3-panel Mk II

It's been very quiet on the Peter Powell kites collection front, but I guess that as the collection grows, there are fewer and fewer 'new' kites to add to the collection. 

But that doesn't mean none! This is a 3-panel Mk II, which I stumbled across, for sale on Facebook, and as I don't have any 3-panel Mk II in the collection, you can guess what happened next ...

Flies very much like any other PP Mk I / II kite, as you might expect. It didn't come with the yellow tail, but I felt a yellow tail would look best on the green kite. 

And that's #77 in the collection ... will I ever get to a 100??

Nastie One

If you see this label for a dual-line kite, "Peter Powell" isn't the first name that comes to mind, is it?

But strange though is may seem, there is a Peter Powell connection .... The Nastie One was made by the Caribbean Kite Company, the US arm of Peter Powell kites once they became 'independent', and is the kite in my collection which is clearly the furthest away from the classic Peter Powell Stunter. 

Here's Nastie One on the ground ...

I readily admit it's the ugliest kite in my collection, but how does it fly? It took me a lot of bridle adjustment before it would even take off ...

Strip away all the applique stuff, and you've got a kite of which the sail shape and dimensions, including the position of the stand-offs, are virtually identical to Skyraker. And it very much flies like one: it needs a decent pressure in the sail and doesn't like tight turns. 

If you name one of your kites Nastie One, it suggests there is also at least a Nastie Two, doesn't it? Yes, there was indeed a Nastie Two! It was said to be green, and that's all I know about it; despite a lot of googling and using the wayback machine, I couldn't find a picture anywhere. However, this single-line kite was marketed by the CKC under the name 'Frank':

Look at the hands of 'Frank' .... they're almost identical to the hands on the Nastie One .... And 'Frank' is green .... So it's possible that the Nastie Two looked similar to 'Frank' .... Maybe one day I will have a pair of Nasties to fly together; I will certainly keep my eyes out for that!

PPKOG 2023 kite

I'm pretty sure you're familiar with the logo for Peter Powell kites, which is used on their web-site, Facebook page, etc. 

Now to the best of my knowledge, there never was a UK-produced Peter Powell Stunter with the chevron sail pattern as shown in the logo (though chevrons were produced in the US). Until now, that is, because the chevrons have arrived!

To mark that occasion, it was decided to use a chevron sail pattern for the PPKOG for 2023, with the PPKOG logo prominently on the kite this time. My first PPKOG kite (in 2019) was a triple-stack, whereas the 2020, 2021 and 2022 PPKOG kites were singles. Time for another stack? I decided to go for a double-stack this time, with both kites having the chevron sail pattern. And with blue tails, obviously, to match the kite in the logo. 

First official UK Chevron Peter Powell kite looks pretty good, doesn't it?

Six tails, ready for tangling!

Recently, I got myself a black kite with orange stripes, which we flew together with the black kite with flo-green stripes we already had. They look well when flown together, I think, but I felt more could be done to increase the spectacle. Specifically, both kites could be expanded to a triple-stack by the addition of two entirely black kites. Black tails on the front and back kite, with the middle kite in each stack having either a green or an orange tail. Should look really good in the sky!

Now to be clear, we've never flown two Peter Powell triple-stacks, with tails, together .... It will certainly pose a challenge for us: two triple-stacks means six tails that can get tangled up, with each other or with the many stacking lines!

Each of the stacks on their own look great on the ground as well as in the sky.

But what happens when we put them together?

Here goes ...

The key was to keep all moves big and be very aware of where the tails are in 3-dimensional space. We did have a few 'catches', though, I must admit ....

And of course, there is the inevitable aftermath of flying six tails ....

Chipmunk kite

When the Powell boys and Luke went to the Canary Islands at the end of last year to do some serious kite testing (tough job, but someone ....), among the kite-related pictures they posted on their Facebook page was also this one:

This cute little animal is a Barbary ground squirrel, or Barbary chipmunk. They occur naturally in Morocco and Algeria and were introduced to the Canary Islands in the mid 1960s. They are thriving there, and have become quite tame, so are a real tourist attraction (even though the authorities prefer you not to feed them). 

When I saw the picture, my immediate reaction was "this chipmunk face would look great on a kite!" Talked to Luke and Mark about that idea, and guess what? They made a 'Chipmunk kite' for me!

And not only that, they also added a custom black/silver tail!

The 'Chipmunk' was very happy flying around, and the black/silver tail is a perfect match.

Now real chipmunks have a furry tail, don't they? So how about .... a furry tail was easily found on eBay!

Key question is of course how a PP kite flies with such a short and rather unusual tail ..

Basically, it flew absolutely fine, though a bit faster and maybe a bit more 'squirrelly'? 

I'll get me coat ...

Dutch pair!

Some years ago, I got myself a Mk III Stunter in the 'historical' Dutch colours: orange-white-blue. As we're often flying kites as a pair, my thoughts went to pairing it up with a similar Mk III, but with the 'modern' Dutch colours, red-white-blue. As I said at the end of that earlier blog post: any excuse to add to the collection ...

Thoughts became reality and here's another 'Dutch' Mk III, on the ground and flying.

As the whole idea was to have a 'Dutch' pair of PP Stunters, here's the pair sitting on the ground and flying together.

The kites are named 'ranje-blanje-bleu' and 'rood-wit-blauw'; guess you can figure out what that means even if you don't speak Dutch. I do need to find some suitable Dutch language music to fly them to ...

End of 2022 - state of the collection

I realised the other day I haven't done an 'end of year - overview of the collection' post since 2018. For the last few years, that was mostly because the growth of the collection has slowed down considerably. And that again is mainly due to there being very few old Peter Powell kites for sale out there that are 'new' to the collection. 

Nevertheless, I thought it was time to do another 'end of year' post again, but slightly different from the previous ones. Rather than showing pictures of those PP kites added this year, I'm posting some graphs showing the growth of the collection over time. If you want to see pictures of any in the collection, they can all be found here. 

First graph shows the number of Peter Powell kites collected over time (in days), since I got my very first PP kite in 2013, nearly 10 years ago. You can clearly see when I got a job lot of PP kites, which really kickstarted the collection. And you can also see the rate of new additions to the collection levelling off, simply because fewer and fewer PP kites available for sale are new to the collection.

In the graph below, I've split the collection in four different groups. Blue squares show the numbers of old Mk I / II kites. Green circles show the US-produced Peter Powell kites; diamonds, deltas as well as quads. Purple triangles show kites from the Caribbean Kite Company. And, finally, red diamonds show the modern Mk III kites. 

At the end of 2022, the overall total is 72. And just for clarity, I consider a stack as one kite as it is flown off one pair of lines (so the Cayman 6-stack counts as one kite), and don't count the 'Duct Tape Stunter', as that one merely uses an old Peter Powell frame. Looking at the breakdown, I guess the CKC part of the collection will always remain the smallest part, as they're really hard to find. And I wouldn't at all be surprised if the number of modern PP kites overtakes that of the US-produced ones; maybe even this coming year already ...