Date:	Sun, 4 Jul 1993 02:10:05 -1000
From:	markus@mwhh.hanse.de (Markus Witt)
Message-Id: <1993Jul4.121005.1673@mwhh.hanse.de>
Organization: Nothin' is organized here.
Subject: Back from Scheveningen (REPOST)

Hi.

Due to serious problems with our local backbone, this article possibly
never made it out of Hamburg.

My apologies if you have already seen it.

Markus

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello.

Having been in Scheveningen at the "Nationale-Nederlanden Vlieger-
feest 1993" over the past weekend, I'd like to tell you how it was,
or better how I found it.

Overall, I did like it. The weather could have been better, but it wasn't
as bad as it could have been, either.

To be more precise :-) ...
------
FRIDAY evening at 20.30 the festival was opened with a Fairy tale, per-
formed with quad's that looked like elephant heads, with trunks fastened
at the bottom.

Here is the first thing I have to criticize. Over the whole festival, all
announcements and comments over the loudspeakers were only made in Dutch,
>From which I understand only every tenth word, when being similar as in
German.
IMHO it would have been much better, if they had made the announcements
at least also in English.
So I can't tell you what the story was about, but probably it is not
so important.

Friday there was not much wind, sometimes it did rain a little, and the
sun didn't show at all.

--------
Saturday morning the weather was the same as Friday evening, but around
noon the wind freshened up and in the afternoon the sun came out for a
short time.
At noon began the competitions for team precision flying and here is the
next thing that I think wasn't planned too well. The fields for the competi-
tions were at the end of the part of the beach reserved for the festival.
The distance between the promenade and the fields was one or two kilome-
ters and so there were only a few people watching the competition.
And for this reason I too missed the first three of the ten teams flying.
The badest thing about that is that I missed Aircraft which was the best
team as I was told.

The teams were:
Lucky Landing Albatroses, Aircraft, Flashback, Highlife, Puppy's Power,
Dike Hoppers, Crazy Diamonds, Fly-Tox, A-66 and Kite-o-holics.

All in all I had the impression, the competition was integrated only half-
heartedly into the festival. I don't think a competition is the most impor-
tant thing of a festival, but it would have deserved more attention.

After failing to see them because they weren't flying as I passed them at
noon, at afternoon I asked one of the organizers and then found them -
THE DECORATORS - and I have to say it was impressive to see what one can
do with a Rev. They also flew together with Aircraft, and the guys weren't
untalented either. At first I had trouble to see which Rev's was flown
by which team, because the had almost similar designed kites.

There were many people flying hundreds of different kites all over the
beach. But it wasn't as crowded as I had expected it to be.
A while back a guy on rec.kites mentioned, he wouldn't even take his kites
out in Scheveningen because it was so overcrowded. This year I wouldn't say
that. There were places were one could fly without having to worry about
being killed by crashing kites.

------
On SUNDAY the wind was stronger than on Saturday. The sun came out before
noon and there were only some clouds in the sky. The wind was pretty cold,
but aside from that, the weather was good.

There were no competitions on Sunday, just demonstrations. Some of the
teams flew, the Decorators flew, again together with Aircraft.

One of the Dike Hoppers flew a show with his eight year old son. It lastet
a while 'til I recognized, that one of the flyers was a child. Pretty
impressing.

There were a lot more people watching the show than there were on Saturday.
Probably the better weather was one of the reasons.

All in all it was a fun weekend with a lot to see.

I made some photos. I hope I get the prints the end of the week. I'll post
some of them the next week, if there is interest.

Looking forward to the next kite festival wherever it may be,
	Markus


-- 
                       Markus Witt, Hamburg (Germany)
                            markus@mwhh.hanse.de


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