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Hey John, Just wanted to post a birthday wish for you. Hope all is well, and that this upcoming year will be fulfilling. Make the best of it, as I am sure you will. Happy Birthday Bud.............and later this month, same to TK & Luca !!!!

Too much credit given to guy who makes it up on site. Frob I don't think about the music, ( back to the future is an outdoor song!) certainly no pre-planned movements . nope I simply let loose and watch the crowd's reaction. Dave's original design almost flies itself, so no hard work by pilot, it glides down a wall unattended too, so trying to include that ending seems reasonable. The crowd occupies all of the wall surfaces, so I'm forced to throw the handles over their heads once contact is made. All the antics in the world won't cure a dangerous safety violation! I understand you want advise to improve,... well here's mine, be yourself with kites. Are you organized, great use that. Me? Heck no! Loose as a deck of cards in the wind, I can't apply organization, it is against everything I stand for! i am lazy, don't edit music, plan corrography, even maintenance on my wings is neglected, been described as the Charles Barkley of kiting (not a positive role model.) i am exceptionally gifted at fun, like a double PHd in it! Spectators like a friendly smile, indoors is intimate with the folks, pick one individual and focus/fly for them. A kid, cute gal, special needs individual, not someone you know. work your strengths and be yourself, listen to your music, know it well, don't follow my example, I am everything wrong with kiting!

I compete, have since 1999...... but that doesn't mean I care about how I do. I just want everyone to have the same opportunities I've experienced. See what's being done, and how. Anything I can take and make my own? Is the thing I'm after "equipment specific"?,... if so what's different, that allows this thing to take place at all? I have music, but it's the same ole crap I've had for over a decade. Honestly I do better just pulling a rabbit out of a hat (sound tent chooses). I don't usually win, only if the conditions are beyond the legal limits of competition (MMB is 3-18 mph I believe). I'm awesome under a dead calm or if the portas-potties are blowing over (under 2 mph or over 28) I've got a few things I've practiced for years to throw in,... as the music fits,..... be they precision moves or slack lined tricks. A winning routine is built on straight lines, tight corners and clearly recognizable circles. The rest of your routine has to fit and belong where you put it! On the East coast you will not receive a good score if you fly a quad with two string fitting music and flight style (almost all forward and fast). Here the quad line effect is king, you better show me what that kite can do and do so tight. 15% side slides and full hovers are possible with a dually, upright or inverted. SHOW ME quad effect, back that pig up, slide diagonally and make it match your music. Are your tricks balanced (if you can only do it one way then you can't do it yet!) across the window? Do you use the window's edge, where others can't fly at all? What separated you from all others, technique, music, equipment, routine, fashion statements? Competition has taught me so much, new friends and new techniques. Everyone should have the same opportunity that was offered me. There are plenty of things to complain about during a competition too. foremost, you WATCH more than you get to actually fly. Still it's worth it to me. What is everyone else doing?, well I'm not going to do it and that's for sure! But sharing the tricks of the trade conversations, those friendships established even the ribbing that takes place before, during and afterwards. The newest, coolest stuff will be on display with somebody wiling to let you try it out! Given a choice, I will always team-fly the last position, I prefer inverted, and occasionally I've been known to see and give chase to a squirrel too!

First, I don't compete but I do a lot of Demo Flys. I'm 100% a Soul Flier and I choose music that I know very well so my timing steps reflect the music and the mood. I do let the choice of equipment for the day determine my music selections. Light Wind days will give you flowing performance from me. High winds and I'll be picking something far more up-tempo..

For me, solo flying, indoors or outside, is all about the music and the mood it conveys. I rarely have any planned routine, just fall into rhythm with how it moves me. I may go into it with wanting to try several things, but where I try them is dictated by the music. Soul flying ...... Team flying is a whole different beast, partly because I'm tailgunner on my team. Our leader usually comes up with the majority of a routine. We fly it to find out if it works or not. Maybe some moves fit better here or there? Maybe some moves don't work as thought, but will if modified? This is a chance for the whole team to have input on it. But still, it fits to the music, the mood, the rhythm. I do call for many "beginner" lines. I try to determine the skill set each flier brings to the table, and construct the line based on what people can do. No sense putting someone at tailgunner if they can't hold an inverted hover, that means balls would be shaky. BUT, I also try to push them a bit, try new moves, experiment. Do things in segments or slow motion. Talk it out and explain if need be. But push them to come away a better flier if possible. Funny story: A friend and I were fooling around trying new moves to be different as a pair. Out of those experiments, I built a complete pairs routine - but without any music! One day I heard a song that fit perfectly! Match made by the wind lords!!!

The title sums it up. There hasn't been much on the site about how people choose the moves, one short discussion from 15 years ago, and a few stories that I've unearthed while browsing old SKQ and Kite Lines magazine archives. From the most broad perspectives it is about building up a collection of motions and choosing from them. I've got a good chunk of the AKA compulsory figures under my belt, plus a bunch of figures and ideas from watching at festivals and old performance videos. I'm not talking about doing a motion, or the techniques behind a pinwheel or tip pivots or anything. How exactly do you choose what to fly? How do you match up what you hear in the music with how the kite moves? I think this is where the art comes in, and I want to learn that art. When flying solo, on the most broad perspective slow points in music mean arcs, slow circles, and stalls. Fast usually means angles, snaps, and tight motion. But for YOU INDIVIDUALLY, what guides your choices? Why does one person choose an arc over a circle or a stall? Why do you choose to do an axel instead of a sharp turn? Why do you say "I need to do X because Y"? When flying groups (which I rarely have the opportunity to do), it is much the same. Why should the caller choose one formation over another? What is it that says one situation is better with side-by-side boxes, another similar situation is better with do-se-do/matrix, another calls for a blender? What goes through your head when you are calling? When flying together with beginners --- since when I can occasionally convince someone to fly with me I'm usually the most advanced of the group --- how do you build up interesting patterns when your copilots only know two or three maneuvers? For those who are professionals or otherwise advanced, how do you make the calls still be fun and also compelling? And finally, for fixed and pre-choreographed routines, what do you do when the wind doesn't match what you had planned? "Just wing it, and try to get back into formation" seems to be typical, but some performances seem to suddenly shift into ad-hoc moves that still work out despite the wind dropping and the team suddenly running a reverse marathon. What goes through your head as the caller? When watching videos both of competitions (and of myself), there are flights that are polished yet completely unrelated to the music. There are flights that are unpolished but fit well with the music. And there are the rare amazing flights where both the motion and the music are amazing together. I imagine the answers are unique to each pilot. In that regard I feel like an art student looking at masterpieces, being able to identify the curves and forms in the art, able to clone pieces of what masters do, but struggling to create something masterful of my own.

Those are good, but they don't really address the art side. Flying at a fast tempo can mean lots of twists and turns, but even if those are performed well, the tempo alone doesn't make it beautiful. I think about this article. That "washing the car" description seems to fit for me. When I know music well I can do my own "soul flying" as was described, maybe matching wingtip turns to a beat, flying certain shapes at given times, but nothing that makes me think "wow!" I like the general guidance for showing off quad-specifics when flying quads, and not doing what others are doing. Those fit nicely in my engineering brain, remove X from the set, leaving Y and Z to choose from. But still trying to make the art side of choreography, what is going through your head when you choose them? What makes it a "wow"? That's good, and I look at shows like that. Living in central Texas there isn't much, but I attend whatever I can, and watch streams and videos that as best I can. I guess coming from you specifically, an example of the wow factors was this segment of yours at SPI from two years back. As always, those performances are better in person than in video. Great music selection, it's driving, dramatic, and hits strong emotions. A+ for that. When I look at "wow" moments during the performance, there were several where you interacted with the audience; several "wow" moments were over-the-audience glides, stopping and reversing over the crowd, or the long slides. A few other wow moments were a few series of fast tugs (where you were clearly getting a workout). Throwing the kite out of the arena toward the air vent that pulled it away from the audience at the end was also a wow moment for me. Were those just ad-hoc moments of dancing to the music, or more along the lines of "time to do another pattern, ... glide turn back, glide turn back, next wall, glide turn back, glide turn back, on to the next pattern..." ? Or did you have specific segments already in place fitted to the music, "this segment goes through four long glide/return pieces, that's followed by some rapid beats, and next comes this one really long slow draw ..." ? Or in the moment were you thinking more about trying to get up over the audience specifically, and because it was on your mind you repeatedly went over people during the segment? Basically, what went through your head as you chose those specific patterns? For others like Brett Marchel, many of his videos lately seem to be focused around axels, mixing them in effective ways with other motions. Is the thought process more like "I want to do ALL the axels! An axel here, and an axel here! Here an axel, there an axel, eveywhere an axel!"? Or is the thought more along the lines of "to the side, TURN, other side and TURN, back over and TURN?" Or more dancing to the beat, like "1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, flat, yank, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, flat, yank!" ? Or more about knowing the specific song and what patterns happen to work well for it? Why all the axels and not something else for those sharp turns? I guess written differently: Lots of y'all are are awesome performers. What are you thinking, how can I perform as awesome as you? In addition to a billion hours on the lines, what is going through your head for pattern selection that changes it from a meh to a wow?

I'm In. I haven't participated in a Karma in a while.

Took it out today with my dad. we put up a 54" Ascension delta about 200 ft and let it fly for a couple hours while I tried to teach my self how to fly my new Rev. Other than the crank handle is a bit too stiff to turn, it worked out great! As to how much line it can hold, it depends on the diameter of the line. With the spiderwire, it is very very thin. This reel would hold several MILES of 80# spiderwire. I am overboard with the 3300 feet that is on it now. There are not many places near my home where I can fly that far up without endangering air traffic.