There were a number of options when it came to looking at the last 30 years of The Kiteflier. We could go over the founding history, the way that the ‘old’ regime was cast off and a new one put in place. Another option was to take something from each issue and reproduce it here—but that has been done before for other anniversaries.

In the end we decided that it would be interesting to take a snapshot at the 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 year marks and see how the shape of kite flying in the UK has changed. These snapshots are simply taken from the content of that years Kiteflier magazines (or K.O.N. in the early days), this is more in the way of ease of access, all of the Kiteflier issues are stored in the office whereas the other archives (with magazines from various clubs worldwide, shop catalogues, newspaper articles and so on) are in boxes in the attic. [One dream is to sort them all out one day].

5th Anniversary 1984. The April edition saw, for the first time, inclusion of the Midlands Kite Fliers News within the pages of the magazine. The MKF was also founded in 1979 although it is 5 months older than the Kite Society! The number of local groups listed in the April issue were 10 (of which 4 no longer exist). Shops and traders providing discount to members; nine (two of which were overseas, 4 of which no longer exist. Number of festivals listed—15. 1984 also saw the subscription rate increase from £3.00 to £4.00.

10th anniversary 1989. The January issue reproduced a safety code from the Drachen Club Deutschland. It goes on to say “To make sure our sport does not get a bad name and is not perhaps subject to certain restrictions each one of us should observe a few basic rules. Subscription rate was £6.00. The second STACK news was published in the pages of The Kiteflier. Number of festivals listed 10.

15th Anniversary 1994. The group directory listed 47 regional group and one national group. Of these 28 no longer exist. The trade list showed 93 shops/traders of which 57 no longer exist. Number of festivals listed 20 UK, 6 overseas. Of the UK festivals just 10 are still running in one form or another. Subscription rate £8.00.

Notable in the January 1994 issue was a full page from the Ian Meredith titles “Be a Safer Buggier”. This gave 11 simple rules for safer buggying at festivals. Nothing has really changed, safety is just as important today as it was then. Just to finalise the buggy theme (which shows how big it all was in 1994) Peter Lynn contributed a set of rules to cover buggy racing with the aim to get international agreement of the rules. The July issue announced the formal creation of the British Buggy Club, this announcement goes on to say “There is a need for a national independent organisation to help promote buggying and buggy skills throughout the UK and at all times keep the FUN aspect alive and kicking”.

Pin collecting was also a major happening around this time with most groups producing a pin of some sort. This extended to the traders as well, although it could be argued that it was a good way of making a bit of profit. The mania at the time was such that a new pin being spotted on the field led to a frenzy of people wanting to (preferably) swap pins but as a last resort buy one!

In July 1994 Andrew Tate wrote an article about Kites in Cyberspace and promotes the availability of Usenet and rec.kites. This talks about internet connectivity just becoming available via such suppliers as the BBC, CompuServe and CIX.

20th Anniversary 1999. Membership increases to £10.00 (first change since 1996). It is probably around this time that the popularity and availability of large inflatable kites becomes the norm. It is interesting to look at the events list in the January issue. There are some 15 main events listed an the majority of these are still running in 2004. It does appear that events have polarised around these main ones and there are very few new events on the calendar. It was in this year that a road was named after Vivian Comma the creator of the Kisskeedee kite.

25th Anniversay 2004. Membership still cost £10.00 The 2004 Handbook listed 118 traders and 36 regional and national groups.  There were 39 events listed in the April addition.  This was the the year of the Worlds Largest Kite's visit to the UK - flying in public for the first time at Portsmouth Kite Festival.

30th Anniversary 2009.  A small rise in the membership cost to £11.00 during the last five years.  Since July 2005 the magazine has been printed in-house with full colour covers and photo pages (not always!).  Currently the traders listed stand at around 87 and the groups listed at 29.  Number of events listed 35.

Technology

Over the last 30 years there have been a lot of changes in the way that the magazine - KON to start with and now the The Kiteflier - has been produced.

	In the beginning there was the Typewriter. The first few issues were produced on a manual typewriter - which is still around for those extreme emergencies! Any drawings for the magazine were produced using a Rotring pen, drawing implements and paper. Letraset - or dry letter transfers (remember that) was also used for captions on the diagrams. John Barker produced many a cartoon using his unique talent. As for printing the early issues (issues 1 to 3) - these were photocopied at work. In fact some copies of issue 1 were copied onto foolscap paper rather than A4 (it was the only paper size used). The membership system consisted of each members details being held on a file card - fortunately the numbers were low as we had to write the envelopes by hand.
	Then came the First computer - Sharp MZ80K, 20KB of RAM, Z80 processor and a cassette storage system. In fact the whole operating system was booted from tape! Other programs were also loaded from tape and a simplistic word processor was used. Whilst the pages with text could be printed drawings still had to be done by hand as for the early days. The membership system was also held on tape and used a very archaic method of having to view the addresses in a single stream of data with 'blobs' representing line feeds! Linked up to a Epson MX80 printer we could print the address labels rather than write them out by hand. Sold the Sharp shortly after buying the Amstrad.
	Then was the Second Computer. An IBM clone Amstrad PC1512 was purchased when they came out in 1986 - Dual 5.25" floppy discs, 512KB RAM, 8086 processor, hooked up to the same printer as the Sharp but some quirk meant that it did not work properly, therefore ended up buying a Star NL-10. Vast improvement on the systems and with the ultimate add on of a 20MB file card allowed data to be kept on line without having to load floppies. Around this time a DTP style tool called Fontasy was purchased which allowed a bit more variation in the fonts and graphics used - and it showed when we first got this as the overuse of fonts and graphics was rather obvious - but hey, it was a new toy. Diagrams were still done using the trusty Rotring pen. Membership system was Dataease (a bootleg copy from work) - which was dead easy to use, character based and did not require any coding. WordPerfect 5.0 was the word processor of choice - except for the Fontasy pages. Took it on holiday one year to do the magazine whilst we were away! Still have this one in the attic! During this time also obtained a very cheap Amstrad portable - dual floppy but we could do things at events like take the members. Unfortunately it was stolen at Weymouth one year.
Third computer bought in 1993. Dell—faster processor, Windows 3.1 based with a 230MB hard disc and 4MB RAM. Add ons eventually included an Iomega Zip drive for offline storage [which as an aside came in mighty useful when the disc crashed wiping out the membership system. We were in the process of converting to Paradox so thankfully had a new system with the data in it to use]. Other additions—more memory, faster CPU (bought whilst on holiday in Florida), hand scanner, page scanner, flatbed scanner over time. Around this time a 2400 baud modem was also obtained allowing us to browse a number of bulletin boards (no such thing as the web then). Nice character based boards using the old version of Hyperterminal. One of the earlier bulletin boards was a dial up to Nottingham - not cheap on the call costs! Zip drives, Laser printer (Sharp Wintype 4000) to supplement the dot matrix. Paradox Database membership system created rather than simple mailing list giving us a bit more control. Faster modems (4800, 9600, 32000 and the ultimate 54000), web browsing, email all came along. Used CompuServe for a number of years (remember the funny numbers for the id - we were one of the first in the UK to have a real name instead). Microsoft publisher used for magazine. Web site built (handcrafted in raw HTML!). Used CompuServe for the first ISP as well as the homepage. Kept using this computer well past the year 2000 - of course Windows 3.1 was not year 2000 compliant so had fun and games with the date stamps on files—something to do with 100 being the year! At various times have also used an old IBM ThinkPad for dual typing—so we could both do the work at the same time. The Dell is also in the attic! Fourth computer. Compaq, 12GB disc, 128K memory - upgraded from 64K, Celeron processor, built in modem, Colour Xerox M750 printer. Finally handed on to Tara. FrontPage 2000 used for web site rather than hand crafted. Had our own hosted web site. Fifth computer. HP Pavilion, 256MB Ram, 20GB disc, AMD Athlon processor. Mostly the same software as before but later versions. Broadband obtained 2004. At the same time wired up the two PCs in a network - back to dual working! Current Computer. Custom built mini-tower with 1GB Ram, ASUS Motherboard and far more disc then we ever need.  For printing the magazine an HP A3 colour laserjet. Over time the main change has been the use of email for communication and submission of items for the magazine. The time required to create the magazine has been reduced substantially as there is little need to type the items in anymore. Various drawing tools have been used over time. Digital cameras have also been a great boon. Rather than the shoot, print and then scan to get a picture in the magazine. Link up and copy directly from the camera and the quality is as good if not better!