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Newsletter 11

Last modified: 31-Jan-99

KiteFlight Review by the Aussies

The following review was recently published in the newsletter of the Australian Kite Association. It was written by Joanne Baker, who is a member of Team Positive Lift. Positive Lift became the 1998 Australian Sport Kite Champions after winning both in precision and ballet at the Australian Team Championships.

Please note that the folks down under don't really speak English. Instead they speak something called Australian. The following text thus works best when read out loud as if auditioning for a part in Crocodile Dundee III (it may take a few Forsters to really get the hang of this, mates).

"After finding the KiteFlight Home page on the Internet and downloading their free sample version I decided this looked great for our team routines. I purchased a copy from the U.S. and with postage and exchange rates cost approximately A$32.00."

"KiteFlight is an MS-DOS program which can simulate the movements of dual-line stunt kites. You actually purchase version 2.01 and then register and download the upgrades (currently 3) from the home page. Being new to downloading this took a few goes to work, but with the help of the step by step instructions we got there and now have version 2.08 up and working. We run it using Windows 95 with no problems."

"KiteFlight was developed by Peter van den Hamer from Holland. It has all the compulsory maneuvers from the Stack Manual already loaded in, as well as some sample routines from individuals, pairs and teams. It was easy to load and run the different routines and I quickly got the hang of the program. The Internet Site offers up to date information on the program and lots of helpful tips."

"It was then time to start loading some of our Team Maneuvers and routines. Having never programmed anything on a computer before, I found this part a bit tricky. A quick SOS via an e-mail to Peter van den Hamer gave me the knowledge of how to print out the step by step instructions on programming. Starting off slowly it did not take long to get the hang of and we soon had some of our maneuvers on screen. I decided it would be easier to put in each team maneuver separately so that you can copy and paste it together for a routine."

"When showing the rest of the team the maneuvers their comments surprised me greatly. Comments such as "Is that where I am supposed to be?" and "I don't go out that far" highlight that what one person is expressing does not mean that the other person is fully comprehending. Even what I thought to be the simplest maneuvers looked clearer using the program and made getting my message of what I wanted the others to do come across load and clear. It certainly leaves no room for arguments as everyone can clearly see where they are going and exactly how big that circle is supposed to be. Although I still have not put our full routine together, due to lack of time, what we have done is very valuable to our team flying. KiteFlight will be a very useful tool for both visualizing, creating and remembering both individual and team routines." [from March 1998 issue of Australian Kite magazine]

New KiteFlight routine from Japan

Japan's Team Gulliver has released their new routine for the 1998 season. Team Gulliver uses KiteFlight to design and display their routines. You can find more pictures and information (in Japanese) about the pilots and their techniques at their Team Gulliver's Web site. Note that the fonts on their Web site may not display correctly on your browser unless you you have the appropriate Japanese language support module installed.

You can download the routine as file 98g.zip (only 3091 bytes) from the Team Gulliver's KiteFlight page. The ZIP file can then be unpacked into four small KiteFlight files using an unzip program such as WinZip.

KiteFlight sponsors United Kingdom team SAS

KiteFlight is co-sponsoring a promising team from the United Kingdom known as Special Air Stunts (SAS). SAS is the only team which carries the prestigious "sponsored by KiteFlight" qualification since the Dutch team "The Dike Hoppers" split up. Fortunately for me, KiteFlight sponsorship isn't quite as dramatic as sponsoring a Formula 1 racing team: the team simply requested and received a free copy of KiteFlight.

You may be a bit more impressed by the fact that SAS belongs to the select set of teams sponsored by Top Of The Line (TOTL) kites. I believe that they are also sponsored by a major kite line brand.

SAS's Web site is currently being renovated and will move to a new Web address. I will provide more information about the team in the next issue of this newsletter. Their new URL should be final by that time.

In the meantime I wish 'my' team best of luck in the '98 competition season.

Netscape gets its act together

Roughly 50% of the world's Internet surfers use Netscape Communicator. Although Netscape claims to comply to the "Cascading Style Sheets" standard since Netscape 4.00, it apparently took them over a half year of bug fixing to get it quite right. With the current version 4.05 you should now see my Web pages as they were intended. In particular, Netscape incorrectly rendered my coloring scheme which associates clickable links to the corresponding section of my site. Thus the KiteFlight home page has an ocher theme color and any links to that page have an ocher background color.

Although it has become fashionable in Internet and software circles to regard Microsoft as the latest incarnation of evil, I want to point out that Microsoft's Internet Explorer has rendered my pages according to the standards since version 3.02 (which was released 1 or 2 years before Netscape 4.05). To avoid any confusion, the current release of Microsoft's Internet Explorer is named "IE 4.01 Service Pack 1" and it still renders my pages correctly. Apparently Microsoft's marketing wizards are currently worrying about more pressing matters than devising apt names for free products.

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Direct any remarks or questions to Peter van den Hamer (vdhamer@msn.com).