Flying Colors Kite Festival!!!

It's back! The Minnesota Kite Society is hosting the Flying Colors Kite Festival this year!

My understanding is that its been a few years since the last one. I'm glad that the club is bringing it back. This will be my first Flying Colors to attend and what's cool is that this is also my first chance to help with putting on a festival.

First, here is the event information.

What:	Flying Colors Kite Festival
	Flying Colors is the Minnesota Kite Society's summer kite festival. There will be big kites, stunt kites, kid's kite making workshops, kid's kite flying competitions, a rokkaku kite battle and open flying for the public. The festival is at the Valley View Middle School play fields on the Northwest corner of 90th Street and Portland Avenue South in Bloomington, MN. For more information about Flying Colors and about the Minnesota Kite Society check out our website http://www.mnkites.org. Come Fly With Us!
Price:	FREE
When:	Saturday, August 21, 2010 11am – 4pm
Where:	Valley View Middle School Play Fields 8900 Portland Avenue South Bloomington, MN 55420 map
Co-Chairs:	John Kaulbars, phone 952-854-0985 or email jskaulbars@gmail.com Ken Wilkowski, phone 763-536-8552 or email cheapsheep2001@yahoo.com
Email:	flywithus@mnkites.org

This is going to be a blast! I love kite festivals! The sky is filled up full of colors and shapes, kids, young and old, are flying kites with big grins! Everyone come out and participate! Bring your family and friends and have your friends bring their friends. This is a big field, so we need help filling it up.

Just as a preview of the location, here is a link to the MKS pictures from the Bloomington Sister City this last spring. Flying Colors is happening on the same field.

Here are some links to pictures from past Flying Colors Festivals.

• 2005 Flying Colors
• 2004 Flying Colors
• 2001 Flying Colors
• 2000 Flying Colors
• 1999 Flying Colors

So everyone come out and lets have a great time at Flying Colors 2010! I'm looking forward to posting some really fun pictures from our event.

Oh, and just in case you didn't notice there are plans to have a Rokkau battle. These are a lot of fun. A Rokkaku is a 6 sided Japanese style kite that is used in kite battles. The object of the kite battle is to knock the other kites out of the sky by either tipping them so they hit the ground or by cutting your opponents line. Last kite in the sky wins. There are rules to ensure safety, no glass coated line or physical contact with other fliers. These are fun to participate in and fun to watch. MKS member Dean Murray participated in his first Rokkaku battle last fall at the American Kitefliers Association National Convention and with great skill (wink, wink, actually it was pure luck) won 2nd place. So here is your chance to challenge a nationally ranked Rok battler.

Anyway, instead of me rambling on why don't all of you leave comments to this blog entry. Tell us about your memories of Flying Colors past and/or what you like about kite festivals.

See you all on Saturday, August 21st!

-- Dean

Indoor Kiting

Last week on the TV show America's Got Talent there was an incredible display of indoor kite flying.

We would like to say, CONGRATULATIONS! to Connor Doran on his great performance. Connor is 17, a senior in high school graduating in 2011 and the son of AKA region 9 director Amy Doran. Be sure to tune in the Vegas show of America's Got Talent to cheer on Connor.

Since Connor's appearance on the show the MKS website has received some inquiries about indoor kiting and where to learn about it.  We've done some checking and have not found a lot of contacts here in Minnesota yet.

I've done some digging on the internet and would like to share what I've found so far.  If you know of some good resources for information about indoor kiting, please reply with some comments and share with us all.

Thanks!


To start with, here is Connor on America's Got Talent.


Connor Doran - Portland Audition for America's Got Talent



Here are more indoor kite demonstrations at this year's Kites Over Grinnell festival.

Indoor Kites Grinnell 2010


Here are some great indoor tricks.
Long Beach 2008 Hot Tricks
Penny Lingenfelter and Lam Haoc in a Hot Tricks contest.



The following are some articles from the online magazine, KiteLife about indoor flying.
Mike Reagan - Doin' It Indoors


KiteLife (Issue 1 April 1998)
http://kitelife.com/magazine/issue01/indoors/content.php

KiteLife (Issue 2 May 1998)
http://kitelife.com/magazine/issue02/indoors/content.php


KiteLife (Issue 3 June 1998)
http://kitelife.com/magazine/issue03/indoors/content.php



Here is a document about how to make an inexpensive, easy indoor kite found on the Drachen Foundation website.


Making and Flying a Light Indoor Kite - by Charlie Sotich
http://www.drachen.org/journals/a08/Mini-Kite.pdf


Here are a couple of kite plans for indoor kites from the kiteplans.org website.
http://www.kiteplans.org/planos/society/Flutter_Mouse.pdf

http://www.horvath.ch/ninja/the_urban_ninja.html


A video and some plans for the Borelli Glider. The plans may need to be translated to english.


 Kite Flying Indoors with the Borelli Glider


Plans for Borelli Glider
http://northernelectric.ca/kites/borelli/borelli.htm



For information about Revolution kites (like the one Connor used) checkout KiteLife (http://www.kitelife.com/) and the Revolution website (http://www.revkites.com/).

Flying at the bluff

One comment I've heard is that we need to have more flying events around the Twin Cities during the spring/summer. It would be nice to have regular fun fly events where we just get together and have fun with this great hobby.

There are a few things kite fliers have to contend with like sport events and city parks charging fees to use public grounds for events. But there are places to fly if we look around. If you know of a great place to fly please share it with us on the MKS website! Contact the club through the website or the board members and make suggestions. We all want to make the club better. Even if the club doesn't sponsor an official event we could put a fun fly on our calendar if you know a great place to fly.

Check our event calendar on the MKS website often for updates.

One place that I like to go fly is at Schaar's Bluff down by Hastings in the Spring Lake Park Reserve. It's a bit of a drive from the north end of the Twin Cities, but worth it. There are a couple of fields with good space for kite flying. On the weekends there are usually other kite fliers there too. Best of all there is the great view out over the Mississippi River.

Here is a news blurb from the Dakota County website about kite flying at the bluff.

The Solid Kite Flying club is out there regularly. Here is their schedule for flying at Schaar's Bluff.

Here is a map to Schaar's Bluff in the Spring Lake Park Reserve, Hastings, MN.

So what is this blog stuff about?

Okay, so what is blogging and what is the purpose of this blog in particular?

Well, I don't know really. I'm just going to spew my ideas about both questions without really doing any fact checking or research. From what I've heard, that may be the definition of blogging.

This is my first time trying to write something for a blog. Really, I think a blog can be anything you want it to be. It can be a collection of articles, links to other things, music, pictures. Whatever it is that you want to share at a given time. Then people who read your stuff (people like you!) can add comments about those ideas which then can get more comments and all of a sudden you have an exchange of ideas going on. That's going to be my answer to "What is blogging?".

Next the purpose of this blog.

I'll start with a little background. Last summer (2009) I joined the Minnesota Kite Society (MKS) because I had started flying kites as a hobby and attended some of the flying events that were listed on the MKS website. Membership was only $20 and I thought that was a bargain to help the group keep hosting events. It's fun flying in the sport fields near my home, but it's more fun when you can find new places to fly and there are other people with the same interest flying too. All of the kite people I met were very nice, helpful and happy. I think flying kites and people being happy are connected somehow.

Back on topic... Late in the year I was asked to join the MKS board and I said yes. One of the things I can help with is the club website. www.mnkites.org I work in IT and have had some personal websites in the past so I agreed to help with the website. It's in need of updating and is currently being redone. Hope to launch the new site late spring 2010. Looking around at other club sites, some of them have blogs. It was an easy thing to add for the club so I created this blog. We'll see what it becomes and kinda wing it.

My hope is that any club member can and will contribute to the blog. If anyone wants to write an article or post a picture or link, contact me and I can get you setup as a contributor to the blog or send your content to me and I can add it to the blog.

I think we should have some guidelines/rules for this blog.

1. This blog is family friendly. No cursing, no adult-only stuff.
2. Should try to keep kiting or MKS at least loosely part of your topic.
3. I'm not sure how to describe it other than keep your posts tasteful and respectful. Content that is deemed inappropriate for the site will be removed.

Like I said, I'm new to this blogging stuff. We'll see how it goes.

Please let me know if you want to contribute to this blog.

Thanks. Let's make this thing a useful part of the MKS website.