About the Webmaster

The 'Who', 'What' And 'Why' Behind This Site

My name's Tim Parish, and I have a degree of interest in just about all things that fly. Ever since childhood in fact. It all started with a Primary (Elementary) School book about the Wright brothers and their Flyer.

From there, I took an interest in all kinds of flying hobbies. Paper planes, small balsa wood gliders, home-made plastic diamond kites, shop-bought Indian kites and probably other stuff I've forgotten. Then I moved up to balsa and tissue models, control line models and eventually radio-controlled aircraft. A mixture of powered and un-powered model aircraft.

That was the modeling side. Full size flying also seemed very inviting, so I saved up some money as a teenager and went flying with the local gliding club. Soloed at age 15, while we were living in Alice Springs. The 'Red Centre' as tourism brochures like to call that area of Australia.

Eventually, that led to becoming a fully qualified gliding instructor with the Adelaide University gliding club in South Australia. Lots of hours in the back seat of various 2-seaters, operating out of a large paddock near the small town of Locheil.

Since then, I have dabbled in paragliding, hang gliding and flight simulation as well.

I still live in Adelaide. Now with a wife and young son who features in some of the pics on this site. Small kids grow up so quick, don't they. Various pages have documented his growth quite well!

Connections With Kiting

While writing this, an interesting thought came to me. Four other flying activities besides actual kite flying involve kiting a flying object up into the air. They are...

• hand-towing a free-flying model glider into the air,
• bungee-launching a radio-controlled model sailplane into the air,
• operating a V8-powered winch with a full-size sailplane on the end of the cable,
• flying a paraglider - these aircraft are the direct descendants of the parafoil kite!

So maybe I did more kiting than I realized!

Why A Kite Site?

Flying kites, in particular, was a fairly small part of my overall flying experiences. So why start a kite site? Well, besides embarking on an adventure of designing and flying ever-more kites for the sheer love of it, there's a business side to it too. Old computer programmers don't get work offers thrown at them ;-) so they have to make a living somehow...

I found a system called Site Build It which offered to help anyone build out a high-traffic website, then make money from it. A 'Get Rich Slowly' scheme in effect. Very, very different from all the usual 'Make Money' ads you tend to see popping up online.

After 4 years, this site is certainly pulling in the traffic, with a 4-digit number of daily visitors. And it continues to grow substantially each year. The income is coming up too, and is covering many bills. One day, we'll be self-sufficient! That's the dream.

It all started with a 5 dollar Baby Sled kite and a tiny Delta made from clear plastic and 4 thin bamboo BBQ skewers. It's come a long way from there, with the help of many other keen kite fliers from around the world who have contributed to this site.

We hope you find the information you are looking for, here. Maybe even get inspired to take up some form of kite flying. Or if you're already into it, perhaps trying some new type of kite!

Some Personal Links

Our local church, and I'll let the website of this large 21st Century gathering of believers speak for itself...

My first website, which still gets the occasional update...

Last updated: 19 Jul 2011