About the Club

Hello from the beach! I'm George Weaver, founder of the Space Coast Kite Flyers. I spent thirty years helping rockets go up. I started out on the launch pads at the Cape in 1961 and retired as a pad technician in 1991, and in between I watched more countdowns from closer up than most people would believe. When I retired, my wife bought me a kite to keep me out of her kitchen. It was a six-dollar diamond from the drugstore, and it worked. I flew it every day for a month, then bought a better one, then started building my own, and that summer I put a card on the bulletin board at the bait shop asking if anybody wanted to fly with me. Five people came. Today we have 64 members, ages four to eighty-one.

We're a friendly bunch. Some of us fly big show kites, some fly stunt kites, some build their own from scratch, and some just like to sit in a beach chair and watch the sky. All of that counts. I'll tell you what I tell the grandchildren: a kite is the simplest flying machine there is, and it still has to obey every law that a rocket does. Lift, weight, drag, and a little bit of luck.

Dues are $10 a year for one person or $15 for a family, and that includes our newsletter, The Tail End. You don't have to be a member to come fly with us.

The Monthly Fly

We start at ten, but the real flying usually begins around eleven, when the sea breeze fills in. On most days at the beach the air is light and fickle early in the morning. Then, as the land heats up, a steady breeze comes in off the ocean, and that's what a kite wants: smooth air with nothing in its way for miles. We don't fly when the wind is blowing offshore, from the west. It comes over the condos and the dunes all chopped up and gusty, and if a line breaks, your kite heads out to sea.

Bring your kite, your line, a hat, sunscreen, water and a chair. Leave the swimmers plenty of room, and keep away from the pier and the fishermen's lines.

Last fly: Sunday, September 5. Thirty-one flyers, a sea breeze of 8 to 12 by eleven o'clock, and a sky full of color. Dorris Foret's new rainbow tail, all sixty feet of it, drew a crowd. The stunt team flew a demonstration at noon. Then Floyd sent most of us inland for a couple of days in the middle of the month. It stayed out to sea, thank goodness, and we're all home and ready for October.

Kinds of Kites

Here's a quick field guide to what you'll see on our beach. I've added the winds each one likes best, because that's the first question everyone asks.

Reading the wind without a meter: If you can feel it on your face and the palm fronds are moving, that's about 5 to 8 mph, good for a delta. A few whitecaps on the ocean means about 10, good for almost everything. Whitecaps everywhere means 15 or more, time for the box kites and the strong line, and time to put the little ones away.

The Stunt Kite Team: T-Minus Three

Yes, I named them. Our team is Marcos Bonney, Ramona Bui and John Downing, flying three matching dual-line deltas in red, white and blue, nose to tail, sometimes about three feet apart. They practice Saturday mornings on the beach when the wind cooperates, and they fly demonstrations at our monthly flies and at the festival.

At sport kite competitions there are two main kinds of events, for solo flyers and for teams. In precision, flyers have to fly set figures, squares and circles and straight lines, inside a box marked out on the ground, and the judges score how exactly they do it. In ballet, flyers fly a routine of their own to music, and the judges score how well the flying fits the music. T-Minus Three is working up a team ballet routine to music from the Apollo 13 soundtrack, which I may have suggested. They hope to take it to their first competition next spring. John also flies a quad-line kite, and if you ask nicely he'll make it walk backward along the sand toward you. It's a sight.

Want to learn stunt kites? Come to a monthly fly. The team keeps a trainer kite with short lines just for beginners, and they'd love to teach you.

Kids' Kite-Making Workshop

Every child goes home with a sled kite they built themselves, from a trash bag, two dowels, some tape and string, decorated with markers any way they like. We supply all the materials. Barbara Gayle, who taught second grade for thirty-four years, runs the workshop, and several of us will be there to help with the measuring and the knots. Then, if the wind is willing, bring your kite to the beach at 1:00 and we'll help you get it up for its first flight. Can't make it? The instructions are on our Build a Sled Kite page.

Kids who like this sort of thing might also enjoy The Paper Airplane Laboratory, with folding instructions for six paper airplanes, distance records and what they learned about why planes fly.

The Space Coast Fall Kite Festival

• Big show kites both days, including our octopus and a couple of visitors from up the coast.
• Sport kite demonstrations by T-Minus Three and guest flyers, at 11:00 and 2:00.
• Rokkaku challenge, Saturday at 3:00. Rokkakus are six-sided Japanese fighting kites. Everyone launches at once and tries to bring the others down, and the last kite flying wins. Spectators should stand well back.
• Kite-making table for kids, both days, while the supplies last.
• The candy drop, Sunday at 1:00. A kite carries a bag of candy up high and lets it go over a roped-off stretch of sand, and the children underneath go wild. Ages 10 and under, please.

We need volunteers for the crowd lines, the kite-making table and the candy bags. Luann Templeman is keeping the list.

Flying Calendar

About that rollover: I worked under countdown clocks for thirty years, and in my experience T-zero comes and goes, and then you go back to work. We'll be on the beach either way.

Safety

On the pad we had a checklist for everything, and I still believe in them. Here's ours.

Club officers: George Weaver, president and founder · Luann Templeman, secretary and treasurer · James Rathbone, field marshal (he keeps the flying lines sorted out on the beach, and he worked the pads with me for twenty years) · Barbara Gayle, workshops · Dorris Foret, banners, tails and ripstop repairs, at 76 the best seamstress on the coast.

Coming to the Space Coast to see a launch too? Shuttle Launch Viewing Guide tells you where to stand, when to arrive and what to bring.