This would have been about 1975 or so and it was a GLORIOUS spring day in College Park, Georgia and for some reason I was at my high school after hours. My high school was Lakeshore High School in College Park Georgia.
Being in College Park we were just a few miles from the Atlanta Airport. In fact we were so close that when a plane flew over the teacher would have to stop talking because we had no AC so the windows were all open. That's how close we were. I said all that to say this.
We had a concrete football Stadium behind the school with a large press box on the top of the stadium. On the top of the stadium I saw a friend of mine Mike Brown with a strange black kite that looked like a bat. I had never seen a kite like that before so I went up to investigate. Mike told me this was a brand new kite design with no tail. It was already in the air when I got there and it was flying great. Mike told me he had 4000 feet of string and looking at the spool about the size of a pineapple I had no reason to doubt him. After about 30 minutes all was going well and the kite was flying strong and pulling hard. Mike said, lets see how high it will go and he started letting out string.
Now from time to time they would change the traffic pattern at the airport and this was one of those time when all of the sudden planes started their landing approach almost directly over our football stadium. With about 3000 feet of string most normal kids would have panicked and would have quickly started reeling in the string. Well that's not what we did, I yelled MORE STRING and so Mike did just that...Up to about 3500 feet now we were laughing like crazy people because as each plane went over the turbulence from the plane would cause the kite to dip and dive and sway back and forth and we laughed even harder. Then it happened...A Delta plane came over and the kite disappeared and the spool of string was ripped out of Mike's hands and landed about 200 feet away in the middle of the football field. The kite had been sucked into the engine of the plane.
We were convinced the plane was on the was down and killing everyone on board so we decided it would be a good time to go home. On the way to the car we were expecting to hear the crash but it never happened. I'm sure there was an investigation but I was not involved. I'm hoping the statue of limitations has run out by now.
#Batkite
