Why my lab are so wonderful...

Have been meaning to write a post about this for a while now, but have just got back from the kite place so it seemed like a good time. So, the story so far is that for my 30th my Lab (and Christian) got me an extremely cool (and very me) present of a remote controlled kite. Unless you've seen the people flying them here, that won't mean too much. It's designed and made by a Singaporean company called 'Go Fly Kite'. It is a fairly big kite, with a model airplane engine on the front. The really cool part is that it also has a whole load of LEDs (lights) all over it, and cos its built from carbon fiber it's really lite, so is very maneuverable. I've been lusting after one since I first saw the club that makes them flying them at night by the river. It looks like a scene from 'Close encounters of a third kind'. Lots of strange alien lights diving and swooping through the air.... Any how, having got it I'm very eager to fly it... so I went to the shop today to try and get a lesson (which they are happy to give). They suggested I try flying the simulator first (the controller plugged into a computer). I was kind of keen to try flying the real thing, but they effectively demonstrated that it is much harder than it looks. My simulator experience went like this.... {Adam makes plane take of with relative ease, plane turns, plane crashes into ground} repeat X times.

So spent a couple of hours hanging out at the shop today (which is cool cos they have big sofas and they're really chilled out and friendly). After much practice I can now make the simulated plane take off, fly around in all sorts of (unpredictable) patterns, and crash into the ground.... They managed to convince me that I shouldn't try the real thing until I could make some sort of landing.... (which is a good point, although they are happy to teach me how to repair broken kites....) Still it was lots of fun and they're happy for me to drop by anytime and practice/get advice and help until I'm ready to fly for real. (am at level 2 of 4). So hopefully with a bit more training I can fly for real next week. Until then, here are some pictures of my kite (as yet unnamed)