It was strange to be driving to Blackheath today.  I was quite prepared to turn around and drive home again if there was any indication of congestion on the site.  While there were people about, many in pairs at a distance, there was plenty of space at our usual spot.

Mid vent 1.5 for a while just to remember how it felt on a dry surface with some sun breaking through the high cloud.  I then set up the Hexagonal ‘pilot’ kite that was sewn up back in the autumn as a possible replacement for the missing element of the Peter Malinski ‘stack’.  The bridle had been roughly configured but I knew that there may be some considerable ‘tuning’ required to achieve anything like a stable and sustained flight.

A combination of re-tying and using dowel pegs eventually got close to stable flight on a fixed line.  At that point I extended the flying line, hand held it, and found that the kite was flying like a well balanced fighter kite.  It really needed slack line in order to change direction or to stop a spin.  While I had put seven lines in the bridle the centre and top two are the main elements and it may be that the remaining four lines will need to be discarded.  It is possible that they are the cause of instability.  More experimentation is required but considerable progress had been made today!

Felix