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Welcome to the forum.

I am thinking of purchasing a Level One Badass, has anyone had any experience of this kite, good or bad.

I would like to propose a new topic relating to the use of 3D Printing technology to create parts for building and customizing kites. I have almost a year of experience with this technology, using it every day, and would like to share what I have learned with those of you who are interested in the subject. I am an engineer by profession and finding this new tool has been the realization of a dream of a lifetime... If I can sketch an idea on paper and then create a 3D model of it with software then I can hold a physical example of my idea in my hand after printing it. Many ideas can be used as functional parts rather than just prototypes. Surprisingly, the technology is rather affordable for the consumer these days. But there is a moderate degree of skill that you will need to have to design and print your own parts. Printing parts that others have designed is less complicated but also requires some computer skill and skill in using your particular printer. If it is agreed that this is an interesting topic, then please reply and I will give an introduction to my setup and workflow and some examples of parts that can be made. I’m looking forward to your replies. I am very enthusiastic about the subject and hope that your input will also help me gain knowledge. Regards, Segel

There is no joy in a virtual kite festival for those that don't do social media.. I just found out one of my favorite events will be "virtual" I didn't even bother to ask why. Can't even bring myself to care about it. Further, my usual flying fields are off limits to me right now. I understand social distancing and I'm in a higher risk group. But kite Flying outdoors is generally pretty well distanced. I detest Facebook and I'm not willing to give my personal information to them. That is why I'm not there. Same answer pretty much for the other social platforms. So my entire kite season is a bust.. I have 17 kites in my bag that no one outside of Kitelife and a few select friends have really even seen. I've done bridle tests but except for the swirling field and under the trees they've never really flown. Only one other event on my calendar this year and I'll have to work that weekend so no joy there..Probably won't happen anyway, it's outdoors and who wants fresh air any more.

Decided to revisit my original perspective design with a bit of black and Flo Green. LE is also Flo Green 72". Edge binding will be black. Sail is sewn and LE is ready. Should finish this kite up tomorrow.

Would also be nice to line up some more Direct Line chats. Overall, The Group Chat feature doesn't get nearly as much traffic as it used to..

The energy behind KiteLive kind of dwindled after the really interactive folks (like yourself) started to fill up on info, I really need good interaction with the participants to cycle my own energy and excitement... I have been toying with the idea of a new podcast series since On The Line basically became the Josh Mitcheson show - power to him, but it would appear the incredible string of interviews and mixed discussions they were doing have all but come to an end.

Are the likes of £10-£12 wind meters on Amazon/ebay any good? And which is more useful starting out, wind sock or wind meter. Also how big should a wind sock be the be useful and how long should the pole be in height. Any features to look for?

Tell me about it, I'm usually traveling to 10-15 events a year, the vast majority of my social circle is in the kiting world so this current situation has me feeling quite disconnected (some of the reason for my partial absence from the forum as of late)... Still figuring out how to get my proper fix and input of energy / ideas in this new world.

I once successfully did 36 roll ups on a Deep Space, with a successful unroll.

welcome to the forum, Icarus as it turned out, i didnt get a Benson, i got a couple of used Widow Maker Pros being sold by John Barresi here in the classifieds...im still looking at the Bensons but in the meantime ive picked up a used Blue Moon Mantis, a used Level One Genesis, and just recently an unflown Prism Quantum Pro.plus i have a pair of Sky Burner Ticas on order...my plate is full to overflowing the Hypnotist is a good kite especially for beginners but needs too much wind for where im at. if they made an ultralight or if someone reframed one a couple ounces lighter ...hmmm Breezin is the one to talk with about Bensons...(hey Breezin, whered you go?)

You get what you pay for. Wind meters can be nice if you're looking for numbers, or want to make a record of what your day was like. Some high-end meters have data logging, you can set them up on a post and they'll measure speed and direction through the day. There are also small wind meters you can attach to headset jacks on smartphones, which turn the wind speed into a microphone noise the phone can interpret. As for wind socks, those vary as well. There are calibrated wind socks, the red/orange ones you see at airfields are fully extended at 15 knots / 17 mph. If you go that route or happen to have an airfield nearby, most kites fly in a 5-15 knot range, which on those windsocks mean the first 2 of 5 segments are extended, up through the entire windsock is extended. When the whole things stands out straight you'll need high wind kites. When they bend just below horizontal, 5 degrees is 10 knots / 12 mph, which is a usual good experience. Most people don't need wind meters, just fly what feels good. If the kite won't stay up, swap for a kite designed for lighter conditions. If a kite starts pulling hard, deforming, or showing other signs of stress, swap for a kite designed for heavier conditions. They can be informative to help you learn, but that's about it.

It's not easily possible to put together tutorials like that, as people want different things. Everyone comes from different backgrounds, and everyone learns differently. There is no "Start Here To Learn Everything You Need" video. Instead you will need to watch many videos showing many topics. For dual line, see the very first sticky topic under dual line forum: Stunt Kite Video Tutorials (dual line). For quad line, see the forum section: Video Tutorials The "sample tutorials" has 34 tutorials ranging from setup and assembly through intermediate level skills. Down below under "full index of tutorials" has links to many more, some require paid access to the site. You supervise others first by learning how to fly yourself, then teaching others what you've already learned. Or you start by learning together from the basics. Videos like those linked to above give guidance, but there is no alternative for time on the lines.

It happens.. Just edit and hide or let us know and we'll take care of it..

The angles of the strips on this particular kite made it very hard to control puckers and mis-alignments. I think I got everything but there are a few spots with machine holes where I had undo some of the sewing and do it right.

Hello @thegoatlark, Welcome to KiteLife®! Although this is an automated message, it is written with heart - I love kites deeply, and I believe the KiteLife community represents this passion with a very friendly and helpful environment for everyone. Please feel free to browse around and get to know the others. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask. Need to tweak settings? Edit your profile here - View Member Edit your settings - http://kitelife.com/forum/settings/ Other than that, here are a few handy links that you might have a use for... Member Chat Member Map KL Shop And while it's never an obligation, we always love hearing about our new members if you'd like to share some of your kite stories, videos, and/or background... Tell us a little about YOUR kite life!

I made that change between the snowflake and the widow. I also just like the triangle there.. Makes it very clean looking.. I used it on one of my earlier sails "Yonder"

I very much like your color scheme and may steal that.. That strip arrangement looks similar to the first perspective prototype layout I used for the Window and snowflake meshes, Where the vanish point is in the center and the other strips are parallel. I do like the performance of that particular design. It has a very good control but also eats gusts very well. The strips in both of these are just over 1" wide.. I do love playing with the angles though..

Great minds think alike? I drew this up last year and never got around to building it. It's slightly different, and has less venting. All strips are 2" wide, and the basic dimensions are like a 1.5. (I adjusted the shape a little.) If you want to build it, go for it.

Told you the sky was falling .......TIMBER!!!!

And just in time for your birthday too? This is getting vewy, vewy scawy. Happy Birthday, Wayne.

It's because you missed your usual reminder.. @Wayne Dowler How prophetic.... Congrats on the win!!!

Wait - I'm picking myself off the floor!! This spoils my perfect record!! I never win!!! Oh dear - the sky might be falling!!

I think I developed a love for kites a long time ago. I'm 72 now, so who really knows. My Dad would take my brother and I out to a hill in Bethlehem, PA and bring along a kite or two. They were usually the typical diamond or box kites, make by Hi-Flier. But we always got it up in the air, and he even let us hold the string after a while. We'd rip a hole in a piece of newspaper and send a message up to the kite. It was always simple, but always fun. That started me on a lifelong love of kite-flying. Now, if you all are the type that buy or make very complex kites, spending a lot of money, I'm not that guy. I do have many kites and enjoy flying them all, especially now that I have grandkids. I'm trying to keep this love going. My four sons all like kites, and remember our times at the Jersey shore (not the TV show) flying many kinds of kites. One year, in the 60s, I was spending a few days at the shore with my (future) wife's family. We were in JrHS. One day, it was rainy. There weren't many things to do and my wife's brother was along. He was five years younger than me. So, I said, "Let's make a kite and fly it tomorrow when it's sunny." He agreed. Now, to be sure, I had never made a kite from scratch, I only had the store-bought Hi-Fliers. So, I figured out what we'd likely need and we gathered the materials. Newspaper, string, glue (maybe tape), and some sticks. I roughly calculated the dimensions of a diamond kite and cut the sticks down to the approx measurement. I cut notches in the end and ran a string around the perimeter. I laid this on top of the newspaper, and cut out the diamond, leaving room for the flap to be glued around the string. (This was before trash bags, and other simple things that might have made it easier.) We cut out the diamond, glued the flaps around the string, tied a cross string at the joint of the sticks and added a bow string. I found an old sheet, and we tore up some material for a tail. The next day, we took it to the beach and flew it. Seeing it take off was one of my finest moments. Another time, again at the shore, I brought along my Tetra Kite. You probably know what this is... if not, google it. My first Tetra Kite was the typical orange and red plastic sails. It made a fine looking tetrahedron, when assembled. I also had one of all silver mylar. It was also fun to see in the air. So, I went down to the beach (this is many years later, I was married to the girls in the first story and we had two sons by then). We flew the orange/red Tetra, and it was waaaaay out there. It was a good evening for flying, the wind was off-shore, so the kite was over the water. I had a lot of string out... and the wind picked up. You can probably guess what happened next... the string broke, maybe a 1/4 of the way from me to the kite, closer to me. The only way I figure what happened next was that enough string came into contact with the ocean water that it created sufficient drag so that the kite stayed aloft. For. A. Long. Time. The kite took on a course of its own, moving South parallel to the beach. We were at the North end of the island. I got the boys into the car and we drove South, trying to stay in view of the kite. It was difficult to do. We finally lost sight of it when we go to about 24th St or so. The kite had drifted much further out to sea and was disappearing from view. I like to think it's still up there today. Over the years, I've made many homemade kites. I love having kids "help" me... they have such unconventional ideas, and we try them all. How else would they learn? Well, that's it for now. I hope I'll fit in. I do have a post in the Single String section... looking for info on an old kite I have. It's here - Please visit and answer if you know anything about the kite, or if my geometrical calculations seem correct. It's one of those subject we all said, "Why do I have to learn this, I'm never going to use it." Have fun, all, and never lose your childhood zeal or imagination. Jim Author: The Grandpa Book https://www.amazon.com/Grandpa-Book-Are-you-ready/dp/1502579049 Owner: www.littlethinkeradventures.com Kids Adventure Stories.

The Kite package finally arrived here in Ontario, after a voyage of in excess of three weeks from the Pacific Northwest of the US, down to San Francisco international distribution for USPS, up to Vancouver, British Columbia and across the continent to the Toronto Ontario area. In these Covid times the mails, while perhaps a little slower, do once again, come through. Hooray for USPS and Canada Post. I was excited to try the kite but had to wait a couple of days for decent conditions and a window of opportunity. Finally we had a day this past week where winds were 15 to 25 kph and I grabbed the kite along with a couple of other similar kites to give it a go. The only spare set of quad lines I had to hand for the new kite was 100 feet of 150# that I use in upper wind for my revolution style kites - and I started with those. The Symphony 2.2.4 flew fine on those lines, although they are perhaps a little longer than I might prefer. I am not sure that those lines would be good for extended use in bigger winds as … man… does that kite pull in the middle of a wind window. I was leaning back big time! Will need to tweak the brake line length if continue with those lines, probably with another knot or two in the leader at the kite end. I also had out a smaller Flexifoil Sting, and that is a really sweet little kite which has been tuned properly with its shorter pre-configured lines. I will likely come up with a set of dedicated lines for the Symphony; something in the range of 80 to 90 feet...? Perhaps a little research to determine what a proper line strength might be. Some of my other power kites have heavier flying lines than the brake lines and I am thinking something like 200 pounds over 150. (Thoughts welcome on that.) I have been flying mainly in lower winds of late out of preference, and on this outing I was getting some adrenaline flowing with the pull in the bigger wind. That was a lot of fun! Thank you very much J B for this prize. I was particularly pleased to also have received a set of quad leader lines which I look forward to adding to a spare set of handles that I wanna get going for one of my Freilien quads. Hats off also to riffclown for coming up with the conversion process from two to four lines on the Symphony. Outstanding!

Hello John , and to all the others ... Im Max from Germany, and I wanna say sorry for bad English skills .. Very looking forward to browse all the Content Mahalo - Max

Decide to play with the color placement as well for the other panel. Still a ways to go but it is taking shape..

Flexifoil Bullet is a great kite. Bummer that they are no longer made. Loved my 2.5 and 4.5 sizes.

Hi Mainly here at first to get a little advice, I used to have a flexifoil 3.5 bullet kits I think, looking to get nephew into the sport

Great! I’m ecstatic that there is an interest in the subject. I will start with my personal discovery of this technology. Almost a year ago today I was trying to create some rather complex kite-flying related parts and planned on making them with my available shop tools. A friend of mine suggested that I consider 3D printing them; note that he knew absolutely nothing about the technology but had heard about it. I shrugged it off remembering that my children’s High School had purchased a multi-thousand dollar printer and kept it locked in a room so the kids couldn’t break it. Too much $$ for what I’m wanting to do I said. Then, my friend and his wife went to a local Library technology class introducing 3D printing and reported that I should really look into this. I then did my first Google search on the subject and found out that this is really much reachable for the consumer these days. I found that you could purchase a *very* capable 3D printer for ~$250 or less which is not much more than a regular laser printer might cost. Having been stung with the price of Ink Cartridges and Toner costs to operate a printer, I was bracing myself for what it will cost to feed a 3D printer... $16 - $25 for a Kg of filament! This will probably mean nothing to those of you who haven’t explored this but a Kg of filament lasts quite a long time! After doing much research I found that the Creality Ender 3 Pro was the place to start. There are many printers on the market but this one received great reviews for features that higher priced models had such as a heated bed, .1mm resolution, and the ability to modify it. Which I did. I have made the following modifications, each cost ~$15 each but were well worth the cost: 1. Replaced the magnetic bed with a glass bed; makes removing parts much easier 2. Replaced the bed springs with actual compression die springs; less bed leveling required 3. Replaced the original Bowden tubing with Capricorn tubing which has tighter tolerances and is slicker; improves Filament Retraction performance. I have attached some pictures of each of these. Note that the Ender 3 Pro requires a moderate amount of assembly and it helps to be mechanically inclined. Following comments on this post I plan to follow-up with the work-flow required to use the printer. -Segel

Personally I think it's a great topic. Would love to see a repository of 3D Printed connector patterns.

Welcome to the forum. Anything you want to know about kites, someone on this forum can answer. It's good to have you on board.

Hey there thanks for this space I'm going to be flying solo and can use the help. I used to fly with my favorite uncle but he passed 2 months ago. I kept his Nexus Prism that we flew together ☺️. I look forward to learning a lot from everyone.

Deep Space now ordered, just got to wait for delivery.😊

Here's the maiden flight (couple of crashes and all)

OMG, just took out my newly finished Symphony Pro 2.5.4. I love it!! What a totally different experience to the regular 2 line kite. Taken my enjoyment of kiting to a new level. Took a bit of trial and error to splice the bridals but got there after I realised that the string I was using wasn't good enough (initially tried using the line that came on the Symphony 2.5 Pro, but it didn't open up nicely and was nearly impossible to splice). I recently bought replacement quad lines for a Peter Lynn hornet so ended up using the old flying lines to make my bridals. I managed to get my bother into it too after I bought my niece a Symphony Beach 1.3 for her birthday. He instantly bought a 2.2 pro and will no doubt be converting it after seeing my first flight video of the 2.5.4. Strong work @riffclown thanks again. Can't believe HQ aren't selling the 4 line Symphony Pro kites out of the box but there is something satisfying about doing the conversion yourself (I even learnt how to use Mrs LeMac's sewing machine!)

Good work. The brake lines are attaching to the trailing edge only. Almost all the force is on the original bridles. Applying the brakes will partially deflate the airfoil by design.. Unless you are flying it in really strong winds, it shouldn't be too much of a concern.

Just wanted to pop in with my new account and say I started this project up with my Prism Tantrum 220. Since I don't have a sewing machine I hand-stitched the tabs to the bottom of the wing at the point where the baffles between the cells are sewn into the rest of the stitching, so it should be the strongest point. It also helped to evenly space the tabs. I did 5 tabs on each side, but so far I've only bridled the 4 starting at the outer edge and I'm waiting for some wind and time to take it outside and try it. The bridles are 2 pieces per side--24+28" pieces, and 26+30" pieces are single pieces of 200# braided dacron, and they knot up to a main bridle line on each side currently made of paracord (will change this to the same material as the bridles soon. This past weekend there was just enough wind to go out to a field near the house and make a couple of initial adjustments--I wanted to be sure I could bind the original 2-line bridles to the new brake bridles and have the brake bridles be "dead," letting me fly the kite as a 2-line and I was able to get that working. Now I just need to get outside with my little makeshift handles (old broken drumsticks, holes drilled, paracord knotted through the holes) and see if I can make the thing fly as a 4-line. A question: how much weight are we typically putting on the brake lines as compared to the regular attachment points for the main bridle? It looks like the Tantrum has some string that runs through the foil to reinforce it where those lines attach, which won't be present for these brake lines. I'm a little concerned that if the "pull" is the same the foil material may not hold up as well. Anyhow, I attached a picture here. I'm hoping I can get out into the field behind my office today, but right now the lawn service is mowing so I may miss my flying window for today (rain on the way )

Here's a link to Carl Robertshaw's video called Flying Techniques. Covers a lot of ground and lots of helpful tips in all aspects of kiting. The last hour or so there are some really nice explainations of what the kite is doing during tricks. It's interesting to see that perspective and compare to videos showing hand movements. Long video, but well worth watching! 👍

Welcome to the forum.

Hi, Glad to join the forum, my name is Andy, I have been flying kites purely on a pleasure basis for about 20 years or more. Mainly two line stunt kites and also owned a Rev for a fair few years, but recently sold it due to wanting to concentrate on two lines, and also to get my head around some tricks, have performed the most basic things, but having a resurgence and want to become better. I have also built a number of my own kites, having also been a model yacht sailmaker on a semi professional basis for a number of years. I wish I could be as successful flying kites as I was sailing in Europe, making the top 4 places on a number of occasions at European events. I am over 60, still employed as a captain in the merchant navy working on the UK coast. Own kites from HQ, Prism, Elliott, Spirit of Air and own design.

I personally don't feel the "classic" is worth more. There are B-Series hitting the classifieds here fairly regularly as individuals upgrade to Djinns.

Thanks guys, JB thought it might be a good topic.

Check on some fishing rod building websites. https://www.mudhole.com/supplies-rod-building

Thanks

Welcome to the forum.

Hello John and to all the flying company ..being optimistic about about finding people in my area (Athens,Greece) to show me -explain me some basic steps and fly together...being impressed by John's Barresi vids (respect m8) got me into this hobby ...recently owner of 2 quad kites...next target the xx tarantula 😎can't remember how many times I ve watched the line management length and equalization videos 😁😁😁

Welcome to the forum.

Thank you!