Leaderboard

OK, now something for your Saturday beach day (and many sessions to come). Work on a couple of things: Side slides Bicycle rotations Power-ups/deadstops Small figures, like a square, rhomb, triangle... Side slides Do an inverted hover close to the edge of the wind window and just drift downwind. When you can do this (not necessarily on Saturday), try speeding it up by driving the kite sideways by pulling mostly on the front side handle. Pulling like this hard will cause the powered kite to turn following the now curved LE. To counteract this and continue in a straight line, apply brake on the trailing side and release brake on the leading side. Bicycle rotations Keep the center in one place. Power-ups/deadstops I see this as a two stroke thing (the thumbs should be on top of the handles): Pull on all four lines to speed up. Throw out your thumbs/arms in front of you to stop the kite. It should be like if you are hitting something in front of you with your thumbs while your arms extend front/downwards. Small figures, like a square, rhomb, triangle... You don't want to look like you just are having problems in making the kite fly? Include figures! It is also a good over all practice in control. Let us know how it goes! Yes a last (important) tip. With a rev-like kite don't use unnecessarily short settings on the top line, instead use one of the outermost knots. To find a good trim point on your upper leaders you can test it by doing a LE up hover (except for in the lowest of winds). Extend the top line setting until you can barely keep the hover.

You can go backwards and, I assume, forwards. You can hold a hover in any direction. You can turn in some manner. From this you should be able to start/land with the leading edge (LE) upwards/downwards? You attempted a quad slack line trick (a flic flac) very early and write in a kind of condensed way. Action/just go for it, seems to be a driving force? (Me obviously going Sherlock or Freud today... 🤔 ) A flic flac is IMO more of an icing on the cake, but less an early stage building block. If you want action also in low and low/medium wind, learn how to power up the kite by for a moment pulling on all four lines. Also try doing it rather aggressively. For the kite to respond and to really grab the air, function like an efficient wing and jump forward (instead of more towards you), you need to have quite much brake. Find and maximise the response in the lines when tugging on all the lines.

@Exult I started following this post in hopes to assist (since I was in the same spot as @matthew_birkett just a couple of years ago). I'm continuing to follow in order to soak up all this great information you are dispensing. Thank you for all your contributions. 🤙🤙

congratulations to the winners enjoy those lines , very generous to throw in a second prize.😀

This session I tried a new place. I had gotten permission to be on a neighbor’s property. I could fit in the 8.2m lines (27ft). Unfortunately the wind had a habit of changing direction almost 180 deg due to a long nearby island blocking the wind. Yes, towards the end of the session the kite ended up in the water. The Rev B-series Std. Temporary mid setting on the top leaders for testing purposes. If this session had a theme (apart from some usual maintenance practice) I'd say it was trying to mimic dual line half axels and its possible resemblance to quick 180 deg (team) turns. I tried "shortening the top lines" for this. Earlier I have also tried bridle less piloting when doing dual line like half axels. I'd say that I’m still learning though. Successfully fishing algae goo by application of the tangle method.

Wow, did I ever miss the ball on this one. 🤦‍♂️ Sorry folks, life has had me crazy busy lately with my 6 year old son out of school and spending more days with me than ever before over the summer, as well as the middle of kite season activities, work and my love life at home. No excuse, but you deserve some explanation. So with that, let's pick us some winners! Yes, that's right, WINNERS - not only will we give away the line set for this drawing, but I'll award a second member with a free one year renewal to their KiteLife subscription. Drum roll... 1 - The line set (primary prize) goes to subscriber #1142, @Greg McHugh! 2 - The subscription renewal goes to subscriber #940, @XD1! Deepest congratulations to both, and ongoing thanks to ALL of you for helping us keep this website alive. 🙏 Stay tuned for a new prize to be announced shortly!

Well it depends of what basic means... It is a bit difficult to recommend anything new when it is not obvious where you are. Also I wouldn't say that all progress is necessarily linear. In the mean time one can always polish what one already can do and do variations in tempo. You could always make sequences/figures of the known stuff in various speeds. E.g.: Can you side slide - try it vertically back and forth. Can you do one dead stop - make it a rapid series (how quickly can you make a start/stop cycle...), Now instead make it slow while trying to minimize any wobble. One can think of the small details. How can you vary the "default" 90 deg turn (whatever that would be)? Do you stop before the turn, do you preserve the speed or do you speed up the kite? Is the pivot point at the wing tip, in the centre of the kite or in a point in between? I like exercises that are cyclic, that gets you back to the start position (again and again), because that quickly gives you those repetitions that are good when learning (and aren't we all learning constantly?). Have you practiced the "basic moves" in low wind yet? Tried a short line set?