Naming Tricks

Back in the 1990's there was a plethora of new kite tricks being invented, particularly tricks where the kite was not flown flat at the end of the lines, such as the axel. The rule was that the first person to perform the trick three times in a row got to name it. In this way, I got a trick with my own name:

The Full Andrew

This is a power kite trick. The idea is that you launch a power kite that is too large and too powerful in too much wind and slide... A small slide won't cut it. You have got to slide a distance equal to the length of your kite lines, all the way to the point on the ground where the kite was launched from. Done properly, this is a single, smooth slide as the kite makes it's way directly from launch to the top of the window. If you find that you need to make loops or dives to get the distance, your kite simply isn'g big enough. I may not have been the first person to do this by accident or miss-judgement but I was certainly the first person crazy enough to do it three times in a row.

Doing a Beattie

The name for this move was first coined by Pat May at St Annes 2013. When we fly at kite festivals, we will anchor maxi kites to vehicles, bulk bags of sand or big lumps of concrete but sometimes that gets restrictive, so Kathleen and I like to take a single maxi kite, fly it on a short line and a strap and take it for a walk round the event: "Doing a Beattie". Some pictures to illustrate from previous events: