Kite Strings

Speaking of pretty cool... While the temperature had been pretty benign I hadn't planned on being out anywhere near that long and had gotten a bit chilled. Packed up my gear, started walking home, got about twenty-five yards, stopped and picked up a Cicada from the middle of the street. Also chilled...

The 23:54 EDT three minute flyover calendar day was over, the night wasn't. Wanted to do another Jupiter-Saturn from my East Spot so back out on foot with four layers at probably a bit after 04:00. Got my targets no problem, some little wisps of high clouds would dim and fuzz them from time to time,...

2021/05/15 - third night in a row. Back on station, get all my boxes checked. There's a stable/stationary low cloud mass running a few degrees above the horizon to the NW so I won't be getting proper sets. Venus gets eaten. A car pulls in and parks behind mine. Young female driver emerges, says she'...

Well, that was kinda fun - and it's nice this time of year not finishing up half dead from hypothermia. Let's try it again the next evening - 2021/05/14. The Moon's a day fuller and a lot higher, Mercury and Venus are a little higher. Get on station with lotsa light left, know where to find things a...

Jupiter and Saturn have come back out from the far side of the Sun and, in early March, started becoming doable again. I'd started noticing Saturn appearing out the front / East facing window and through the gap in the tree canopy some months back in early morning insomnia hours some weeks ago but h...

http://www.facebook.com/ Fabio Giongo - 2021/05 That day, for Enzo it was the second flight of the day, at 83 years old it seems that he left without hooking up, Federico told me with tone of surprise and perplexity, implying "how can you forget the hookup?" Why does anyone in this sport w...

NMERider - 2021/05/12 16:57:46 UTC There was a previous fatal FTHI on April 16 at the same launch... Absolutely incredible. We go almost exactly nine years without a fatal and then kill a solo and half a tandem at the same launch in the blink of an eye. Federico told me with tone of surprise and pe...

http://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51177855484_e71c84ba77_o.png https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51177855484_d2f5bc0d8c_c.jpg And some crime scene shots from: http://www.trevisotoday.it/cronaca/morto-deltaplano-borso-grappa-oggi-8-maggio-2021.html Si schiantano con il deltaplano: morto un uomo, ...

And on every foot launch I ever executed - untold hundreds - I assumed I wasn't hooked in - and was wrong every single time. And on the untold thousands of foot launches Federico ever made he assumed he WAS hooked in - and was only wrong ONCE. My track record sucked beyond description compared to hi...

Had a horrible digital disaster - of my own making - from which I recently recovered over a roughly 24 hour span commencing Sunday evening. I maintain an archive of every video referenced on Kite Strings (though I've dropped the ball a few times and have had the source go extinct) plus some miscella...