The North East Kite Fliers, one of England’s largest kite clubs, is proud to report that its Russian member Alexander Iksanov has developed considerable skill at Canadian Ray Bethel’s trick of flying three stunt kites simultaneously, two from the hand and one from the belt. Harry Pert, a veteran member of the association, went with his wife to visit Iksanov at his home in the Urals, near Ekaterinburg, last year and saw him perform.

Without diminishing the unique magic of a kite in flight, what actually enables it to fly, to remain suspended in the sky, escaping earth’s gravity?

Electrical power generation using kites has been given a preliminary study by David D. Lang Associates, Seattle, on behalf of the Drachen Foundation. As its mandate, the Foundation seeks to increase and diffuse knowledge about kites worldwide. The study spans power levels from municipal to small domestic applications. Five schemes for power generation were identified and examined.

Istvan Bodoczky, of Budapest, Hungary, is a painter of beautiful abstractions. As professor of art and pedagogy at the Hungarian University of Craft and Design, he is also a committed teacher. Born into a family of lawyers, he instead chose to be an artist at the age of 14. “I’m considered a rebel by my family,” he says.

Thijo van Beek, of Mijdrecht, Holland, is one of the success stories of international kiting. A truckdriver by profession, as he frequently points out in his booming voice, before making some exquisitely sensitive comment, or bestowing a well crafted compliment, or cracking a refreshing joke in his fluent, charmingly accented English, Van Beek has made a name for himself with just one kite.

As part of the Drachen Foundation’s campaign to spread the word about the efficacy of kite aerial photography, Eric Muhs, resident boffin of the Foundation, journeyed to Hawaii to show Professor Don Ryan and his archeology cohorts how a rapid digital recording technique works. Ryan, of Pacific Lutheran University, in Tacoma, Washington, has done projects in the Holy Land, Egypt, and the Canary Islands. The team target was ancient Polynesian rock carvings in a large ground level lava deposit on the Big Island of Hawaii.

After thinking about it for a decade, Patrick de Koning of Ymuiden, Holland, decided in 2001 to make a manlifting kite system. He had been a convert to single line flying for years, “searching for difficult winds in strange places in the landscape—-gales, or light winds barely touching your cheek. I liked single line kites for their nice behavior and ability to make the wind visible. Soaring skies, chaotic clouds—-the eye rests on a high-flying kite glued to the sky, you dream away.”

After its total suppression by the Khmer Rouge, kiting has made a resounding comeback in Cambodia. Last year a national kite museum was opened in the capital Phnom Penh with His Excellency Ouk Socheat, undersecretary of state for culture, presiding. Educational workshops for children at the museum were initiated and judged a great success. School tours of the facility began. And an annual kite festival bloomed with 80 enthusiastic participants.

In one of its more adventurous research projects, the Drachen Foundation is funding Mexican marine biologist Oscar Frey in his study of the impact of humans on humpback whales. In its test phase in the Bay of Bandaras, north of Acapulco, Frey joined French photograph Nico Chorier and Drachen Administrator Ali Fujino in making kite aerial videos and still photographs of the giant whales. Going out to sea daily in a heaving 27- foot boat was real punishment, says Fujino, and seasickness was rife. But the team carried on without a hitch.

The latest kite is a soft, 6.5-by-10-meter Stars and Stripes, the prototype for what may be the new world’s largest kite. Our plan is to make one 25-by-40-meters (about 900 square meters, comfortably larger than the Mega-Byte or Mega-Ray which are each 635 square meters) and to fly it at various (mainly non-kite world) events around the globe.