Leaderboard

I don't compete because it brings out the worst in me. I fly to have fun and increase my skills. Club 38 is a promotion for Revolution kites that measure skills according to their way of doing things. I won't say it's right or wrong. I will say it's not consistent with what the general quad community flies by. That being said, your motivation for kite flying should be, at its core, to enjoy the kite, the wind and your time. Failure to do any of these requires adjustments in how you enjoy your hobby. If you aren't having fun, you aren't doing it right..

under 180, okay

On the topic of reverse indoors, two ideas: 1 - let the pressure off for a split second when shifting from forward to reverse, similar to shifting gears in a car, being sure to fill the sail evenly when you go to reverse. 2 - "lead with your chin"... Tilting your head with the kite (top of head same direction as the LE or chin following the "V" in the TE) can help you keep a perspective on the controls up to but before it becomes physically uncomfortable to do so. Watch this video and you'll see a lot of my head (and torso) work in this area, no big shifts in the handles, mostly pressure on 4 lines, pressure off 4 lines, keeping a grip on the four point frame and just shifting priority to the lines I want to be dominant.

Trying to maintain an inverted hover indoors is one of the things I'm using while trying to figure out what's up with the reverse 360. Outdoor I'm fine with that, unless under mental stress. I can trace out shapes and words in reverse, boxes in reverse, quickly rise inverted from a launch up to the top of the window, and hover comfortably inverted. The same with side hover and wingtip landings, I usually try to land on leaves, sometimes picking up multiple leaves each stabbed through the wingtip. My aim is gradually improving, some take a few attempts. Indoor I can hold it up steady while walking backwards, but it requires maintaining plenty of pressure in the sail. From re-watching performances, most reverse flying is far slower with less air pressure. I suspect that is because the reverse motion is relying on the momentum of flight rather than a constant load from walking required for hovering. I've also been playing around with seeing how the air flows differently in reverse. Some of my time this morning I tried the spin in place done before a catch/throw to load up the sail for the long glide. That same motion done in reverse has a dramatically different effect on the 'legs' of the quad; unlike the leading edge that wants to glide, in reverse the two legs both want to flip up or flip down to catch the air even at slow speeds, rather than wanting to glide. Trying to enter a stable reverse glide was what clued me in to applying different motions (less reverse on the lower wingtip) for my few successes. Another thing I've been feeling is the nearly-inverted slide/float, which is more like a long glide. It is still mostly forward motion, but closer to inverted that I hoped it might help develop the right sensations. It is likely some subtlety I'm missing, subtly changing tension on one handle, feeling a minor difference in motion, needing slightly different tension. Just like the struggles I had with outdoor inverted flight, finding the balance point through repeatedly over-correcting and learning the edge.

I had a bit more success in this morning's practice toward a reverse 360. I had perhaps 4 successful reverse turns instead of just one. Each one used more pressure in the sail (back up more quickly) plus a bit of forward drive on the bottom wingtip, although it's probably closer to less backward than a little forward drive. With the increased pressure in the sail it felt more prone to overcorrect/flip just like inverted flying is on outdoors when first learning the skill, but putting pressure on the kite and forcing the motion into the sail seems to be better than relying on momentum. It doesn't have the smooth floating reverse I've seen others do, but I suspect that comes with practice and finesse. I didn't realize downward 180 turns indoor were quite that strongly held, especially since outdoor quads seem to prefer downward 180s in group flies instead of upward 180s. I've seen some people do downard 180s in demo flys, but it is uncommon indoor. I'll remember to avoid it in the future. :-) At the risk of derailing my own discussion a bit, my current practice topics are: Outdoor dual: improved stalls to enable more and better precision work. Yet another big thank-you to Paul De Bakker for ~90 minutes of stall tutoring at SPI. The old Dodd videos kept stressing they were the key, but Paul's explanations helped. My new goal is to get it to stop dead, like a quad's rock solid hover, and practice holding it for two seconds to ensure it is a solid stop rather than just a brief pause. More footwork and better timing seems to be the key. (More foot-travel and better timing of footwork seem to be present across the board.) Outdoor quad: improved control in variable conditions through footwork instead of arm work, and axel all the time. The megaflys showed me I need to work on stability when not flying alone; when alone the formation is done when I feel like it, when with a group the formation isn't done until the leader calls it. During one megafly I couldn't rise as quickly as others even though my neighbors were fine, during another I dropped control while we were holding position in a ball for an extended time. I think both require hoofing it, since baking up quickly with my neighbors rather than quick pulls was the part that felt different to me. Brett Marchel helped unlock the piece of a quad axel I was missing. Before I could achieve more of a jerked snap-spin, it stayed upright and rarely laid flat. After 2 days practice on the field I can lay it nearly flat during the spin about 70% of the time, and get really flat around 20% of the time. I still sometimes get the timing wrong and it stays upright. Like the other skills, the key to unlocking it was more slack gained by footwork. The future work requires footwork timing to get the slack in place at the correct moment. Indoor duals: launch-to-fade, gain competency at indoor slackline Indoor quad: reverse 360 And on top of them all, gain more confidence in front of groups. Another thank you to Fletch for helping me over that last minute terror. The adrenaline rush part is good, the performance anxiety and overcorrections it causes are a problem. For nearly all of them I'm at the point of improving an action I can perform. Those improve with practice and study. But this reverse 360 indoor is unlike the others. I don't yet have the skill, but I'm working on it.