Page 28 - April 2015 Volume19 Number 4

26 • TWIN & TURBINE APRIL 2015From The Flight Deck by Kevin R. DingmanKite TalesJust as we scribe detailsof a troublesome flightin our logbook, so the snowfalls and venomously-bitter cold of last winterare now recorded. Inches and feet, extreme temperatures and lessons learned; from north to south, many of these were charted as new records. Now, April showers bring May flowers, and this year we can record the arrival of spring with renewed appreciation. Soon, grass on the airports and yards will need to be mowed. Not only is it time to get out the bat, ball, glove, lawn mower and cleaning supplies, but it’s kite season too – if there is such a thing.For a lot of us (Wright Brothers included), kites were one of our earliest endeavors into the flying realm, along with gliders and rubber band airplanes. Before the days of two-handled controls and rip-stop nylon, kites were made of wooden sticks covered with paper, most of them by a company called Hi-Flier. Instead of fancy handles, you flew them holding a ball of kite string with a stick through the hole in the ball’s middle. The string came from a dime-store called Woolworths, Ben Franklin or Kresge’s and the stick came from the woods – back when there were woods next to your house. If the kite was deployed in a stiff wind, the string would cause the inside of your pinky finger to bleed, completely unnoticed. Ah, those were the days.Chemicals, Compounds and CarcinogensIn addition to kites, string, and balsa wood airplanes, the dime- store also had BB’s for your BB gun, rolls of caps for your cap gun, pocket knives, baseball cards for the spokes of your bike, model airplane glue,spraypaintand all thesugar-infusedcandy you couldingest – all right thereon the shelves. No locks, no restrictions and no ID required. We were free to use our own judgment and if you liked your dime-store, you could keep it. Unfortunately, this freedom also allowed the purchase of candy cigarettes, over- the-counter codeine and morphine, lead-based paint, rat poison with arsenic, insecticides with DDT, and a host of other products laced with hazardous chemicals, compounds, and carcinogens. Adults perused the aisles of the store smoking their Winston, Lucky Strike, Camel and Marlboro cigarettes. Perhaps it’s best, after all, that the government intervened with some product and social regulations to make our kite shopping less hazardous.In the spring, we went to the dime- store for our kites; Dad selected a box-kite and we three boys were given the diamond-shaped ones. I didn’t like box-kites and never understood why until I was older; it was the aesthetics. Dad’s box- kites were square and never had a tail. A square doesn’t look very aerodynamic, and a kite just isn’t a kite without a tail. Mom let us tear up old pillow cases and bed sheets to make tails for our more streamlined- looking diamond kites. Three or four two-foot sections of linen, tiedtogether with granny knots, made a fine tail. Their diamond shape, along with a tail, made them look agreeable, like the two-seat, twelve- cylinder Jaguar, the Beech Duke and runner sleds. And not so much like a Volkswagen van, Piper Apache or toboggan. Now I understand: the square box kite, without a tail, wasn’t sexy.After construction, failure to get the kite airborne was both common and frustrating. Without the guiding assurances from Dad, it often seemed impossible. And, once aloft, the ability to keep it airborne was not to be taken for granted. If the wind was to change speed, or shift direction, the string could go slack and the fragile paper kite would either flutter pathetically to the ground tail-first or point its nose at the earth, thereby increasing tension on the string and impacting the ground just below the speed of sound. A kite with no tail has nothing for its flier to work with to stabilize it when there are shifts in the wind. In a light, steady wind, that’s fine, but it’s a good idea to add a tail, in case the wind shifts speed or direction.Once stabilized in the air, learning to maneuver around and away from obstructions was the next milestone. Even Charlie Brown found it necessary to explain to the Peanuts gang the formidable truism of the “kite-eating tree.” As a novice kite flyer, the learning curve was thusly fraught with setbacks, disappointments and broken kites. Once mastered, however, the full therapeutic effect of a bloody crook in your pinky finger could be realized.Perhaps there was a deeper meaning to kite flying than Dad and we boys realized. After all, we were just a bunch of kids (Dad included) playing outside and getting grass stains on our jeans. By donating her linens, Mom not only got the four of us out of the house, but she had facilitated stability. Innately, Mom