The most common and most likely answer to this crossword clue is the 5 letter word KITES
I've seen this crossword clue in Financial Times
K
I
T
E
S
More clues leading to the result KITES
- Football clothing starts to excite strikers and wingers
- Equipment best uncovered for so-called planes
- Birds briefly peck around the edges
- Birds strip outer covering of eucalyptus
- Risk it — especially boxing these birds
- Old aircraft, many of them flown by youngsters
- Coming west, regularly seen sweet dinky birds
Buddy explains!
The straight part
We know that "Equipment/so-called planes" is the straight/definition part of the clue. The straight part is often a synonym or definition, in this case equipment/so-called planes = kites.The cryptic/wordplay part
In cryptic crossword there's often an wordplay/cryptic part as well.This part involves a more complex hint, such as an anagram, homophone, hidden word, etc.
Sadly, We don't have an explanation for this specific crossword clue yet.