Line/kite ratio increase

15 meter lines? I'm guessing some one made those up. You would actually learn better(?) on the 25 meter lines. Gives you more time to react to what the kite does. Surprisingly the most breakage I've seen is that the verticals blow out! Usually in too much wind. For unplanned landings try this trick - if the kite is going to crash - let it! Learn to "give to the kite", take steps forward, throw your arms out. DO NOT PULL! Pulling only drives the kite faster into the ground!

3 hours ago, Wayne Dowler said:

15 meter lines? I'm guessing some one made those up. You would actually learn better(?) on the 25 meter lines. Gives you more time to react to what the kite does.

I bought this line set ready made 15m long (49 foot). I kind of figured that since QLK is more of precision and positioning the kite in different places 15m would not result in a too small window considering that I sometimes do fly the 4D on 18 foot lines (6m). But as I said I just started out learning so I'll will surely notice the difference and possibly I'll change my mind when I meet more wind.

3 hours ago, Wayne Dowler said:

Surprisingly the most breakage I've seen is that the verticals blow out! Usually in too much wind.

Good to know (assuming that "the verticals" are the two spars connecting the front and trailing edge and that they snap in high wind).

3 hours ago, Wayne Dowler said:

For unplanned landings try this trick - if the kite is going to crash - let it! Learn to "give to the kite", take steps forward, throw your arms out. DO NOT PULL! Pulling only drives the kite faster into the ground!

My DLK reflexes knows this thoroughly, while my QLK self knows this mostly only limited to theory unfortunately. Most often I only pull the brake(/rear) lines when the kite to ground distance rapidly decreases. On the other hand normally you fly faster and more frequent in the forward direction. Hmm.. possibly I should do some fly fast-slowly-fast exercises with varying line tension (and pitch angle) to get this going?

A couple of things to learn and be good at:

Speed control - that fast, slow, fast thing is good. Being able to slow it down or speed it up - on command! Develops that "control" we all want.

Straight lines - You maybe aren't in an area of team flying, but - learn to fly straight lines anyway. Pick out something on the horizon and try keeping nice, level flight, in any attitude (inverted, backwards, etc). Learn to do 180* turns with no loss of altitude. (If you do fly team, you'll see the advantage to learning this!)

Hovers - Learn them in any and every orientation. Again, all about that control we look for! (and again in team, think of those positions on a ball - everyone faces different issues, depending on where they are in that ball!)

Remember that "give to the kite"? Better to go and straighten things up, than to go down and find broken spars (or worse)!!

And remember longer lines give you more time to react - bigger window!

So you see how all of this is good for solo flying and much bleeds over to team flying!

Nothing bad can happen once you are comfortable flying the kite inverted/ in reverse.

practice a few times each session with the kite inverted.  Take off with it in this orientation, fly to waist high, stop and return to the ground.  keep doubling up the distant traveled in reverse, go straight up in reverse from resting on the ground SLOW.  When you can make this look effortless and back all the way up (to the top of the window) you will be in control.  That could take many hours of practice until it looks like the kite is riding on railroad tracks.  In low wind conditions this may mean you are briskly walking backwards also instead of stationary!

If a quad will not fly in reverse there a couple of unused strings affixed to the bridle.  

Tune the reverse (in more & more) until the kite will back up from an inverted position, when starting off as sitting on the ground. Either the top leaders get longer or the bottoms get shorter,... or both need to move!

Hold the handles softly, like you were planning to drop them.  Make tiny movements with your handles and move your feet to add to (or diminish!) the wind's energy so your reverse flight is silky smooth.

On 7/7/2017 at 0:49 PM, Paul LaMasters said:

the kite inverted.  Take off with it in this orientation, fly to waist high, stop and return to the ground.  keep doubling up the distant traveled in reverse, go straight up in reverse from resting on the ground SLOW.  When you can make this look effortless and back all the way up (to the top of the window) you will be in control.

I'll include it in the exercises and learn that thoroughly. Initially I had problems switching between holding inverted and non-inverted orientation (like entering two different modes), so I still do some focusing on the transitions between the orientations.

On 7/7/2017 at 0:49 PM, Paul LaMasters said:

Hold the handles softly, like you were planning to drop them.  Make tiny movements with your handles and move your feet to add to (or diminish!) the wind's energy so your reverse flight is silky smooth.

Already holding them very light. Also thinks that some of the low wind techniques from DLK carries over into QLK. But thank you anyway! It is time for some more QLK practice.

On 7/6/2017 at 8:00 PM, Wayne Dowler said:

So you see how all of this is good for solo flying and much bleeds over to team flying!

Even though I don't have any kite flying surrounding I always plan ahead, moves in planned paths/figures between tricks (DLK) and (obviously) try to make it look as good as possible (DLK and QLK). So in this aspect I guess it could be considered as a (non-existent) team flying preparation. However it feels very unfamiliar when flying two DLKs and the lines cross - so that is an aspect that remains getting used to (and flying two DLKs in itself still requires some more "getting used to"). The least (solo) teamflying-like is trick flying in my opinion, especially when randomizing input to see what the kite wants to do.