Philadelphia International Kite Festival, PA, 1995

After the great time Maryam and I had at the Smithsonian kite festival, we were excited about our next trip in that direction - direction south towards the Spring. The week before I was on the phone with Roger Chewning from Sky Festivals and luckily we were able to arrange for the stay at the home of Mary and Fran Gramkowski over the weekend. We had a very good time there and enjoyed their generous hospitality a lot. I also had the chance to meet Jon Burkhardt and his wife Karen during that time and to exchange ideas and impressions on kiting.

After a good breakfast outside in the sun on Saturday morning we were then going from Haddonfield to Fairmount Park in Philadelphia. The Festival site was about three baseball fields large and had really enough space for doing a lot of fun things. The organizers did a lot to secure the kite-fliers and the spectators by fencing and numerous people watching the field. The sound was organized very professionally and the whole festival was attended by TV (I have a nice video copy). One of the first people I saw while registering as a flyer were Maggie and Gary Engvall, busy like always in organizing the important "little" things of our hobby. Thanks to both for their tremendous engagement! Other K.O.N.E. members there were DAVE & MONICA YOUNG from Connecticut, JUDY TATE, and ERIC BABILEWICZ. A lot of people from the local area were already there, the banners were all positioned on the border of the kite field and a number of kites were already in the sky. During this first day a lot of single-line competitions were going on. In most groups the same kites as during the Smithsonian kite festival were entered. I entered my patchwork Hakkaku in the flat and bowed kite category. In addition the kids had a lot of fun in their little high-flying competition. We and the kids enjoyed this a lot. On Saturday the winds were very gusty, from 4 mph to 25 mph! By that reason a lot of spars broke and the day was kind of hectic. I broke spars on a Delta, my Delta Conyne, my patchwork Hakkaku and my Chukalissa Rokkaku. It wasn't too bad because none of the sails was ripped! Pete Dolphin did show a lot of his stuff, for example his Smithsonian winning box-kite (construction like the kites of Andre Cassagne). He wasn't so lucky: a broken spar ripped the sail in the middle of the wonderful sun - what a pity. During the day a lot of demonstrations were going on. Fritz Gramkowski and John Smith were demonstrating buggying and despite the gusty wind did a really impressive job. Another competition was going on with fighter kites (unfortunately I heard too late about it) and was really interesting to watch. Two people were competing against each other. Fighter kite specialist Peter Lee won this event. After a wonderful day and a lot of sun (I got my first sun-burn of this year) a number of kiters were going to the party at Judy Winkler's in Trenton and had a wonderful time. She was really great in preparing food! After a couple of beers and with a full stomach we were then sleeping deeply into the next day......and woke up at 7. The birds were too happy and singing really loud.

On Sunday the wind was much better, around 10-15 mph and not as gusty. It was sunny and the temperature was around 60 F, perfect conditions for a great day. One of the main events was a big Rokkaku battle. The Rokkakus had emblems of the sponsors. I was helping a TV-team but really messed up in the battle (I should exercise a little bit more!). Peter Lee was extremely good in the fight and won with his team from Domino's Pizza. It was a lot of fun. During the day a lot of big kites were demonstrated like the Dolphin and Blowfish (it isnt really a kite, I know) from Peter Lynn. The spectators had a good time. Fran demonstrated a big 90 feet windsock (really big, that thing) on a gigantic 252 Flow-Form. The whole day the sky was filled with a lot of kites. Maryam likes Penguins and asked Doug Kegerise to fly his train - and he did! 60 Penguins were gently flying in the wind and it was a great view - really great job and thanks again Doug! He also did demonstrate a perfect rebuild of the Petrosaur from George Peters and some other nice things (I think he had another train [Dawn Jacobus'] with parrots, beautiful!). Another guy I remember was Scott Spencer . He developed a new brand-new technique (at least for me it was) of doing nice things with ripstop - instead of patchworking he was doing kind of waving it. It is a little difficult to explain it here in this article, but I can explain it on the field if anyone is interested. In this technique the colors mix and give gorgeous patterns because they are arranged overlaying. He had kites with 20 or more different colors which I had never seen before on a kite due to the mixing! I was really very impressed and anyway he is a nice guy. He also makes very tiny windsocks with ripstop pieces not larger than 3 mm x 3 mm or so........ how is he able to sew that? At about 5 the day ended with the awards. Our own Gary Engvall won the First Place prize in the Soft & Flexible (with a Stretch Tucker Painless Parafoil). I was happy to get the First Place prize in the Flat & Bowed kite category for my patchwork Hakkaku, but I am more than proud to be honored with the Benjamin Franklin award of this year for being the most electrifying Kite Flyer at the Festival. I was really very surprised and happy. I have now a head of Benjamin at home and him and Paul Garber are looking down to me. I think I really have now to do some other good kites because most likely I will not enter this kite again in a competition. He got its awards ;-). In summary, K.O.N.E. was very well represented in Philadelphia! We had a wonderful time!

Happy Kiting

Kai