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Antelope Island • Kites, Simon Crafts believes, are "a blend of art and engineering."

"It's an artistic outlet for a guy like me who's not an artist," said Crafts, a mining engineer from Vanlue, Ohio. Crafts was one of some 20 enthusiasts who flew their kites Saturday in the clear blue sky over Antelope Island State Park during the annual Stampede Festival.

If your image of kites stops with Benjamin Franklin, Charlie Brown and Mary Poppins, these fliers will set you straight.

Instead of the familiar paper-and-stick diamond-shaped kites, these fliers have created elaborate designs of geometric complexity — square-ended boxes, spiraling circles, bird-like wingspans or triple-level triangle shapes.

When Kevin Bayless of Taylorsville, who organized the festival's kite-flying area, first got interested in kites, "I got a pro stunt kite for $200, and my wife said, 'You spent how much on what?' "

That's when Bayless, who works as a maintenance man for Varian Medical Systems, decided to learn how to make them himself.

Antelope Island is a challenging place to fly kites because the winds around the Great Salt Lake are unpredictable, said Crafts, who has flown his kites around the Midwest. What feels like a good breeze at ground level can change speed and direction at 30 or 40 feet up. "You're having to work the lines," Crafts said.

"It's on, it's off," pro flier John Barresi said of the wind at Antelope Island, which he compared to flying through peanut butter.

Barresi is captain and co-founder of iQuad, a team of six fliers from the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia who has toured the world showing off precision skills.

Barresi and his team — which includes his wife, TK Barresi, along with team co-founder David Hathaway, Steve de Rooy, Bazzer Poulter and Willow Robin — performed intricate maneuvers using quad-line kites, so-called because each kite flies on four lines with each flier holding two foot-long curved rods as controllers.

The iQuad team ran its bowtie-shaped kites through graceful synchronized moves. Their kites formed circles and pyramids, chased each other across the sky, dropped into dives and stopped to hover inches off the ground. The team timed these maneuvers to music: Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" and the theme from "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Working solo, Barresi made his kite dance, walk, twitch and swoon in comic fashion to accompany music from the Rossini-inspired Bugs Bunny cartoon "Rabbit of Seville."

Occasionally the iQuad kite lines would twist around each other, and the fliers would then reverse the maneuver to disentangle. The lines on the quad-line kites are a polyethylene fiber, with the brand name Spectra, that's slippery enough to allow fliers to control the lines even when twisted.

The disadvantage, Barresi said, is that the lightweight lines are expensive and delicate. If a kid flying a diamond kite on a string crossed the quad-line kites, Barresi said, "his $5 line would cut through our $70 lines like butter."

The quad-line kites aren't cheap, either. A vendor at the festival was selling Revolution kites, the iQuad team's preferred brand, for $199 to $320 each.

For amateur enthusiasts and pro fliers alike, flying at Antelope Island was a chance to test the wind, meet other kite fliers and kite makers, and, in Crafts' words, "come out and be a kid."

Bayless agreed. "My worst day of kite-flying is still better than my best day at work," he said.

spmeans@sltrib.com High-flying fun on Antelope Island

The Antelope Island Stampede Festival continues Sunday at Antelope Island State Park, west of Syracuse. (If traveling from Interstate 15, take Exit 332 heading west, drive 14 miles through Syracuse and across the Antelope Island causeway — then follow the signs to the event.)

Balloon launch • Vendors open at 8 a.m. A hot-air balloon launch (weather permitting) is scheduled from 8:30 to 10 a.m.

Other activities • A pie-eating contest takes place at 11 a.m. Demonstrations by the 5050 BMX Team are scheduled for noon, 3 and 5:30 p.m. Musical acts will perform at 1, 3:30 and 6 p.m. The event ends at 8 p.m.

Kite-flying • Pony rides, a climbing wall, inflatable rides happen all day, and there's a public kite-flying area.

Info • Admission is $15 per carload. Vendors take cash only. For more information, go to http://www.antelopeislandstampede.com.