2009 Kite Flyers
David and Susan Gomberg
David Gombergis an accomplished flyer and international traveler who is known for his big "show kites". Together with his wife, Susan, he owns Gomberg Kite Productions International, a kite product distributor and event management partnership. GKPI has provided kite shows for Walt Disney, for the London Millennium Celebration, for major motion pictures, and for the Super Bowl. They perform at 20-30 events each year and have participated in festivals in 35 states and 25 countries. In 2005, GKPI acquired the world's largest kite, a 10,000 square foot showpiece. David served an unprecedented ten terms as President of the American Kitefliers Association (AKA), the largest association of kite enthusiasts in the world. In 2005, he was inducted into the Kitefliers Hall of Fame.
Windjammers International Kite Team
http://www.windjammerskiteteam.com
On almost any weekend on a small island park in the center of the Detroit River, you may find the WINDJAMMERS Stunt Kite Team (Aaron, Nate, Gary, James, Mike and George) practicing their craft. These gentlemen with their mutual interest in kites established the Windjammers S.K.T. in 1983, making the Team one of the oldest intact kite Team on this planet
The team began with nine or so guys at the small island park in the center of the Detroit River flying and having fun. And in the 80's when team flying began to take shape with competitions, three of the guys (Aaron, Nate and Gary) formed the Windjammers Stunt Kite. Since those early days they have added three more gentlemen to the team. In 1989 James joined making the Windjammers a steady four person team until 1996 when his job called for him to move out of state. James remains a member of the team and regularly returns to fly with the team on special events. Also in the that same year Aaron decided to stop the competition portion for the schedule, leaving an additional spot open on the team. So in 1996 two other gentlemen joined on board. Mike was first to join the group. He was a native Detroiter and we met while he was on the island flying a delta stunter. Next came George. We met George several years prior to him joining the group. The reason being he lived several states away. But, his determination and willingness to travel weekly to make team practices made him an intricate part of the team. In 2007 we added Jean from Montreal Canada. Now we had a steady four man competition team and a six man demonstration team.
There are many accomplishments the team has had over the years: On April 15th 1984 the Windjammers along with the 5/20 Kite Group (Local kite club) flew the record breaking Trlby flight of 76 kites in a train. Later that year they attended their first AKA convention in Nashville, TN. Performing at the last Detroit City Air Show 1988, Performing for nine years straight at the Howell Hot Air Balloon Challenge to name a few. As for team competition they have competed in many competitions in the USA and Canada. One of the first competitions the team flew in was the 1987 "Fly the Mit" in Traverse City, Michigan. The team has competed every year since then.
Team Island Quad: Holger E. Witte, Mario Di Lucca, Terry Wiggill and Peter Wolf
Holger E. Witte - Victoria, BC
Flying since 1999, Holger has enjoyed recreational flying up and down Vancouver Island using various styles of kites. In the summer of 2007 Holger started his Revolution experience. He quickly began building his collection, and can now be found down at Clover Point home of the WCKFG flying either by himself or in team formation with all the other kite junkies.
Fairly new to team flying Holger had his first team event in the summer of 2008. Now almost a year later he is excited to be involved with the West Coast Kite Flying Group.
Mario Di Lucca - Victoria, BC
Mario has been flying kites longer than he can remember, but seriously for fun since 2003. He has competed for the last 5 years at the experienced level in individual and pairs precision and ballet events organized by the Northwest Sport Kite League in BC, Washington, Oregon and California.
He flies outdoors and indoors using a variety of single, dual and quad lined stunt kites. Mario’s favorite fun is Revolution kites team flying as a regular member of the Island Quad - West Coast Kite Flying Group and as an honorary member with the IQuad team.
What is it about kites?
Mario got into the joy of kite flying because he loves to be outdoors and the challenge to control the kites to perform predetermined freestyle stunts, precision figures or team chorographic ballet routines in different wind conditions. Most of all Mario enjoys sharing his devotion for kiting with fellow flyers and new comers.
Terry Wiggill - Victoria, BC
Originally from Fort Macleod, Alberta, I came to Vancouver Island many years ago to escape the wind. My only kiting experience had been a single disastrous flight as a kid. Now it’s ironic that I hope for wind on a daily basis.
I began flying seriously in 2006 after a flyer gave me an old skool dual line kite called a “STINGER”. Nearly indestructible and totally user friendly, it was the bait that drew me into this wonderful obsession’. I quickly gravitated to the precision and grace of the quad line “REVOLUTION” kite. The challenge has been learning to sustain consistent controlled flight. It’s a continuous learning process, as each flying day comes with different wind and weather conditions.
Also a member of WCKFG. The camaraderie and friendships developed through this shared passion is what makes team flying way so very much fun.
When not flying…. I wish I was.
Peter Wolf - Victoria, BC
Wolf has been flying kites since 1981. Starting like most people with single line kites as a child and has had a long life passion with kites all kind. Introduced to dual line kites in early 2007, he took to it like a bird. Later in 2007 was handed the handles of a revolution kite and their has been no looking back since.
Always looking to improve his skills as a rev pilot in team-style and free-style flying. In 2009 you will find The Wolf hard at play to prepare for a fall season of competition events at which he will be attending in hopes to walking away with some extra feathers under his wings.
Member of West Coast Kite Flying Group. Always enjoys getting together to fly and have fun at our home field at Clover Point.
Carl Bigras
Ottawa’s Carl Bigras’ distinctive humour is easily recognizable at a distance - especially when he flies his large “hot air balloon” kite with three-dimensional bodies hanging from the torn basket. On the more serious side of his creativity, Carl’s aerial kite photography, which is taken by remote-control camera, brings us stunning glimpses of what’s on view at the soaring end of a kite and has a fantastic static display of his photographs.
Building kites since 1995, his other creations are: a 4 meter high Rokkaku called “The King of Rok”, a 6 meter Delta, Delta clown kites, Hargrave, Conynnes and other unique and distinctive designs.
Deb Lenzen
Deb Lenzen is from Bismarck, North Dakota and this is her first appearance at the Windscape Kite Festival in Swift Current.
She has been flying kites since 1990 but the last seven years have found Deb moving into the realm of kitemaking and it is those kites that she is honored to fly during the Swift Current festival. The majority of her kites reflect the respect she has for the Native American culture that she grew up with back on the North Dakota prairie. Those kites have been award winners at the Washington State International Kite Festival and the Comprehensive Kitemaking Competitions at the AKA Nationals. She manages a website, www.sky-dance.net, as a way to promote kiting and share her love of kiting with the rest of the world. She also coordinates the Skydance Sakakawea Kite Festival in Garrison, ND which celebrated its 15th year in May. Deb is currently a Director at Large of the American Kitefliers Association.
Mike Shaw
Mike, also from Bismarck, North Dakota, has built and flown his hand-crafted kites throughout the United States for twelve years and traveled to Berck, France as a member of the American team. He is a five time award winner in the comprehensive kite building competition held during the American Kitefliers Association Annual Convention and served on the national competition and convention committees. Mike works in both appliqué and piecework techniques; often placing Southwest Native American art upon historic Asian kite styles.
When attending festivals Mike often actively engages spectators in fun conversation and answers their many questions. He will often rebridle and tune a poor-flying kite in the public flying area to the delight of the owner. Along with attending many festivals as a featured flier, he conducts volunteer kite building workshops and presentations for school and community groups. While a long-time Colorado resident he was an active member of the Foothills Kite Club and co-chairman of the Arvada Kite Festival.
Vince Herchmer
After watching kite boarders on the Pacific in Los Angles, CA and on the Atlantic in St. Augustine, FL in early 2004, Vince decided he just had to give traction kiting a try.
At the time, Vince and his wife/sometimes assistant Brenda were living in southern Ontario. Not only wasn't he able to locate a retail kite shop that sold traction gear, he wasn't able to find a store handling any of the name brand kite products. So, to make a long story shorter, HorizonKites.com was born. In addition to an online presence, they also offered over the counter sales of Premier, New Tech, Go Fly A Kite, HQ and Gomberg products from their downtown gift gallery in Welland, ON.
Over just a few short years HorizonKites.com's client base has expanded across Canada, the United States, Great Britain, New Zealand and Australia. And, the recent move to Alberta in June, 2007 has further increased sales of traction products for buggying and kite skiing.
On the kite field Vince prefers large single liners, as once they are launched he is afforded the opportunity to meet and mingle with old and new kite flying friends. Solo flying usually involves the physical workout that only a quad line traction kite can provide. He can often be found in his neighbourhood park tuning a kite or teaching a novice power kiter. This past winter, wind chill permitting of course, found him kite skiing on Cooking Lake, located approximately 30 minutes east of his Edmonton home.
Vince can be contacted through the company website at HorizonKites.com or directly at
sales@horizonkites.com
Bev Dockrill
Bev Dockrill, of Edmonton, Alberta, makes and flies single line kites and loves to come to the Windscape Kite Festival.
Dr. Raj Hathiramani 
Raj has been flying kites in countries throughout the world. He began kite-flying in Trinidad, west Indies and as he travelled with his parents he maintained his interest by flying kites in India, Nepal, England, France, Holland, Guyana, Suriname, Grenada, the Bahamas, Barbados, U.S., Mexico, Costa Rica, and Brazil. In 1990 he developed an interest in stunt flyingand to day remains committed to his stunt kites.
Dick and Georgean Curran
Dick Curran made kites in grade school in Michigan, then after 47 years of schooling, military service, a job, and marriage, Dick and his wife Georgean decided to attend the kite festival in Long Beach, WA, in 1991. 
To participate at a festival, you need a kite, so the couple designed and built their first original kite. Since then, they have designed a number of original kites, both sewn and made with adhesives. Dick and Georgean are primarily single line flyers, but Dick has flown his box kite with quad lines. They have taught at the Ft. Worden Kitemakers conference, and have won numerous ribbons and People’s Choice awards at different festivals.
Georgean's biggest thrill is watching the kite go up for the first time after making it, and Dick's is making something fly that isn't the same old kite everyone else makes.
Tim Filtz (and his "entourage" a.k.a. Shauna and Connor)
Tim became interested in dual line kite flying in 1987 when he and his roommate Ken Mueller bought their first kites. Living very close to a large open field in the Callingwood area of Edmonton, he had many opportunities to fly. In 1995, after marrying his wife Shauna and moving to Airdrie, Alberta, Tim found that the chinook winds were conducive to kite flying. In Airdrie, he met Bud "The Kite Guy", and became friends. Through Bud's friendship over the years, Tim has collected numerous kites, for almost every type of wind. In 2000, Tim was blessed with his son, Connor, who, at the ripe age of 3 months, attended his first kite festival. This family loves kiting!! They have attended numerous kite festivals annually; "The Children of the Wind" festival in Pincher Creek, Alberta in July as well as "Kites Over Callingwood" in Edmonton on the Labour Day long weekend. In 2003, Tim moved his family to Devon, Alberta for work and to be closer to his aging parents. Their yard at home is full of wind toys and colour. Tim also assisted in organizing "Kites Over Callingwood" for a couple of years and in 2007, made his first visit to "Windscape" as a spectator. The Filtz family is very pleased to have been invited back to Windscape and for Tim to be included with the elite flying demonstrators in 2009.
Paul Loranger
I started 20 years ago on dual lines. I was working at a hobby store in Medicine Hat. Flew them regularly for about 10 years then took a few years off when work got busy. I moved back to Tofield and discovered an old Skynasaur in the boxes of old stored stuff and it was back on. Thanks to youtube a few years back I found the world of Quad lines. Now, except for the odd buggyride in the desert, I fly almost exclusively Rev's. My wife, Candace, who is completely new to the kiting world, just picked up the handles to a dualie last year, and a Rev last month is progressing wonderfully. She'll be outflying me by the end of the summer. The kids are starting to pick up on it a bit. My 6 year old, Joe, is quite the dualie driver and I'm working on getting him on the handles of my Rev.
Don King 
Don King has been flying kites every since he was old enough to walk. In 2000, he decided to step up his game and began to compete in Bay Area Sport Kite League (BASKL) events in Northern California. In 2002, he won Grand Champion in the West Coast Kite Championships novice division and went on to compete at the American Kite Association (AKA) Nationals in Ocean City, Maryland. Don is past president of BASKL and has served on the Northern California Kite Club (NCKC) board of directors. A few years ago, Don began to share his enthusiasm for kiting by serving as master of ceremonies and announcer at kite festivals. His lively commentary, kite trivia, kite history and other ramblings are enjoyed by crowds of all ages.
John Kaminski
From Winnipeg, Manitoba, John Kaminski has thirty years plus of full out flying. At 10 years old, he became bored with making his own kites out of plastic bags from dry cleaners & bamboo and graduated to a 2-liner bat kite made out of cardboard, coat hangers and yellow plastic. Over the next 30 years, John discovered both stunt kites and traction kiting, and become a collector of rare and top-end kites. His first ride on a traction buggy told him "I was going to be spending A LOT OF MONEY doing this!" John put 1870 kilometres on his first buggy before it wore out.
Don Guick
Don was bitten by the "Kiting Bug" in 1998 on a beach in Mexico. On
his return to Winnipeg, he bought a single line delta kite, followed by
a dual line kite and it has grown from there. While in Winnipeg, Don
volunteered at the ILRC Kite Festival in a variety of roles, including
Director of Field and Flyers.
Don enjoys building kites, doing flying demonstrations and other outings. Don has won awards for kite making at the Washington State International Kite Festival, and for kite making at the American Kitefliers Association National Convention. Don's kite bags contain a variety of single line, dual line and quad line kites, line laundry, and ground displays. Some of both Don's and the public's favourites are his flow form, his flex kite, his ghost delta, his swallow flock, and his spikey bouncer, which has provided hours of enjoyment to the young and not so young. Don enjoys interacting and talking with the public at kite festivals. Don and his wife Alice have participated in numerous kite festivals in Canada and the United States.
Don along with his wife Alice have instructed kite making workshops in a number of schools in Winnipeg and have continued to do workshops in their new home town of Coaldale, Alberta.
Alice Guick
When her husband Don took up kite flying about 10 years ago, Alice tagged along with him and volunteered in the one of the children’s tents at the Winnipeg Kite Festival. The following year she became a kite mascot wandering around the fields in her diamond kite costume giving and handing out information. When Don became more involved in the kite festival she assisted him in his duties and eventually started to assist him in the flying and making of kites. Alice says she is not a real kite flyer, but as she named herself, a “HUMBLE ASSISTANT”. Alice likes to fly single line figure kites and claims the best way to fly is sitting in a lawn chair soaking up the suns rays. She also makes the occasional miniature kite and enjoys doing kids kite making work shops with her husband Don.
John Pollock
John Pollock approaches his kites first as art pieces. He is an art teacher, an artist and a kitemaker. John is a Professor of Art at Montana State University-Billings, where he has taught since 1974. Painting and lithography, which are the areas of media that he works in, have also become his method of creating images on kites.
Over the years he has received many awards and fellowships in printmaking, watercolor, and now in kitemaking. He started showing and competing with his kite on a national level in 1999 and has received awards every year since. The most prestigious of these awards has been twice receiving the Grand National Champion Award at the American Kitefliers Convention. The first was in 2004 for a kite titled “The Crows Stealing the Buffalo Ponies”. The second was in 2007 for a kite titled “Good Times”. Both of these kites have images that are hand painted on nylon by a process using acrylic paint.
To be able to paint on nylon the way Mr. Pollock is currently doing, he spent much of his time while on sabbatical during 2003/04 experimenting with different materials and processes. The successful results turned out to be fairly simple and involve the use of acrylic paint and a special additive made by Golden Acrylics. The results have been very successfully both visually and durable. Besides painting on kite material, John will occasionally create an image and directly print the image onto the nylon material using hand lithography. These processes have been used to make many of the kites that he will be flying at this festival.
John is also very sharing with his ideas and methods. He has conducted several kite painting workshops and demos at various places around the country. Kiting, The Journal of the American Kitefliers Association, printed an article written by him about his painting process in the Spring Issue of 2007.
Mike Rose
For the Roses, Kite flying is a family affair! Michael, Andrea, Josh, Jake, and Jorryn enjoy a lot of different types of Kites from stunt, to single line and even some traction. They have found flying kites a great way to spend time as a family and get some fresh air! The entire family has a passion for kite flying and love to share it with whoever is interested. This passion for kites led them to create the Great Canadian Kite Company which promotes kite flying locally, and sells kites all over North America. At Windscapes this year, they will be flying an assortment of stunt kites along with their 81 sq.ft. Mega Power Sled kite with Super Bear (3 metreslong), a flying octopus and wind wheel. They will also fly their Gomberg Ghost Delta (11ft wide and 30ft long) and an assortment of other kites!
Bud Taylor
Bud Taylor is from Airdrie, Alberta and is Canada’s “Kite Guy”. He is an avid flyer and kite builder for more than 40 years. Bud and his family have attended and participated in many kite festivals around Canada and the United States and he is a regular at all of the Windscape festivals here in Swift Current.
Bud’s father Dusty Taylor introduced his boys on their fervor of kites at a very young age of around 5 years old. Kite building lessons took root almost immediately after the introduction of their first home built newspaper kite made with wooden sticks, binder twine and Mom’s old stockings. The passion for kiting continued to grow within his boys and took them from simple materials found around the house into the more advanced high tech fabric and carbon spars of today. The lessons he taught to his boys have taken a dream and made it into a reality that they truly enjoy sharing with others and introducing their friends to those new heights.
Bud, along with now deceased brother Scott, started The Kite Guys kite business in 1989 and have been looking skyward ever since. The business deals with all aspects of kiting from teaching simple basic kite building workshops in schools and group sessions to flying the more advanced dual & quad line kites and right into the all out crazy power of today’s Traction kites. Bud will fly anything and everything and you can usually find him outdoors soaking up the sun and the wind and enjoying his perpetual youth at the end of a kite line. He is an active member of many kite clubs and organizations and is most willing to share his passion with all who are interested.
www.kiteguys.ca / email kiteguys@shaw.ca. His motto: “Fly a kite, just for the health of it.”
Ken Ruhr
I've been flying kites for over 30 years. There's nothing much better than flying and hanging out with kite folks, be it kites, birds, radio controlled airplanes, boomerangs, fire works or fish. If it puts color in the sky, I LIKE IT!!!!!
Kenny Wong
Kenny Wong of Winnipeg, MB, is also a Windscape veteran. Kenny is a three-wheel traction kiter who has flown all over the world.
Ray Gowan
Ray Gowan, of Swift Current, Saskatchewan, has been flying and building kites for many years and has become our resident Stunt Kite Expert.
David Tuttle
David Tuttle, also from Swift Current, Saskatchewan is our very own ‘kite guy,’ and has been a kite enthusiast for many years.
