From: miel@knoware.nl (Emiel Stroeve) Subject: Fano '96 report. Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 21:00:06 -1000 Organization: EuroNet Internet Message-ID: <4q5k5m$6uo@news.euro.net> Here's my report on: || ----------| ---------- | ---------- | ---------- | | | | | | F A N O '9 6 | | | | | ---------- | ---------- | ---------- | ----------| || || || || || || || || || || ---------------- lots of these windbags were NOT illegally sold, but were available at Drageland in Nordby. This was my first time ever on Fano, so I'll report stuff a lot of you already now for years..... THE WEATHER. The weather was fine, as long a you brought warm clothes (the temperature was about 15 degrees during day-time with peaks up to 15.5), medium to small kites (winds were up to 6-7 Bft., 3-4 on sunday) and sunglasses (obvious reasons). There was no rain during the festival. The wind was coming from a North-North-West direction and therefor to parallel on the beach for real up and down winds buggy rides. THE ISLAND Fano is a peacefull island only 10 min. from the mainland. The nature is like the rest of Scandinavia: perfect ! The only thing here is that all the kiters can drive with their cars on the beach ! From a kiters point of view this is perfect. If I try this at home, I'l be shot by the first copper around.... The beach is laaaaaarge, about 20 km long and 500-1000 m wide. Due to the dry weather the last months, the beach wasn't as hard as last year (from a buggiers point of view). The cars were all sandblasted by the 6-7 Bft. wind. THE CROWD People who have been here (mentaly I am still there...) before, told me that there where fewer people than last year. Sometimes we could even see a bit of sky through the kite-clouds and find a spot to fly. The general opnion was that it was less crowded than the previous years. So there was more space to BUGGY ! THE PEOLPE Obviously this was THE event of meeting (r.k) people. I had a change to meet Doctor Bernard Malle and his magic tricks daughter ;-) and Robert Pudlo. Of course Simo and Peter Ulfheden were there. Rolf got his kite skiing kit and will try to demonstrate it on the dangerous NorthSee next year ;-). The Rec.Kites meeting didn't end up with indoor flying, that already took place the previous day. We had some German beer brought by Sven after promising it last year. The live connection to the super highway Internet from the beach didn't work :-{ so you missed it all... To bad the grazy Brit's weren't there..... THE KITES Beiing a 2-liner myself, I hardly recognize any 1-liner, but they were impressive ! The most strange things flew in the sky. To bad the winds were to high for the single line Lynn stuff. I think the Cody manlifting team from Holland managed to succeed in lifting the crew. Kite arches all around. The most impressive was the sight of all this >From a distance, one huge cloud of kites, very very impressive. You really had to be there! On the friday night the wind dropped to a nice 3-4 Bft, so nightflying started near the Ro-Land camping area. I didn't had a change to take a look at the Tramontana demo, but did saw a couple of vented ones in, again, 6-7 Bft. They flew like there was a nice evening breeze on the beach. The foils were mainly quad-liners, due to the high winds mostly classic Quadrifoils. On friday and saturday (an obviously sunday when the wind really dropped) the high performance quads came out: Mosquito's and Q-competitions. Between all of those the 2 liners like: Sputniks, Peels and Buggy-Flies were flown. I really had a good impression on the differences between 2-liners and 4-liners. Most 2 liners could run rings around lots of 4-liners. The high performance quads are a hard case to beat, and there were a few Modulus fliers..... I will not go into that, but we flew a Peel 3.6 and sputnik 2.8m^2's and we could overrun them. They were of course the faster turners. THE BUGGY Seen lots of them, mainly Lynn, Windtools, Libre (even the 2-wheeled version, the guy riding it really knew how so it CAN be done). And lots of selfmade buggies. To really keep track, lots of balloon tires were used. THE RACE. Due to the wind direction the Crazy Fun Buggy Race was only on a 5 km course. First downwind (no problems here) and back against the wind. Here's were the problems started, the one with the sharpest upwind angle course won the race: Stefan Nickmeijer (sorry if I misspelled his name) who flew his modified Elegance DELTA kite. Next the guys >From Red Bull with their Mosquito's and fat tires came in. The rest followed with again a few Mosquito's, Peels and other stuff. The start of the race was very impressive, about 120 kites, buggies and pilots on 200-300 m of beach. No doubt about it that Drachen Magazin will cover the race. It all comes down to only 1 word: A O X O M O X O A only 362 nights to sleep...... Emiel (__) (__) Emiel Stroeve The Netherlands (oo) (oo) ---------------------------------------------------/----\/------/----\/ http://www.euronet.nl/users/mielse/index.html /||,--|| /||,--|| E-mail: miel@knoware.nl * ^^ ^^ * ^^ ^^ = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =