As the Drachen Foundation steadily adds to its kite files from around the world, it has had to find researchers to do some of its most vital work. Enter Ed Milligan-"Uncle Ed" to all-who works out of Washington, D.C., a mother lode of valuable, obscure, often difficult to unearth information.

At age 79, Ibsen Nelsen’s Drachen Foundation headquarters, now under construction, may well be his last architectural design. He is pleased to note it continues the creative tradition he has established in his 57 years as a practicing architect in Seattle: "It’s a nice little building in a nice little neighborhood. With its courtyard in front, it is part of the continuity of the street-distinctive but fitting in nicely with the neighborhood."

The most famous single kite flight in history is unquestionably Ben Franklin’s successful attempt to draw lightning from a cloud. Firm and fixed in legend, the episode turns out to be dim and mystifying in fact. A voluminous writer all his life, Franklin himself never wrote the story of the most dramatic of all his own experiments. All that is known about what he did on that famous day in Philadelphia, of no known date, comes from an account by Joseph Priestley, published 15 years later.

In its final manifestation last year, the annual Junction, Texas, kite weekend produced yet another surprise-a kite wizard from one of the world’s more obscure countries, Afghanistan. Basir Beria, born in 1961 in the capital, Kabul, and now resident as a refugee in Tarzana, California, after doing a prison term as a teenager for demonstrating anti-Russian sentiment in his home country, showed off the kite tradition of Afghanistan to a fascinated audience.

The BBC at Broadcasting House, Portland Place, Oxford Circus in London has opened a semi-permanent installation called "The BBC Experience." It begins with the dawn of radio and covers the succeeding 75 years to the interactive present, that is to say, directing a segment of a sitcom, doing sports commentary, creating sound effects.

A student of American kite patents, Ed Grauel of Rochester,N.Y., has expanded his research into kite creativity elsewhere in the Western world. On behalf of the Drachen Foundation, he has now: -prepared a definitive listing of all Australian kite patents from the first one issued in 1900 through 1997; -read and summarized the 59 English kite patents issued from 1911 through 1965 (it would be very difficult to check the 800,000 patents issued prior to 1911 to determine which, if any, covered kites);

The sport of falconry-using falcons, hawks or eagles to catch game-has been in existence for several thousand years. Its traditions and techniques were established early on and have continued virtually unaltered over the centuries. Something innovative has recently changed the sport for the better-the use of high-flying kites for training purposes. And the inventor of the technique, Dr. David Scarbrough, of Fairfax, Missouri, remembers the very moment of his inspiration.

Having studied the "Pictures for the Sky" catalogue, I found the reality of the large exhibition surprising. What you don’t get from looking at the book is scale. The kites in the exhibit are generally quite big. You don’t get to see kites as big in Japan very often. Longing to see the exhibit for years, I caught up with it finally in Luxembourg last year, where the organizer, Dr.Paul Eubel, is directing the Goethe Institute-Germany’s cultural equivalent of the United States Information Agency.

A lawyer by training, Dr.Paul Eubel changed his career in mid-stream from being Germany’s leading contemporary expert on the Japanese legal system to a cultural affairs officer representing his country in Japan. He got himself posted to Osaka to head the Goethe Institute there, Germany’s equivalent of the United States Information Agency.

The role of kites in the development of the first manned, powered aircraft, the Wright Flyer of 1903, has become clearer through the work of Ken Hyde and Rick Young. The Virginia pair and their dedicated team-known collectively as the Wright Experience-are busy constructing every one of the development flying machines made by the Wrights over the years so they can celebrate the centennial of flight in the year 2003 in real style. Where else to fly this squadron than the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where the epochal first four powered flights were carried out?