Flights of Fancy : A Spate of Seaside Kite Festivals Show Off What’s New in a High-Flying Hobby That’s 3,000 Years Old

When Bill Franklin started flying kites 10 years ago, he was often alone on the wind-swept Santa Monica State Beach, sitting there in his aluminum beach chair with a red-and-yellow box kite floating overhead.

“I’d come down on a gray, windy day when nobody was around, throw ‘er up and let her climb, and just sit here and think about things,” says Franklin, a retired electrical engineer.

Fortunately, Franklin likes company, because he now gets plenty of it when he shows up to fly his hot Delta-wing Stinger.

About seven years ago, after sales of steerable, dual-line “stunt” kites started to take off, kite flying soared from a hobby for loners and individualists to an almost organized sport pursued by all kinds of high fliers.

Indeed, the days of flying a simple kite with a piece of string were over.

“Single-line kites--the old paper diamonds and silk dragons--are colorful and artistic but they’re passive,” says Gloria Lugo of Let’s Fly a Kite in Marina Del Rey. “The dual-line kites are active. They’ve opened kiting up to younger, sports-minded people and created teams and competitions.”

Though modern kites made of nylon ripstop, Mylar and sailcloth have come far from their ancestors, cheap paper fighter kites from India have been darting through the ether for as long as anyone can remember.

Kite festivals, too, have sprung up like dandelions after a spring rain. Four festivals--planned for beaches in Santa Barbara, Santa Monica, Venice and Huntington Beach--are the place to catch up on what’s new in a hobby with a 3,000-year-old pedigree.

At the eighth annual Santa Barbara Kite Festival, fighter kite demonstrations and stunt kite aerobatics will be a big part of the day’s activities.

“Fighter kites don’t try to hit each other, as some people think, they try to cut each other out of the sky,” says Neeta Khare, owner of Come Fly a Kite in Santa Barbara.

“The first 100 feet of the string is the cutting line, cotton string coated with powdered glass. If you’re really good and there’s enough string left on your opponent’s kite, you wrap your line around it and bring it down as a trophy,” she says.

Santa Barbara Kite Festival, today , 11 a.m.-5 p.m., at Shoreline Park.

So many newer kites are aerodynamically akin to hang gliders and parachutes that organizers of the Huntington Beach Festival have repudiated the word kite and are calling their event the Powerflying Games.

Here, contestants pay a $10 entry fee to compete for trophies in one or more stunt, precision or power-flying competitions.

This event is a good place to see the huge 15- and 20-foot Delta-wing monsters and the arch-shaped Flexifoil power kites, dead-ringers for inflated air mattresses that, when aloft in a strong wind, can easily pull their owners along in “sand” races.

And the wind’s power isn’t something to sneeze at, as these demonstrations show.

When kites are “stacked,” or tied together, in a “train” of 30, 50 or even 100, even small Delta-wing models like Trlbys exert a potentially dangerous pull.

Huntington Beach Festival, March 21-22, noon-4 p.m., at the pier.

From swirling dragons to Stealth bomber look-alikes, the spectrum of kite types and their owners are likely to be found at Southern California’s oldest kite festival, the 18th annual Venice Pier Kite Festival.

Here’s where kite connoisseurs traditionally trade tips on new designs, materials and skills, and on promoting kite-flying.

Once an hour during the afternoon, precision teams will perform with single and stacked stunt kites, demonstrating regulation competition maneuvers--figure eights, circles, dives and ground passes.

Venice Pier Kite Festival, March 28, noon.

For all-around fun and games, the sixth annual Santa Monica Pier Kite Festival is the place to be.

People are invited to compete for prize kites worth $1,000 to be awarded to the person with fastest (as measured by the Harbor Patrol’s radar gun) kite, most beautiful handmade kite, and the longest train of stacked kites.

Other categories include the most unusual (one winner was a flying stork with a garden hose for a neck) and the longest tail.

In the latter event, a record-breaking attempt failed two years ago when the tail, a 3,000-foot piece of videotape, broke in midflight.

The newest in kite designs will be shown, including the four-line Revolution, a kite that is, well, revolutionary. Controlled by four lines attached to two handles, the Revolution is said to be the world’s most maneuverable kite.

The Revolution is big--about 9 feet by 3 feet--but it flies easily in light winds. The reason? It weighs just more than 12 ounces because its spars--which make up the framework--are made of carbon-graphite.

“The graphite spars used in some of the new ultra-light, dual-line kites means you can fly them in as little as 2 m.p.h. winds,” says Steve Behr of Keely’s Kites.

“No matter how much or how little wind there is, you can find a kite designed to fly in it. We can control the kites, but we can’t control the wind.”

Santa Monica Pier Kite Festival, April 5, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. , on the sand north of the pier.

If You Don’t Already Have One . . .

* Come Fly a Kite

1228 State St.

Santa Barbara

(805) 966-2694

* Keely’s Kites

2900 Main St.

Santa Monica

(310) 396-5483

1400 B 3rd St. Promenade

Santa Monica

(310) 576-7977

* Let’s Fly a Kite

13755 Fiji Way

Marina del Rey

(310) 822-2561

* Sunshine Kite Co.

101 Fisherman’s Wharf

Redondo Beach

(310) 372-0308

* Ultimate High

419-G Shoreline Village

Drive

Long Beach

(310) 436-3180

* Village Kite & Toy Store

1575 Spinnaker Drive 107-B

Ventura

(805) 654-0900

* Winderful

102 W. Tehachapi Blvd.

Tehachapi

(805) 823-7922

* Windworks

15317 1/2 Roscoe Blvd.

Panorama City

(818) 892-6474