gone on my own I dread to think where I would have ended up!

Keep flying!
J.L-J