I Bought an Anemometer

Not the most original title for a journal entry, but it's the truth. I did buy an anemometer: a Kestrel 2000. I can't say it was an impulse buy since I've been looking at anemometers a little over two years now. But the decision to get it right now? I suppose it was.

I've been holding off on getting an anemometer, probably for relatively silly reasons. I can gauge wind pretty well, and the wind models I use are generally accurate. But I've had a bad run of KAP outings recently when I would either find the wind too weak to lift a rig, or too strong to safely fly a kite. I've come home frustrated, more often than not, with little to show for it. An anemometer can't make the wind blow, but it can send a very clear message if the conditions just aren't right.

Another reason I decided to buy one now is that World Wide KAP Week 2009 is coming up soon, and given my finances, there's no way I'd be able to get the kite I've been lusting after (a Dan Leigh Trooper RS, a high-wind delta that can handle the conditions at Upolu Point and Southpoint.) So I took what finances I had and put them into the anemometer. It will be a useful addition to my KAP bag, and if it gives me better awareness of the flying conditions at a new site, it could make the difference between a successful outing and one that ends in damaged or destroyed gear. A sound investment.

But in a larger sense, it was just plain time. A few years ago, if asked which hobby was actually paying for itself the best, I would have to say machining and writing. I wrote a couple of articles for a machining magazine, and when they were published it was the first time I'd ever actually had a hobby start paying for itself. The funny thing is, I used the money from the articles to pay for KAP gear rather than tools. To be fair, I did use some of it to buy two years worth of subscriptions to my machining magazines, so it did go back into the hobby to some extent. But it also helped bootstrap the next.

Today a more truthful answer is that it's KAP that's bringing in the most real revenue. I've sold a number of prints, and have had requests for even larger prints though so far none of those requests have led to a sale. Nonetheless, my KAP hobby has done more to pay for itself than any other hobby I've got. By and large, about half my KAP gear was paid for by print sales. This is better than my ratio for my machine shop and those magazine articles, but it's still not a hundred percent.

I'm at a bit of a leaping-off point. Selling prints is great, but I don't really think that's where I'm going to stop in terms of letting KAP pay for itself. I'm looking at other options, most of which involve doing paying gigs. But for paying gigs to work out, there has to be some guarantee that the flight can happen, and that the right tools are used for the conditions. And for new kite purchases to make sense, I have to be able to demonstrate to myself that I've been asked to fly in conditions that would warrant them.

Hence the anemometer. WWKW 2009 is an excellent opportunity to characterize each of the kites I use, to find out the wind range for each one where I can reliably lift my KAP rig, and the line angle I'm likely to get. This information can be used to plan shots in ways I've never been able to do, and to provide a better guarantee that I can pull off a particular shot.

My goal, by the end of WWKW 2009, is to have a portfolio of images to show to prospective clients, and the ability to know if my gear can pull off a shot that a customer asks for. The anemometer is the first step in this direction.

There's an old adage that as soon as you start to do a hobby for money, it turns into a job. The point, of course, is to keep hobbies as hobbies and to keep work as work. But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't thrilled when I saw my first article printed in that magazine. It only made me want to write more. And when my first KAP print sold, I was ecstatic. I hope this next leg of the venture works out as well.

-- Tom