Midnight Squadron

Dumb Kite Ideas

Complex — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 19:39:18 +0000

Thoughts full of kiting ideas while your life is full of work/baby/life?

Write your ideas in the comments! Gods allowing, maybe we’ll get the chance to do some of this one day!

2010 Smithsonian Kite Festival

Complex — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 16:00:24 +0000

The Smithsonian Kite Festival is this Saturday, 27 March. It runs from 10 AM to 4 PM The kite-making show & competition starts at 10:15; I expect to see some interesting designs and engineering from Harold Ames and Mike Mosman, among others. Our favorite rokkaku combat is scheduled for 3 PM, but remember that they held it early, at 2 PM, last year.

Please come out and cheer for the Squadron in the Rokkaku Challenge. I think we’ll give you a lot to cheer for — we usually put on an energetic and noisy show, and we’ve been winning a lot. To brag a little, last year, our various teams won at Smithsonian and Wildwood and took second in the AKA Nationals, and I won the individual combat in the Nationals. So I can promise that your enthusiasm will be well placed and rewarded with action.

I’ll continue posting info and follow-ups here, so check back in. You can also find more details about the festival’s schedule, children’s events, and rules at the Smithsonian Kite Festival website.

Read ongoing festival news at our twitter feed, MidnightSquad, which is also shown on the right side of our home page.

2/21 Kite Fly and 2/27 Smithsonian!

Complex — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 03:09:35 +0000

Interested in flying 2/21? I’m planning on flying Sunday the 21st (1pm) at the Capitol College Field.

A week and a half from now, Saturday the 27th, is Smithsonian! Join us for a good time, a good crowd, great events, and maybe another Rokkaku win!

Bamboo Sources (Mini & Small Kites)

Complex — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 01:08:54 +0000

From the 2009 AKA Convention:

A bamboo wok-scrubbing brush (© Ms. Tane Chan, the Wok Shop, licensed GNU Free Documentation License, 1.2 or later)

Bamboo for mini kites can be shaved from anything, but what the instructor was using was a wok-scrubbing brush. He’d cut off a bristle, shave it down to the tiniest slivers, um, shave them down some more, and maybe massage their bend. He used magnifying goggles & a box cutter. (The box cutter was common, from their local hardware chain, but its blade didn’t wiggle side to side like the cheap Home Depot ones do.)

The 6th grade teacher giving the Korean fighter -making class used a lot of window blinds. Roman window blinds — the kind that looks like a placemat, with a lot of slats or sticks connected by a weave of string — are apparently great resources. He cuts the entire blind to the desired length and then just pulls out the sticks. He mostly used round-stick blinds, which provided sticks longer and maybe thinner than bamboo skewers, but also used used flat-stick blinds for a horizontal spar.

2009 AKA National Convention Notes

Complex — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:50:07 +0000

A week after the 2009 AKA National Convention in Rochester, MN, Complex is finally posting some of the notes about the convention and things he learned. Some of this is even making its way to the Kite Tips section. Complex writes:

Kite-making workshops: a mini ‘Celtic Shield’ kite and a Korean fighter kite made with a 6th-grade classroom perspective. Great lessons in bamboo, miniature work, the use of art pens, mass production of kite materials for cheap, and how to teach multiple subjects to children using kites.
Kite-making competition: I made a Tyvek delta over one night and dared enter it against some amazing kites. The best part was the sheer bravado of the oral presentation that was All Complex. Now you have no excuse not to make kites — you cannot do worse than I did.
Fighter kites: Did not enter any fighter kite competitions, despite wanting to — conflicted with the kite-making too much. But Carol & Bruce Jarvie invited me to the fighter-kite skills competition — contents that don’t involve line touch fighting. Very interesting.
Did get help balancing my fighter kite from Kenneth, another AKA member, and this Indian-American guy who was simply on the field to play soccer!
Sport/stunt multi-line kites: Didn’t compete at all — I’m really not ready to even make a hash of this yet. But I got to play around with a couple of my rigid two-lines, including the Prism 3D I acquired at the Sunfest auction.
Pin-collecting: I can’t say I’m addicted yet, but somehow I really liked getting the nice pins for showing up at the mass ascensions. Will show these off later — these might make good Squadron propaganda giveaways at festivals.
Rokkaku: The rain & snow held off, and we had great individual & team battles, one after the other. Definitely, definitely show up with separate sets of line for each battle next time.
Banquets & Shmoozing: While I still didn’t hang-out nearly as much as I could have, I pushed my personal sociability limits as much as I could. The banquets are well worth it for the community and shmoozing is worth it for the knowledge. If you’re trying to make or do anything with kites, these are the people to talk to. I spoke to kite makers about sewing and gluing, fighters about technique, KAP salesmen about KAP ideas I’ve had (and which maybe no-one is doing)… more later.
Sleep: Ha ha, not a lot of that.

Also, Gary Engvall is bloody marvelous. The man drove at least an hour & a half out of his way at midnight after the awards banquet just to drop me at the airport, then turned around & went back. Fantastic.

Congrats to Complex, AKA National Rok Champion

chrooke — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 19:47:17 +0000

Complex just called from the field: he won the 2009 Individual Rok Competition at the AKA Convention, making him a National Champion!Â Congratulations, Complex!

This weekend: Sunfest!

Complex — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 04:32:44 +0000

Just a quick note before bed: Complex is going to represent the Squadron on the tail end of Sunfest in Ocean City. Mini rokkaku tomorrow (???) and regular battles on Sunday. Watch the twitter feed (http://twitter.com/midnightsquad ) for from-the-beach updates.

Two weeks from now: AKA in Minneapolis!

Midnight Squadron Wins Wildwood Team Rokkaku

chrooke — Mon, 25 May 2009 00:50:42 +0000

Complex reports via the Midnight Squadron Twitter feed:

rok battle-lost heat 1 but won rest.Wwoods champs!

Congrats to the Midnight Squadron team for winning team rokkaku at the Wildwood International Kite Festival!Â I’m sure Complex will give us the tip-by-tip when he gets online next.

Wildwood Kite Festival This Weekend!

Complex — Thu, 21 May 2009 22:04:51 +0000

The Wildwood Kite Festival is upon us, and with little time to prepare, at least 2 Squadroneers are headed over to participate.

Please follow at midnightsquad’s Twitter feed to see what happens

Kite Aerial Photography at MIKE

chrooke — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 12:57:44 +0000

Kite Aerial Photography (KAP) on Saturday did not work out. All conditions were absolutely perfect for great shots of the festival kites — but the shutter did not press properly, so no pictures.

I tried again Sunday morning and got some great pictures. Unfortunately there were no other kites out so early, but I got some great sunrise and strolling-on-the-boardwalk shots.

I’ve posted 15 of the best at

http://tinyurl.com/cggvhf

Thanks Joanne and Cindy for allowing me to hang a camera over their heads!