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July 2nd - 5th The Flying Squad at 9th Alcochete International Kite Festival, Portugal

This was our second visit to Alcochete. As with all festivals it's great to see old friends and make some new ones.
Festival day: a short walk to the beach revealed the wind was good & the sun is out. We set up camp and put a few kites together while the first performance of the day starts. Then we hear we are on next so it’s straight in to fly "Frogs Chorus".
The appreciative Portuguese crowd loved it; the small groups of the other invited flyers loved it too. Great wind and a great sound system helps so much with a choreographed routine so you can really hit the beats of the music and hear all the key points, our routine "Frogs" has no calls so its important we all hear the music well.
Being on quite a small beach with little space to fly, we sit back to enjoy the other teams doing their stuff;

• Vortex the Spanish Word Cup Team fly a fantastic routine using Masque Kites.
  
• Imagina the Spanish Rev Team produce a unique theatrical performance.
  
• Quad PT a Portuguese Rev team were polished with really nice technical moves and new interpretations of moves that flyers love to see .
  
• Guincho Kite Team, also from Portugal, had a big group and it was good to see so many good new flyers in one team. We look forward to seeing how this develops.
  
• The Pair Viento SUL flew a fantastic routine to a piece of Tango music and perfectly matched the pace and rhythm of the music, with some outstanding flying !
  
• That bring us to one of the all time great teams; Lung-Ta (France) flying a beautiful dual line routine, these guys are brave wearing Lycra suits !
  

Saturday night saw all the fliers in a fantastic night flight and meal on the beach. Sunday - more of the same but with less wind so we flew our Printed Rev 1.5's from Los Hermanos with Race Rods on 120ft lines. To give the crowd something different we had choreographed a 3 person version of Hindi Diamonds. The routine went well even though we had not actually had a chance to fly the new interpretation before we were again called to the arena.
During the day the wind steadily increased. Everyone raised their game in the challenging conditions and had a wonderful time in the sun that we enjoyed all weekend at Alcochete.

Highlights.

 

• The Festival Organisation,
  
• Carlos Soares, his wife and son.
  
• The students acting as water carriers for the kite flyers. (outstanding!)
  
• The on site food. (delicious)
  
• The DJ & Announcer, great job all weekend.
  
• The invited flyers and
  
• all the Rev Family that joined us for the weekend.

Please feel free to send us a link of your own pictures, as we can't fly and take pictures at the same time yet. Many Thanks for all the support over the weekend The Flying Squad