From:	jburka@Glue.umd.edu (Jeffrey C. Burka)
Subject: Lakehurst Indoor Fly report
Date:	Sun, 7 Apr 1996 04:05:54 -1000
Organization: Project Glue, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
Message-ID: <4k8i42$82q@geog25.umd.edu>


Well, I'm almost, but not quite, just back from Lakehurst, New Jersey,
and my third indoor kite flying excursion to the fabulous Hangar 1.

Turnout this time wasn't as good as last, due I'm sure to several
reasons (just a week after folks travelled for Smithsonian, the
proximity to Easter, the fact that there wasn't a competition, etc.),
but we still had about 20 people.

Some highlights for me included watching jtavo doing a Brian
Vanderslice honorarium (running around with an icky Skytiger Hi30 on
fairly long lines), flying a small Cody, and watching Peter Lee and
John (um, what _is_ John's last name?)  run a relay to get one of
Peter's indoor fighters as high as possible...with John's final leg of
the run, the kite got caught in a rafter in the ceiling (doubly odd --
for most flyers at Lakehurst, the concept of "ceiling" has no
meaning!).  There were big cheers when they managed to get the kite
free.

In addition to flying (and sharing) my own cody and SUL revII and 1.5,
there were lots of other people's toys with which to play.  Ed Shenk
had an SUL version of his latest kite which flew reasonably well, and
a 5' or so micro-carbon kite (which needs some tweaking and a heavier
leading edge, but could be great, I think).  Eileen Tavolocci was
gracious in letting me fly her beautiful custom Millenium.  Several
folks, including Sandy Wagner and Peter Lee had Synergy and Minergy
Deca Zero's, and Peter let folks play with his Minergy 333 (I have
*real* mixed feelings about this thing, whatever it is...I'm still
quite anxious to try the full sized kite in a decent wind).  A few
folks had X4i's, and there was a full-sized XTC which I never got
around to flying.  John had a Vanishing Point, and Jason Benedict
brought along a VP Gold, which he let everyone try (even a friend of
mine who hadn't flown a dual line kite in 6 years (and then had only
done so maybe 3 or 4 times) and had never flown indoors!).

All in all, a wonderful day.  I can't wait for the next Lakehurst
trip, though who knows when it might be...

Jeff


-- 
|Jeffrey C. Burka     |  Pithy, insightful quote to be inserted when one    |
|jburka@glue.umd.edu  |  occurs to me.  *If* one occurs to me.              |
|http://www.wam.umd.edu/~jeffy/html/home.html                               |



 = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =