Ben Ruhe
From Discourse 18

Editor’s Note: This article revisits and adds to Ben Ruhe’s 2013 Discourse article “Reviewing Two Decades.”

Browsing Drachen Foundation kite journals, past or present, the reader cannot help but notice that some kites lead the pack, either for size, looks, age, background, or use, and that some of the personalities flying them are particularly unusual. Herewith are some nominees for most notable kites and a glance at some of the people involved in the sport.

MOST EMOTIVE: ANNA RUBIN

A student in Vienna, Austria, Anna Rubin received an assignment to create an original kite, build it, and fly it. She did so. Her second effort, also very imaginative, made the cover of a kite magazine. She was launched. Anna’s kites, constructions of strip bamboo and paper, are a rarity because they convey emotion, sometimes a strong one. In their own way, they are sculptures. An example is “The Kiss.” Two circular bamboo forms merge in the center, a point marked by red splotches – lipstick. “One woman seeing it,” recalls Anna,” burst into tears.” The kite flies well, by the way.

MOST REVOLUTIONARY: THE REVOLUTION KITE

An inventor by profession and a kiteflier by avocation, Joe Hadzicki of San Diego went to bed one night, dreamed of a radical kite, woke up, went to his shop, made the thing, took it out, tested it, and it flew very well. The speedy two-liner went exactly to the right and then to the left, and straight up. Best of all, it could be brought down in a screaming dive, stopped abruptly a foot from the grass, and flown straight back up. All of this was accompanied by an attention-getting ripping sound. The Revolution – Rev for short – was born. Joe and his partner brothers marketed the kite and did well, but then found the design was being ripped off. They won infringement suits, but were unable to collect when the shifty copiers retreated into bankruptcy. “We should never have bothered suing in the first place,” older and wiser Joe concludes.

MOST PROVOCATIVE: THAI FIGHTER KITES

In February, monsoon winds abate at dusk, and kites bloom daily over the vast kite field beside the royal palace in downtown Bangkok. Thousands turn out to picnic and watch the aerial sport. Big “male” chulas go against flighty, little “female” pakpaos. The male kites try to overpower their adversaries. The female kites go in for tricks and stealth tactics. The “female” pakpaos win a majority of the duels, which are accompanied by cheering bugle calls and shouted gambling wagers. As soon as a kite is downed, another one goes up. Several teams compete across the field. Good cheer reigns. Teams have as many as 25 people with designated titles and are very disciplined. They are from neighborhoods and have local support and show up year after year. It is a beautiful tradition.

FESTIVAL FAVORITE: ISTVAN BODOCZKY

Artist Istvan Bodoczky of Budapest, Hungary, made linear constructions of bamboo and colored paper and exhibited them in his art exhibitions. One critic asked jocularly why he didn’t fly them as kites, so the artist did just that, attaching necessary bridal cords. Despite being highly irregular in shape, they flew, and a new kind of kite was born. Bodoczky over the years perfected his skill at balancing his increasingly mismatched shapes so they would calmly float aloft, and combined this with colorful and eye-catching designs. Predictably, he and his asymmetrics became a favorite at kite festivals worldwide.

GREATEST SIGHT: SUMPANGO, GUATEMALA

A mass drama is provided by the Day of the Dead remembrance in Guatemala each Nov. 1 when locals in Sumpango, near the capital, tidy the burial sites of family members in the cemetery and then adjourn to a local field to pay homage by flying kites to the free- flying spirits of the deceased. The kites are something special, dozens of them, some as large as 40 feet. (Larger than that is banned as too dangerous.) The circular kites are displayed in a long line, with a row of active volcanoes as backdrop. The thousands of colorfully dressed spectators add movement and a din to the spectacle. It is one of the great sights of the kite world. It may not be windy enough to fly the giants, but that hardly matters amid the general bustle of smaller flying kites being launched and flown, orchestral music, amusement stand noise, and general uproar. Besides, the big kites are well worth study. It has taken weeks for their crews to construct them of timber and pasted paper, and they are adorned by message pictures. These are typically revolutionary – Mayan protests against injustice. Guatemala has a low-keyed civil war in progress.

GREATEST STYLE: COCKY EEK

Everyone dreams of flight, right? Cocky Eek of Amsterdam, Holland, achieves it and with great style. She designed a 60-foot gown of white Tyvek and uses six Conyne kites to tow her aloft. The man-lifting team is headed by Patrick de Koning. These adrenalin rush demonstrations have been staged in several countries. “The process is close and open. Crew and spectators are not only fascinated by it, they are emotionally touched,” he notes.

GREATEST PERSONALITY: PAUL GARBER

Born at the turn of the last century, Paul Garber as a child had his kite bridled by neighbor and famed inventor Alexander Graham Bell, saw a Wright brother fly in Washington, D.C. before World War I, received one of the earliest pilot’s licenses, became the curator of aeronautics at the Smithsonian, accepted the Wright and Lindbergh planes into the institution’s collection, ran the long-running Smithsonian kite festival, and in general was the greatest authority on kites. He is aviation’s and kiting’s greatest personality. The genial Garber lived into his 90s. He had seen the entire history of aviation and astronautics in his lifetime.

OLDEST KITE: 1773, NEW ZEALAND

Kites by their nature are perishable. So there are no really ancient kites, like stone tools. But their age can be guessed at, very roughly. Cave paintings of them have been dated back tens of thousands of years. And it is easy to surmise what they looked like from the start. A slat of bamboo with rudimentary bridle will fly. To brings things to the present, a tropic leaf – and they grow huge – will naturally develop dihedral when drying, and if strengthened by a stick down its spine and with a crude bridle fashioned from tree bark produces the type of kite still flown today by certain Indonesian fishermen. The oldest actual kite in existence, certainly in the West, appears to be a Dutch example found in a demolished building. It dates to 1773, a date written on the sail, and was sold for five figures to Peter Lynn of Christchurch, New Zealand, a preeminent figure in the world of kites. The peartop paper kite’s authenticity seems proven. “This old kite can be described as having won a long odds survival lottery,” says Lynn.

LARGEST KITE: THE FLYING MATTRESS

Lynn is not only the owner of that probably oldest European kite, he has many other claims to fame in the kite world. He is a frequent flier king, totaling more mileage as he commutes between his Australian home and promised lands north of the Equator than some veteran Airbus captains. With an educational background in avionic theory and a practical one ranging from dirt motorcycle racing to testing advanced kite designs on land and water, sometimes a dangerous business considering the vagaries of wind, Lynn may have a broader range of knowledge than anyone in the field. Design is one of Lynn’s areas of expertise, and he is not surprisingly the builder of the world’s largest kite, a monster requiring a fire truck as an anchor to fly. Constructed for a Kuwaiti oil family, the title is unassailable. If anyone challenges him, Lynn intends to build an addition to the kite to take back the title. The massive kite in question, known as the flying mattress, is more than 1,000 square meters in lifting area.

SMALLEST KITE: LENG SJI XIANG’S MICROMINIS

From a workshop in his tiny Beijing home, Leng Sji Xiang makes what are almost certainly the world’s smallest kites. Where he works is more solitary confinement prison cell than anything else. Still exceptionally sharp-eyed at 54, Leng in this ill-lit space takes days to make a creation, up to one half-day just to bridle it. Flown from a tether, the kite’s flying line is a single fiber extracted from a nylon cloth. It takes a glass to study the micromini’s beauty. The scale of the kite is amazing – just a fraction of the size of an American 10-cent piece, which measures less than three-quarters of an inch in diameter. Leng reports turning down $1,000 for one of his masterpieces, although some have found their way into museums and collections worldwide. They don’t create storage problems.

LOVELIEST VIEWS: NICOLAS CHORIER

Kites are a wonderful platform for low-level aerial photography. They are cheap, relatively easy to use, much more stable than balloons, highly personal, and easy on the nerves, unlike loud, intrusive helicopters and aircraft. Nicolas Chorier of Montpelier, France, is the grand master of the form. His views of India with its teeming population are particularly lovely. As he shows, kite aerial photography gives a unique view – the kite’s view – of our world from just above.

MOST UNIQUE KITING CONTRIBUTION: DR. DAVID SCARBROUGH

An ancient sport, falconry has always been practiced by the select. One fan is Dr. David Scarbrough of Fairfax, Missouri, who has added his own twist to a sport little changed over the centuries. Falconers want their birds to fly high – 1,000 feet, say – so they can do one of their thrilling “stoops,” dives during which the hawk may reach a well-documented speed of 200 miles per hour, fastest flight of any bird in the world. But how to get them up there, where they are at a peak altitude to still remain in sight? Dr. Scarbrough figured out a solution: fly a tethered bait from a kite. (Balloons are too unstable.) The trick worked and is copied around the globe. “I’ve made an authentically profound contribution to the sport,” he says with some surprise.

MOST MYSTERIOUS: CURT ASKER’S KITE ILLUSIONS

Curt Asker, a prize-winner at the highly prestigious Venice Art Bienalle, poses the question: What is a kite exactly? The Swede living in the south of France made a flying object called “X Marks the Spot,” which is an illusion, a double take. The X is blue sky itself, framed by fairly innocuous hunks of something blue, verging on the negligible – the kite itself. This is his mysterious answer. Many of his indoor creations are lightweight cutout metal shapes hung so a breeze moves them. In certain lights, the neutrally colored flying sculptures vanish from sight, leaving visible shadows. Another visual paradox.

MOST DANGEROUS: TRACTION FLYING

With major wars winding down, the millennial generation – 1980-2000 – now coming of age is looking for its own tests. Extreme sports fills the bill nicely. There is parachuting, really deep water diving, high speed car racing, rock climbing, you name it. Among them is kiting. This is not the benign kiting of yore though. It can be dangerous stuff. Kite boarding under tow, buggy jumping, boating with a pulling kite able to lift the vessel clean out of the water, kite skiing, ice skating with overhead propulsion – these are just some of the disciplines. Boarding on water is one of the most popular.

Traction flying can have tricky physics though. The flying kite creates its own wind (apparent wind), which is faster and therefore produces more power than the actual wind provides. Since lift is proportional to the square of the kite velocity, if the apparent wind is twice that of the actual wind, you will get four times as much power from the kite. It’s a simple fact. A first-time traction flier can be injured by misjudging such power. Danger, known and unknown, is what the millennial person craves. Perfect. ◆