FACTORALY - E98 KITES

Episode Date: July 24, 2025

Kites have been around for a while. Mostly for pleasure, but also with many utilitarian purposes. In this episode, we launch into the uses and styles of kites, highlighting some of the people who used them to achieve fame.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello Bruce. Hello Simon. How are you today sir? I'm feeling relaxed and airy. How are you? Relaxed and airy? I'm feeling not so airy. I'm feeling a little bit hot and clammy actually. Are you? I'm sitting in my airtight foam clad sound booth as I am on a hot July day. Oh well I've moved to an igloo. Oh have you? Yeah. How are the acoustics?

The acoustics are quite good actually. I don't know if you can hear that. You're like... That's not bad is it? Hardly anything. it's fantastic. All the snow around you is dead. It's nice and chilled and cool. I'm sitting here in this fur coat. The reason we are rabbiting on about acoustics and things is because we are both professional voiceover artists.

I am Simon Wells. Oh, so you are. And who are you? You know who I am. Oh, you're Bruce Fielding, aren't you? Yeah. The am Simon Wells. Oh, so you are. And who are you? You know who I am. Oh, you're Bruce Fielding, aren't you? Yeah, the one and only. The one and only Bruce Fielding. And when Bruce and I are not doing voice-over-y stuff for a living, we come here into this lovely little space that we like to call Factorally, where we pick an interesting subject each week and we give a little delve into it and pull out lots of interesting random facts for you our dear listeners to listen to.

And we have an amazing back catalogue of nearly 100 episodes. So if you fancy thinking about batht tubs, yes, or pirates, or Vikings, or cucumbers, or anything really, bicycles, all sorts of stuff. Rabbits, anything you like. It's all here. Yes.

All human life, not quite all human life, but quite a lot of human life is here. A lot of human life is here, yeah. And today we're going to be talking about kites. So because of Bruce's own personal enthusiasm nay passion for this subject And just because it's a it's a big subject Just take heed this might be longer than the usual half-hour slot

It deserves it. Absolutely Why we talk about kinds today Simon because kites today Simon? Because kites as it turns out are awesome. I completely agree with you. I was originally introduced to kites by my lecturer, one of my lecturers at art school was a guy called Steve Fletcher. He was a lovely man who collected matchbooks and things like that. Interesting guy. He also is fanatical about kites, single line kites.

And as part of the course I was on, you had to sort of make things and he helped me to make a kite reel, which is an amazing thing. I will show you next time you come to my house, I'll show you my kite reel, it's quite will show you next time you come to my house I'll show you my car it's quite something and he got me into kites and there used to be a shop called the kite store in Covent Garden right that sold kites and I went there to buy a few bits and pieces and I ended up buying quite a lot of kites I now have a collection of kites. You have a plethora. I have a plethora of kites indeed and one of the kites that I bought was a thing called a flexi foil Oh, I've heard of that

Which is a dual line kite And it looks like a Lilo it sort of fills with air from a vent at the front. Hmm And as it's flying it sort of it becomes rigid with with air that's that's yes within it So this is this sort of line of parallel pockets I guess. Yes. Yeah they do they look totally inflated don't they once they're airborne. Yeah they basically look like you're flying a Lilo. Yeah. Which is fine. Great. But when they come down to earth they can crash like a Lilo. They also can lift an awful lot. Yes

I've flown three in parallel and actually lifted me off the ground and into a cow pad. Oh really? Yes, how very well-timed and I was wearing a nice new white jacket at the time Which then they went into the bin, oh what a shame yeah well had to be done. At the top of the show I should mention that I have an interest. Yes, do. So as of about 2019 I got in touch with FlexiFoil because I needed some bits and pieces and told them the story of my FlexiFoils and they invited me to become a brand ambassador. So I've been an ambassador for Flexiful Kites since 2019. Now this every week here on Facts Orally I learn something new about you Bruce. Last

week's episode which obviously all of our dear listeners have listened to because they're loyal and listen to every single episode. Last week's episode was about wind and right at the end just as a little throwaway thing we started chatting about kites and you mentioned that you're a brand ambassador for FlexiFoil. And then you suddenly got all giddy and said, can we do an episode on Kites? So here we are. So yes, you're a brand ambassador for FlexiFoil. I am. Wonderful. Hello, FlexiFoil. Hello, FlexiFoil. If you're listening, we hope you are. You will be because I'll be emailing you to tell you that we're doing this. Indeed, yes.

You will be getting a mention occasionally. Several of them throughout, yes. Yes, and definitely towards the end. But towards the beginning, what's a kite? Where's a kite? How's a kite? Where is it from? All of the above. So the simplest definition of a kite, and I suppose I was looking at this from the point of view of a toy, you know, a kite that children fly. Oh dear. I know, I'm sorry I used the word toy. It's the only way I can distinguish it from the sporty stuff. And you know, I think of a kite, I instantly think of Mary Poppins, I think of the Banks children, let's go fly a kite. It's a bit of brown paper attached to a few twigs, there's a bit of string, isn't it merry and jolly? With tuppence. That's with tuppence for paper and string exactly.

That's my view of a kite and therefore that's the simplest definition I could get to. And it simply says, a light frame covered with plastic paper or cloth designed to be flown in the wind at the end of a string. I recognize that as being a kite. I also recognize that as being not entirely representative of all types of kite. No, there are a lot of different types of kite which again we'll get into at some point. Indeed. The etymology of the word kite, the word kite as we write it, came around about the 12th century so it's a fairly old word. And it's named after the bird of prey.

I've often wondered which came first, the kite or the kite. Kites themselves have been around for millennia, but the word kite, we ascribed them the word kite, named after the kite. The red kite, the bird of prey, which, you know, sort of soar on the wind seemingly effortlessly, hardly ever flapping their wings. And, you know, these things that we've chucked up in the air attached to a piece of string are fairly reminiscent of that. So often we think of the origin of these things and they sort of, they tend to fall into like Roman, Greek or Egyptian, but this one's different isn't it?

Yeah, so the actual word kite is from Old English caita, which is the old name for the bird, and it's sort of an onomatopoeic word suggesting that the caita, if you say it in a particularly shrill way, sounds like the call of a red kite. I can't hear it myself but apparently that's where it comes from. But they originally invented in China. Yes that's right yeah. Basically the idea of a kite is that it goes up. Yes. And it's a lot higher than a man. It's several hundred feet higher than a man. So it's quite useful in a military position. Yeah. Because you can see them from further away. Yeah. I hadn't really realized this. I'd sort of, I'd always assumed that a kite was a kite.

It had always been a plaything. It had always been a recreational item. Yes. But no, the Chinese totally invented them for military purposes, for surveillance, for measurements. The first written account of a kite is from 200 BC in China and the general Han Xin flew a kite over the walls of a city that he was planning to invade in order to measure how far he would have to dig a tunnel under the enemy walls in order to get behind their defenses. To undermine them? Yes, exactly. So they were military things. They were sort of eventually bigger ones or multiple ones flown together were used for lifting things.

Even lifting people. Again in China there's an account in 559 AD, the Gao Yang he used kite flying as a method of execution so he would strap someone to one of these kites you know these these sort of kites that were big enough to fly a person up into the air in order to observe military positions and things like that we're clearly not talking about Mary Poppins type kites, we're talking about big boxy framey kites here. And so this emperor would sort of attach his foes to a kite, send them up into the air and essentially they would eventually either fall off and die or be blown away and die. So that's a lovely use of a kite. What a way to go. Wow.

They're used for signaling as well as observation so you could sort of put up several different kites. A bit like sort of running flags up a flagpole on a boat. Okay, yes. You can give instructions to somebody a lot further away. Right. Then you could normally, because if you're signaling on the ground by waving flags yeah you can normally see the horizon which is about that coming up for three miles from a standing position if about five foot eight right

like that but obviously if you're not five foot eight if you're 150 foot eight you can see a lot further than three miles yes so you can send signals to people a lot further away. Brilliant. So chuck a kite up, were they particularly coloured or patterned or anything to signal different things? Absolutely. They were, you know, sort of attack, retreat, weight, all those things. That's brilliant. And then around the sort of by the 13th century they had kind of spread from China to pretty much the rest of Asia in the Middle East. In the late 13th century Marco Polo described the Chinese practice of people on of setting out on

a voyage. They would fly a kite with a man attached up into the air and see how the wind tossed him around and that would sort of give them an indication of how fortuitous their voyage was going to be. Yes. Well they've been used a lot for that sort of thing. I mean there's a fairly religious use of kites in Christianity as well, still to this day. The idea being that if your prayers go up the string to the kite, they're closer to God. Then they're closer to God.

Right. And also there's the idea that there's an independence and a freeing of the spirit, which I get, because if you fly kites, you get that wonderful, your brain kind of disappears off up into the kite. And if it's a single line kite, your brain brain just hovers just looking at the world from above. Yes almost like it's an extension of yourself. Yes yeah and it's lovely and if you hold the line to your ear especially if it's slightly windy you can hear the hear the wind singing through the line it's absolutely wonderful. But there are places like in

Bermuda they fly kites on Good Friday. Oh do they? There's another thing in Greece, pre-Lent, they have a thing called Clean Monday, where they bake bread, but they make them fly kites as a way of sort of getting their spirits up towards God. That's wonderful. And then of course they started being used in science and doing weather experiments around the 1700s. Please take a listen to our previous episode on electricity to hear all about Benjamin Franklin and his kite flying exploits. I think we also mentioned

Percy Shelley didn't we? Oh yes, he tied a kite to a cat. That's right. Yes. Yeah. A little bit less humane than Benjamin Franklin with his key. With the key, yes. But still. And then sort of people started experimenting with the pulling power of kites as well. So in the early 1800s there was an Englishman called George Pocock. I love George Pocock. Do you? I've only seen, I'm learning new things in my research for this episode that you are clearly already aware of. What can you tell us from your personal knowledge about George Pocock? The thing about a lot of people who fly kites is they're quite eccentric. Well look at you! Well okay, so Pocock, he used to fly kites a lot and he got into the idea of like that they could be used to pull things or children or whatever. Yeah, he sort of used his kids as experiments of the lifting power of kites, didn't he?

Yes, yes he did. But he invented a wonderful thing called the Char-Volant. And the Char-Volant was a kite-drawn carriage. So he attached, in fact, two line kites, dirigible kites, to a carriage and used the power of the kites to pull the carriage. And he got up to like 20 miles an hour. And one of the great things about this thing I think is that you used to be taxed tolls on roads were by the number of horses you had so if you had like a carriage drawn by four horses then you'd be charged a tariff of four horses. If you have a kite drawn carriage you don't have any horses so you it's like a good way of avoiding tax. That's amazing and he he's

a wonderful man I think he had a couple of sons and a daughter and the daughter went on to marry a guy called I can't remember his name something Grace right and their son was WG Grace WG Grace the cricketer no way WG Grace, the cricketer, no way. There was a particular war in which they were going to be used but then they didn't. You know Robert Baden-Powell? Scouts. Who created the Scouts. Dib dib dib dub dub dub.

That's the fella. He had a brother with one of the best names in history. His brother was called Baden-Fletcher SSmith-Baden-Powell. Sorry, Two Badens. Two Badens. He liked it so much in the surname that his parents gave it to him as a first name as well. And he developed a kite called Levator, which was a hexagonal shaped kite intended to be used in the army. He was a military officer. And it was intended to lift people up into the air to observe enemy lines, intended to lift loads, intended to extend radio antennas into the air to give better signal, things like that. And he was going to use a whole load of them in the Boer War and he had

these things built and shipped out and by the time they got there the Boer War was over, so they never actually got used. well good yes good good yes exactly that well that we talked about the the Charvalon the the George Pollock thing what he said was that because the kite was actually taking some of the weight off the thing of the carriage off the road you didn't notice things like potholes because it would just float over the pothole so I could imagine if you were trying to carry like a gun carriage across sort of difficult terrain if you tied a kite to it and made it lighter yes then it would be easier to move across a cross terrain

that's a brilliant point I hadn't thought of it like that I was just sort of picturing you know heavy machinery floating across valleys on a kite but no that would also make sense. That would make sense wouldn't it? So if you'd like to find out more about George Pocock we do have a show notes page we have a blog. Oh yes we do where can people find that Bruce? So if you go to factorily.com. Factorily.com you say? I did just say that. You will find out lots more about not only George Pollock and Sam Cote but all sorts of other bits and pieces about kites which will take you up in the air and not let you down again for quite some time. Go and enjoy the ride. Please do.

You talked about kite flying being quite popular. I think it's actually the fastest growing pastime. Yeah. More and more people are taking up kite flying at an older age. So you start off with your kids, right, but then you actually realize how wonderful kite flying is and you carry on. Yeah, absolutely. And in fact in the 18th century in Japan, kite flying banned. Oh was it really? Why? Because people preferred flying kites to working. Oh my goodness wow. So there were people like skiving off work to go and fly kites. Oh wow. It's immensely popular in China. I've mentioned before one of the voiceover jobs that I do is providing examples of English for Chinese children learning the language.

Yes. And so many of the scripts that I get through from my client are about kite flying. You know, there are little exchanges between people saying, what do you want to do after school today? Let's go and fly a kite because it's nice and breezy. And it's children, it's middle-aged people, it's old people, it's pan-generational. Yes. They absolutely love kite flying in China. They have festivals, their kites have symbolic attachments. They have massive, massive gatherings at these festivals and as you say, there's that element of sort of attaching your prayers to the kite as well.

I just hadn't realised how big a thing it is. It is absolutely massive. Well not just in China but India as well. There's a lot of kite flying in India. In Gujarat there are festivals where they have like 1,400 people flying kites. Whoa that's a lot of kites in the sky. Yes, they do Fighting kites. Did you know about fighting kites? I've read about fighting kites in Japan Not India same same sort of idea. Hmm. So a fighting kite is a very specific sort of kite It's usually a square. So if you imagine a square on the diagonal, yes sort of a diamond. Yes Well rhombus. Yes, so then imagine a piece of bendy stuff going from the left side to the right side with a loop in it. Okay, yes,

all right. So that bendy stuff is the support that's keeping the kite sort of apart. Sure. So what you do to fly a fighting kite is you put that up into the air and if you just tug the... I don't know why I'm showing you with my hand. It's so natural to do hand gestures for these things isn't it yes sorry if you tuck very light lines so if you tug the line the springy thing inside the kite or on the back of the kite will come together and then apart so it has like an impetus to go in one direction so they tend to spin right so when it's spinning and it's pointing in come together and then apart. So it has say at 45 degrees and then as it's pointing down at 90 degrees you give it

another tug, it goes down and so you can make it describe a circle yes okay yeah so imagine that your kite is circling another kite hmm and it's circling the line of the other kite yes what you have previously done is put something abrasive on the line of your kite mm-hmm so that the abrasion as you pull them pull and pull and pull and let go let go and let go it's like acts like a saw oh oh so you're attempting to cut the other line of the other person's cut that's fine that's fighting kites oh and I mean they used to use glass glued to the line that they don't do that anymore because it's a bit dangerous So there's an abrasion on that the last little bit of your fighting kite

So you kind of like you you pull and pull and pull and pull and pull and then you chop the other guys Line off then his Eve one and then it's the last man standing Brilliant. Oh how inventive right in that case? No, I have not heard of fighting guys That's the first time I've ever heard a description of that In that case, no, I have not heard of fighting kites, because that's the first time I've ever heard a description of that. What I've heard of is in Japan, two teams battle massive, massive kites,

and Japan is really enthusiastic about the size of their kites. So they have these huge sort of square or rectangular kites, measuring sort of seven by five meters, really, really big things ornately painted and decorated with portraits of sort of legendary characters. These kites are so big, you know, they take an entire team to hold one kite by all of its various lines.

And they just fly these kites into each other. When they crash into each other or they're caught up in the strings or whatever, they're dragged into the water, they fly these things on opposite sides of the bank of a river. Okay. And when they bring each other, kind of, yeah, yeah. So when they bring each other down into the, into the river, um, they're made of paper, the paper disintegrates, the paint sort of swirls into the river and,

and, you know, colors the river. Um, and all that's left is sort of a messy skeleton of bamboo you know but yeah massive kites Wow so that's flying a kite for the fun of it yes that's flying a kite for sort of competition purposes yes Yes. What about sport? Well there's there are lots of sports you can do with a kite. You can go kite buggying or land boarding which I don't really know very much about but it's basically you're on like a tricycle that's being pulled by a kite along a length of beach

as far as I can kind of work it out. I've seen a few versions of these so as you say you sort of have the the tricycles that you can sit in like a cart yes or you can have these boards that you can stand on like a skateboard. Okay so that's like a sort of like kite surfing. It's like kite surfing but on the land yeah. Yes which is another sport I guess. Right so kite surfing yeah exactly but on the land yeah yes which is another sport I guess right so kite surfing yeah exactly and I had a look at this sort of thing and it's been incredibly popular since the 1990s but it sort of goes back as far as well certainly in the 1970s people were sort of experimenting with well you know we have surfboards we have windsurfing why not attach a kite let's give that a go

well you say that except you had to have a dirigible kite to do that you've used that word twice what do you mean so dirigible means you can control the direction oh I see it's like directable okay so you can't do that well unless you've got a fighting kite where it's spinning around and you're jerking it yes to make it go in one direction yeah you need to at least two lines. Yes. So you can pull on one side and it goes to that side or you pull on the other and it goes the other side. So that's the kind of kite that I'm familiar with. I had a couple of kites when I was a kid and they were like that. You had two lines, two handles. Yes. And you just sort of stood on the beach or on the

hill or whatever and you pulled the right handle to make it move to the right, left handle to move to the left. If you pulled for long enough it spiralled and then you had to keep count of how many times it had spiralled so you could do it in the opposite direction to untangle the strings. That's what it looks like to me. The guy that made those popular was an English guy called Peter Powell. And Peter Powell had a thing called the Stter. You probably remember these sort of blue plastic diamond shaped two lines and a long sort of inflatable plastic tail. Yes, yes, yes. I know the thing you mean. So he invented those back in the 60s in 1967, I think it was.

Really, as early as that. And they took off some BBC show, featured his kites, which he was making at home. And it went from like 35 a week to 3,500 a week. Oh my goodness. Almost immediately. And then it became the most popular kite in the UK for ages. And several reasons.

One, it looks like fun, and it is fun. Secondly, it wasn't expensive. Yeah, sure. And most people could fly it easily. So without Peter Powell, we wouldn't have flexi-foils, we wouldn't have kitesurfing, we wouldn't have anything that has the two lines. Basically owes its existence to Peter Powell. So the steerability of it is the thing that makes it doable.

Dirigibility. That was in the 60s you said. So then I think FlexiFoil was established in the 1970s, wasn't it? Yes, that's right. And I had a look at the FlexiFoil website just so that I could sort of, you know, keep up with your vast personal knowledge. And one of the first uses of the Flexi-foil kites was in 1978. Ian Day powered his catamaran with a flexi-foil kite. That's right, yes.

And it pulled this catamaran, it exceeded 40 km per hour. So all of these wonderful innovations and new uses new materials new designs etc etc you know building on top of each other kites were used for them skiing you know they've pulled people along on on skis through the snow yeah you can you can use them instead of a ski lift okay right yes of course that would make sense if the winds in the right direction you can use a kite to lift you up a hill that's wonderful During the 1980s they were used with canoes, snow skis, water skis, roller skates, ice skates. They've just been used all over the place.

You say 1980s. So my second favourite person about kites is a chap called Sam Cody. Oh I've heard of the Cody Kite. You've heard of a Cody Kite. Well, a Cody Kite is like a box kite with wings. Right. And Sam Cody was a fascinating guy. He's an American. He changed his name to Cody.

Right. And then claimed that he was the son of Buffalo Bill Cody. He wore a hat. He had the same kind of like goatee beard as Buffalo Bill. Brilliant. And he was a showman, he basically took part in circuses, he was a showman, he was a proper showman. But he did invent this Cody kite, in fact it wasn't called a kite, it was called the Cody Aeroplane. Oh was it? Okay, right.

And it was a very early aeroplane and he used one to cross the channel. He actually attached it to a canvas boat, like a 14 foot boat, and he put a couple of his Cody Kites on it. But he wanted to get into the Admiralty with his Cody Kite. So to use it for military signaling and reconnaissance and observation and he basically bulldozed his way into the Navy to do an exhibition of what kites could do in about 1901 and he showed that the Navy that it could be used for military observation at sea and actually even to pull ships at sea as well. And even earlier than Cody, I think you said sort of 1901 didn't you? Very sort of turn of the century. The Wright brothers were keen kite flyers as well and they took their knowledge of how

kites work to create some of their early prototypes for their various flying machines. Yes, the first airplane, one of the Wright Brothers airplanes was actually a box kite with an engine in it. Yes, that's right. Cody kind of decided that he's going to follow this. Yeah, he always wanted to be in with the armed services. So then he then sort of talked to the army about his kites. And he was appointed chief instructor of kiting for the balloon school in Oldershot and soon after joined the the new army balloon factory in Farnborough which became the Royal Aircraft Establishment and what have you. So he told the army and the Navy that his kites were more easily

transportable than the balloon, weighed a lot less than a balloon, and could carry more than a balloon. So he decided to put one of his power kites, what he called a power kite, together with wings and a tailplane and what have you. He put a 15 horsepower Boucher engine in it. It wasn't allowed to fly free. He basically put a long aerial wire down the length of it and made it fly in a circle. You can still build a Cody kite and you can still buy them. Can you? Yeah, they were basically man lifters.

So he would put on a ship, we've talked about how much further you can see, so on a ship you'd put a man up in a kite and he would have a telephone right okay in on the seat in the kite because there'd be a seat attached to the kite and he will get on the telephone and tell you what he could see. That's great. Another connection between boats and kites which we covered briefly on our episode on fishing Kites are and have for centuries been used for fishing So you go out on the water in a boat you let up a kite

with a fishing line and bait attached to it and It it gets further and further away from the boat and therefore it sort of Entices the fish that would otherwise be put off by the presence of your boat. Oh yeah. Because there's just no one else around, you know. You're further away from the shore than if you were fishing from the shore.

And the kite can go really a long way away from your boat. So it just sort of hovers there. And just like watching a float on the water, you watch for the kite to get tugged by the fish below and then you pull it in. Yes, because when you pull a kite towards you, it goes up. Yes, right. And that's been used for ages. Malaysia were using that in whatever year BC. There's some argument from Malaysia and Indonesia that they were using kites for fishing before China ever claimed to have invented the kite for military purposes. But either way that's been one of its purposes

for a very long time indeed. Wow. I mentioned there that the British military were looking at kites instead of balloons. Yeah. The other people that were looking at kites instead of balloons were the Met Office. Oh yes for weather and things if you think about it weather balloons cost a lot of money And they've got a lot of equipment in them to measure stuff Yeah, so the last thing you want is your weather balloon just floating off and becoming a UFO in America So it's much better if you have your equipment tethered to the top of the Met Office Yeah, whatever and you send it up in a kite and then you can bring it back and send it up again tomorrow reusable yeah yeah yeah and and kites depending on the

length of the string they can go pretty high up can't they so that's valid a method well you're not allowed to fly kites higher than a certain height in central London because it can interfere with aircraft. Oh really? Yeah. Gosh. Just a slight diversion away from kites for a moment in order to talk about kites. What? So I'm a bird enthusiast as you know and I think of kites, I actually more readily think of the bird than the item. Okay.

So just a quick mention of kites, which is after all where we get the name for the kite, so you know they've got to have a mention. Red kites, you know they're indigenous birds of the UK. They were once everywhere. In Shakespeare's time, London was described as a city of kites and crows. They're scavenging birds, they sort of peck away at dead stuff. They eventually started to die out, not least because people used to collect their eggs because they're quite pretty. By the 1980s they were almost extinct.

There were two or three breeding pairs of red kites in Wales and that was it. Oh wow. In 1990, and I remember my family being really excited about this because we were all birdwatchers, in the early 1990s the RSPB started a conservation drive to sort of reintroduce red kites and they got a couple of kites from the remaining lot in Wales and a handful from Spain, bred them together and released them in the Chiltern Hills on the Oxford Shear Buckingham Shear border. Then they released a few more, released a few more, released a few more.

There are now 1,800 breeding pairs of red kites in the UK and they're everywhere. They're absolutely everywhere. I see them a lot of the time when I go to Oxfordshire. Yes, right, so that's kind of their origin point. That's where this conservation effort was started and that's kind of their birthplace I guess. But they cling quite closely to motorways so if you're ever driving up the M40 down the M4 or the M3 you just see them everywhere. Because they're scavengers motorways are good places for them because there's lots of dead stuff on the side of the road. I guess yes. There are lots of trees either side for them to nest. It's just a good area for them to be. So they really do sort of hang around those motorway corridors.

And I think they're beautiful animals. They have a really distinctive sound. They used to be a breeding pair living in Shepperton, where I used to live. So every day you could hardly go for a walk to the local shop without seeing a couple of red kites circling above. Soaring, soaring above you. Absolutely, just rising up on the thermals, very effortless, very un-flappy. Lovely.

Well there are lots and lots of different types of kites. Certainly. There are ones that are shaped like a triangle, they're deltas. They generally are very good for light winds, like up to five and ten miles an hour. And then you get bow kites, which are a bit like, effectively they are what they sound like. They're bent wood with a piece of string at the back, which actually helps to make an aerodynamic shape. There are these diamond kites which are like a fighting kite. There are sea kites and there are parafoils and we talked

about box kites which look like a box. Yeah that's quite a sort of a traditional Chinese style as well isn't it? Box kites. Yes absolutely and also you know very traditional Chinese is dragon kites. Oh yes of course. There are lots and lots I mean you can make a kite out Chinese is dragon kites. Oh yes of course. There are lots of not I mean you can make a kite out of several different kites of different sizes and shapes which actually start to look like a dragon flying through the air. Of course yes. And they're amazing. Yeah. I have a collection of kites so I have Delta kites, I have box kites, I have I even have one which is called a Sode and the soda kite is effectively. It's a kimono. Okay, so imagine a kimono

that's that's like flattened out and got wood to stiffen up the sleeves. Yeah and things and You tie string to that and you can fly it. That's brilliant. A lot of kites have tails Yes, I've often wondered this what what is the purpose of a of a tail? Well, the Japanese kites Japanese kites hardly ever have tails. And the reason that Japanese kites don't have tails is that a tail is a way of cheating. If you have a kite which is effectively unstable, the way to stabilise it is to put a tail on it. Right, how does that work though? Well because it would generally wiggle about in the air.

Whereas if you've got a tail of acts like a stabiliser. I see. So the wind sort of snags the tail and puts a bit of downward drag onto the kite to keep it stable. So the Japanese believe that a kite that needs a tail is not a properly built kite. That's all sorts. There's even one called a sled, which is effectively Imagine a square with wings Right and at the end of each wing you put a piece of string Yeah, so that so that so it kind of turns around into a C type kite Okay, and the most famous one of those is thing called a scott sled, right? Okay, and a scott said is effect. You can make one with a bin liner

So you you get a bin liner you chop it out to the right shape you put two bits of wood in to stiffen it up in the middle put the string on it and then you can fly it I've actually shown people how to make and fly their own Scott sleds as part of the work that I do with young people that's brilliant so it was just a fun afternoon of yeah up on a hill of showing them how to actually make a kite from scratch that's lovely yeah I do I do love flying kites though you do don't you it's it's quite a passion of yours it is absolutely I will take them on holiday I have ones that pack down into into baggage yeah but I can actually take take abroad with me

but the best ones I mean ones, I've got a collection of I think four Flexi-Falls, well actually more because I'm an ambassador, so I've got lots, including one that carries a camera. Oh really? I've got a camera kite. Oh that's great. And it's got a gimbal on it that stays level.

That Flexi-Fall used to do. Flexi-Fall, they were a very British company, then they started to outsource where they had all the stuff made. But now, they're bringing all that manufacturing back to the UK. Oh great. So, if you wanted to buy a FlexiFold kit now, which I would encourage you to have a look at doing, you can't actually buy one yet. You've got to wait until the manufacturing

comes back to the UK because they're just in the middle of changing that now. Oh, how exciting. So I think they'll be ready by December this year. Ready for Christmas. Jolly good. Talking of flex foil, I happen to know that there is a Guinness record associated with flexi foil. So Simon, are there any Guinness records associated with kites? Goodness me, Bruce. There are so so so many it's preposterous I don't think I've ever had a topic where there have been so many records to to filter through so I've had to streamline them. I've got some too. Oh good well I would hope that as well. The fastest ever kite. Oh let's start there that's a fairly easy one

it's a flexi foil. Hooray! It was a flexi foil super 10 stacker kite particularly. This was in 1989 in Maryland, USA. A fellow called Pete DiGiacomo flew one of these flexi foil kites and achieved a speed of 193 kmph. That's 120 miles per hour. That miles per hour which was recorded with a police speed gun and then Flexi-Foil sort of started doing quite a few things with the Branson family. Oh what? Virgins? Yeah them. So they teamed up with Richard Branson in a deliberate attempt to try and break a bunch of world records Essentially, okay for kite flying. Yeah. Yeah, so we've got a few here

So we've got the Guinness World Record for the oldest person to kite surf across the English Channel Richard Branson using a flexible. Mm-hmm. Yep Wow, his son Sam became the Guinness World Record holder for the fastest kitesurf crossing of the English Channel. How fast was that then? One hour and 51 minutes. That's not long. It's not that long, is it really?

And then several of the Branson family got together with family and friends to achieve the Guinness World Record for the most number of people to kite surf the English Channel. You can see a recurring theme here. Yes. And all of those were done in partnership with Flexifol using Flexifol Kites. Wow. Non-Flexifol related kite Guinness records. The world record for the longest continuous kite flight by a team, 180 hours and 17 minutes. So this team from Edmonds Community College in Washington State in 1982 took it in shifts. They flew this kite continually around the clock for pretty much a week between them. The most number of kites flown simultaneously

12,350 in 2011. Wow. That's all that's individuals all flying kites each. Individuals flying a kite each. The record for the most kites flown on a single line, this is staggering, 15,585. Wow, bet that's Japanese. This was set by a junior school in Japan, 1998. That's a lot. Yeah. On one line. Yeah, so they tied all their kites to this one line

at 28 centimeter intervals. Right. Which if I've done my maths right, that means that that line was about four kilometers long Wow I don't understand that because each kite is doing its own lifting but then the actual line itself would be quite heavy yes yeah for that amount of string yeah that would be quite weighty wouldn't it but I guess each kite is only pulling a foot's worth of line yeah true yeah yeah spreading the load yes there are lots there are

just that's scratching the surface I know the biggest kite in the world oh do you go on I didn't get that it's called the megabyte the megabyte the megabyte not the mega kite no it's 630 square meters so it's it's 55 meters wide by 22 meters high goodness me me! Can you imagine launching that? No! That's incredible! Yeah and the highest single kite flown is 3.8 kilometers. The highest single? 12 and a half thousand feet. Wow! Okay so right so all of those fifteen and a half thousand kites got higher but as you say that's because they have a combined pulling force of all of those yes yes that's the single the highest single

kind and you're talking about the weight of some some yeah some kites were a lot there's a Japanese kite that weighs like two tons oh really gosh yeah and those and drag the dragon kites that's talking about the Chinese dragon ones they can they can be up to about sort of 600 meters long. No way. Really long. Crikey. That's impressive. So thank you, Simon, for indulging me and letting me talk about one of my pet subjects. Oh, my pleasure.

Thank you for sharing it with me. I've learned an awful lot there today myself. So it's been grand. And if we've infused any of you to go and fly kites, whatever sort of kite it is, even if it's not a flexi foil Then please go to your local toy shop or go get online just buy a kite Yes, and they they are they give you such pleasure for such that they're not expensive Hmm, and they just give you a lot of pleasure whether it's a single line or a dual line

Whether it's dirigible or not Do it go and buy a kite now. So there are three things that we'd like you to do, having listened to this podcast about kites and indulged briefs, then the first thing is to go to your podcast player and subscribe because we might be doing something completely different I know nothing about next week you never know. Secondly if you could give us a five-star review and tell us well tell your podcast provider why you liked the episode you listened to. Yes absolutely. Because that's always helpful helpful to us as well. Yeah absolutely. And obviously we will always get things wrong.

Always. So please feel free to write to us at hello at factorily.com and tell us what we got wrong. Yep, we're on a constant journey of learning so if you know some stuff about kites that we don't then please fill us in. They won't. You never know. So thank you ever so much for listening to us. Please come again next week for another fun-filled, factual episode of...

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