Exult

I also got fascinated by these videos ( https://kitelife.com/forum/topic/3477-trickery-flickery/?do=findComment&comment=62748 , seems to be a double topic btw.). It almost got me to purchase the Elliot Burnout, since at the time it was claimed that it was in the spirit of Psycho (or something like that), I had no similar kites (which is valid still today) and the price was low. Couldn’t find the similarity claim now from the Elliot page when I looked it up and it also looks like the price went up somewhat, +10 EUR to 100 EUR, if I remember the old info correctly. However I found the original (I think) sales pitch in Metropolis Kites site: “If you know the Psycho then you will love the Burnout! Radical trick kite for absolute flying fun.” or the De Paddestoel version “De Elliot Burnout Rood is een All-round en trick vlieger. Hij lijkt qua uiterlijk en vlieggedrag op de Flexifoil Psycho”. I don’t know, I’ve been restraining myself for quite a while, when I need spares the next time I might accidentally happen to order one as well out of curiosity. However I’d like to emphasize that I have not tried the Burnout and have not even read a review of it. Good luck with your new project @Breezin!

Hmm… I’ve never parted with a kite – want to be able to go back to them and see what they can do when you have learnt more. In the other end, to set a pace for the acquisitions I have my wife to explain the purchases to and also that I want to get to know the new kite well. Unless there is a good reason for it, not having caused wear on a new kite within half a year or so I see as a failure and possibly even a shameful one. Having (Had? - Working on it) typically one session, possibly two, sessions per week also limits acquisitions when having use as a requirement. But it is painful to sometimes watch a kite model you want to get obsolete and disappear from the kite shops. And yes, I believe that having a kite purchase strategy/pattern could also mean that “You might be a kite nut” (which is far from unique in this Forum…). Good luck @Breezin with getting them (the models) back!

Thank you for the traction (?) to go public as an indoor kite owner. I think acquisition/possession/use of one in itself, qualifies a sufficient condition for “kite nuttiness”. I don’t qualify for the coolness of a self made QLK yet however. I recently got it and unfortunately have no good indoor place to use it. Instead I can walk to a small nearby forest surrounded field during low wind evenings etc… The image is from the first, recent and only test. Felt a bit hurried maintaining the line tension, but had a nice “kite is all around me” feeling (Troggs music video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7BdyNAwBk4 ).

Would practising these maneuvers (or building blocks thereof, the movements i.e.) be a good preparation for the team flying part of the clinic?: https://revkites.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Revolution-Mega-Fly-Figures-v1d.pdf During my first and only group flying event (during the Nordic Kite Meeting) I had the longest line sets in use. My long lines (40kg and 75kg) are 40m long, which corresponds to 131ft, not 120ft. Would this be OK (personally I had no problems with them)?

... if, when asked for the temperature after checking the weather forecast for tomorrow, you simply don’t know. I mean what is it to know (to make the decision) besides wind speed, wind direction, if there will be heavy rain particularly in really low wind and if the kite would be close to the sun?

You seem to have been using the Hydra a lot for this to be happening already (btw outer batten? – there is only one pair to my knowledge). Have there been many keen 2-point like landings on uneven ground or on “stubborn” vegetation? Any session gives practice in something (not necessarily in what you intended to learn/practice that day) and no two sessions are alike (could indoor sessions be somewhat more alike? – I don’t know).

I’m all ears and learning. So, if I got this correctly, the couping is not only from the flex when pulling on all four lines and the spars that happen to be in place. It is also sewn in from the start by adding a LE curvature when the sail being is being flush? So how does this pre LE curvature induced couping happen? Is the flex happening earlier without much pulling being required or is it a constant shape when using the kite as it already was under more load? So with curved LE to coup air better you gain forward flight earlier when pulling and increased sensibility when pulling on all four lines? With a straighter LE rapid side side slides gets possible? And regarding the two different stack lines configurations what would the difference be?

Thank you very much for that offer! However the time for that is not now. First doing would be needed to make the necessary mistakes, identifying the difficulties, by practice making it vivid enough to remember the answers well and getting a good enough reference to fit the answers into and last to come up with the good questions addressing (as close as possible) the cores of the difficulties.

I have played this video many times with and without music to try to figure out the various parts of what is happening. One of the things I've looked for is when the feet are not moving much to figure out how to low wind pilot as economically as possible. It seems to coincide with having the kite in a close to horizontal gliding position. I have also looked for the same thing in: https://kitelife.com/forum/topic/9011-rev-footage-by-drone/ As @SHBKF says, this is a highly inspirational video for trying really short lines in no/low wind. Ohh, did I happen to say that last sentence? What are the excuses now not to make a ~4m line set (hardly the cost of the line material) and leave the house early in a windless morning heading for a no witness forest glade and try to do a first QLK 360deg? Yes finally, the "SS Great Britain" video made me think of the Fred Astaire dance with the hat/coat rack, just replace the rack with a QLK in the first half of the below video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFD1nky4QTI

Your kite loss pain and frustration is evident. Perhaps some "I've lost my kite" notes if possible to put up in public? Losing kites is something of a paranoia of mine. It has happened on the subway that I panicked for a second after getting off only to realize that I never brought my kite bag that day. I always finish a session by checking around for forgotten items and even then I almost missed a Rev once lying flat on the ground behind a bump. Except when traveling for several hours on a train or bus I put an arm through a handle or lean the bag/sleeves against me. The principle is that I should not be able to leave without noticing the bag. If I find a good long key ring yo-yo (rolls up the string by itself if not under load) I'd fit a small carabiner to it so that I'd be physically attached to the bag. Best Luck with getting your kite back!

Do you happen to have any pictures on how they are connected or where to do the tuning (tilting the top one back a bit?)? Planning on ("one day") to do a minimal stack of two at least.

I had no intention to miss out on this quad clinic as I did on the previous one in Denmark. Nonetheless I believe it was a boost for my QLK-skills then anyhow since I was determined to compensate for the missed training event. This time however I'll use the prior practice time to be prepared so that I can get as much as possible out of the (real) clinic.

Any chance to hear anything (like feel and differences from a more revlike kite) about this later? I have been considering a Skyknife for a long time, but got my B-series in the mean time. Talking about Korvokites - didn't know that they did "penguin-revs" also. And most certainly not from the north either. Besides you got one more quad than I do even when I include a power kite when counting: 3 B-series (std/mid/full). 1 Spiderkites Smithi Pro (much controllable foil). 1 Peter Lynn 5m^2 Peel (power foil)

I have at two different times put my HQ Shadow in the hands of two different absolute beginners in barely no wind conditions with good result. To already from the start get them out of the idea that the kite absolutely must constantly rush forward on powerd lines (an idea that will cause several powered crashes as opposed to the soft "crash" on slack lines), I tell them to barely fly. First only half a metre up (several times) and land, then a metre (and land), then two metres... Of course there were a few unplanned landings during the following more normal flying (the above is no magic method), but none of them were destructive nor got me worried even briefly. Low wind is kind to your kite and is an opportunity to practice to give slack on the lines. A useful skill to handle any crashes of framed kites so that they will not require repairs.

This session I planned to: Test the new Level One, One Eleven. Practice QLK (B-series mid vent) with long (40m) lines. Test the new Smithi Pro kite. Thu Mar 29 11:00:00 CEST 2018 GF, forecasted 3-4m/s, but was a bit varying Level One, One Eleven on 35m 75kg lines B-series 1.5 on 40m 40kg lines Spiderkites, Smithi Pro also on 40m 40kg lines Disclaimer: Do not consider this to be two proper reviews - it is just a first impression of the One Eleven and the Smithi Pro during a three kite session. The One Eleven One Eleven, a 2.6m span width kite with a weight per area being very close to that of the HQ Shadow. Though rarely using as long lines as 35m, I felt that this line length suited this large kite of 2.6m (8.53ft) well. I'd say that this kite extends the flight properties of my kite collection. There the closest thing would be the Tramontana. A very subjective description of the feeling when piloting the One Eleven (that unfortunately sounds piecewise negative): A very precise (and very light) barn door that moves on rails with close to zero radius turns. Very close and long powered ground passes could be performed, because I felt so much in control. It tricks, but perhaps needless to say, tricking is performed with large hand movements, but without feeling ridiculously large. Another thing is the sound level, if my Hydra and Kymera sometimes gently hums for me, the One Eleven is more like a construction site angle grinder or a starting truck. Though to be fair I must say that I never attempted to tighten the leech line. The effect is striking when the sound stops or starts e.g. when doing a "snap" stall, initiating/ending a side slide, landing/starting, etc... I put the quote marks around "snap" because it is not so snappy - you can't aggressively tear this light kite it out of flight. Instead you need to be careful to extend the arms or move forward when doing the snapstall. Spiral wound carbon fibre tubes - who needs them? This large kite use only two one piece loong 5.5mm tubes in the LEs - No possibility to disassemble the LE to make a half length LE package. Even the LS is loong, it is a one piece tube that you fold along the spine for transport. The kite doesn't fit into any of my (two) kite bags. You can't really be tough on the kite when when doing ground work. Nope no tubes broke, but one side of the (single piece) LS popped out of the equally slim fitting. Perhaps this will be as input taming for groundwork as my 4D was for general flight input? I kind of like this approach with the slim fittings on this kite though. In a way, and this may sound strange, this kite makes me think of the Prism 4D. It is not only the colours that match, but also the narrow spar diameter (5.5mm tubes) in relation to the size of the kite. So let's see how close in a weight to area sense the One Eleven is to a couple of other kites. The areas used below are projected areas extracted from photos of assembled kites (by the number of the pixels of the kite), while the weight is from on-line kite data, mostly from the manufacturers sites. 4D (1.47m): 70.9g / 0.355m2 = 200g/m2 Shadow (2.07m): 195g / 0.603m2 = 323g/m2 One Eleven (2.6m): 280g / 0.833m2 = 336g/m2 Infinity (2.46m): 362g / 0.732m2 = 495g/m2 Nope, from these numbers the One Eleven seems to be more like a large Shadow than a 4D. Another 4D comparison is the IMO unnecessary end caps on the stand offs that just falls off and gets stuck in the unnecessary large stand off fittings sitting on the LS. A small glue dot on the 4D stand off side that goes into the LS stand off fitting should reduce any possible risk of carbon fibres fraying/splitting? One Eleven starts in the configuration that my 4D happened to end in - there are no small end caps on the stand off here by design (and the LS stand off fittings are small instead). I was a bit worried when unboxing the kite since the TS seemed to be too short - there were creases along the LE. I contacted Level One to get the correct line length. They responded promptly. If anything, it was actually a slightly longer than the nominal length. My worries seemed to be exaggerated. In the wind already on the ground the creases were largely gone. In the air the sail was like a smooth glittering silk/milk bubble! For this large and light kite one compromise/sacrifice has been the required length of the kite (tyvek) sleeve. There are no mid LE fittings so that the leading edges can't be disassembled - this comes with the bonus of no extra weight for them. This is fine with me. I kind of appreciate when getting something different - a clear personality of the kite. Perhaps I'll add external straps to hold the sleeve on one of the kite bags. The only out-of-the-box working "kite" bag for this long kite is the ski bag. On the plus side is that the One Eleven sleeve is quite narrow. Wing tips and tyvek bag of the One Eleven. The mid vent I couldn't get hold of a lime/yellow B-series mid vent that would have matched the B-series full sail and full vent sails better, since the type became rare and discontinued. The ski tracks behind the mid vent are a bit surprising. These tracks have survived this late in the year (mid Mars), though there is little shade there - they must have put on much snow on these tracks. I can't remember if I have used the 40m line set before (initially I wasn't even sure I had one). However the lines had all been adjusted to the same length. Then I saw that two lines were covering the other two lines (perhaps I had used it for dual DLKs last summer?). They can't have been much used though, because when winding the line up I got the Climax yellow left index finger tip that is characteristic of a new line. For the varying wind of the day I chose to use the B-series 1.5 mid vent. The two feather tubes were often too flexible for the wind, so I switched to three feathers. The motto for the day was: you don't need to do something fancy to improve. Just break your habits, make a turn&wump sequence that you don't usually do and make it shine. Stomp the bugs out of your flying one after one. Don't be lazy - don't do the inverted hoover when the wind drops, though the inverted hover would be easier to hold. Though the ground appeared dry and warm, the kite stake screw driver couldn't easily be put into the ground today, because a few cm below the surface, the ground was still frozen - using this phillips screwdriver as a drill to get through the semi-frozen ground was the way to go. In the image another way of handling the frozen ground from a two week earlier session is displayed - Just put the stake through the hard snow/ice hybrid. The Smithi Pro So finally it was time to test the kite that I have had in mind for so long time. Except for some youtube videos and some general data about the kite, I didn't really know what to expect. The Smithi Pro - the foil that can go backwards and hover but then requires quite active input. To this point I've only tried two other foils: my 5m2 Peter Lynn Peel foil ( https://web.archive.org/web/20010303105904/http://www.kmd-sportdrakar.com:80/Peel4linor.html ) a couple of times (about five I'd say) in the end of the nineties and a budget not so very well working two line foil. I wasn't very thrilled by the Peel flight properties. Compared to my HQ Jam Session and HQ Maerstrale (which were the kites I flew at this time) it felt like a slow sleeping mattress with two brakes in the TE (OK I'm terribly unfair here, after all this Peter Lynn foil was a power kite, not a trick kite and my (foil) time at the lines was much limited). Nonetheless, I used it for it intended purpose (traction) at least two times. I did one (two?) practice sessions on skies on the Gärdet (full name: Ladugårdsgärdet) field in Stockholm. I then tended to end downwind to my initial starting point, but "cheated" and took the bus (line 69 - a bus line with a quite large share of tourists) back home again. With this much limited experience I went on a weekend chartered bus trip to Sälen (in the Swedish mountain range fjällen). There I proceeded beyond the end of the ski lift towards the top to try the traction foil out again. The wind was OK and the forward speed was low/moderate, which was good because of the many very low trees (spruce or birch tree - I can't remember - this was 1999 after all). After a while I got unexpected company, the snow mobile ridden rescue team showed up and asked if everything was OK (which it was). Perhaps they had mistaken the traction foil for a crashing paraglider?? I'd say that this top tour was the end(?) and height of any traction adventures. Non the less this kite might still be the most important one of them all - It was during this weekend that I saw my wife for the first time. Ohh, did I just get slightly off today's topic? So how was the Smithi Pro compared to the framed (Rev) quads? Nope, it is not the same thing - it is, big surprise, a (quad) foil. Maintaining hovers demands more active input (like DLK slides???), the kite (in my rookie foil hands) tended to choose either to fly forwards or backwards. Yes backward flight is possible, to my understanding a kind of hallmark of the Smithi Pro. The air ram intakes are so that the backwards flight is possible. However anything but the slowest of side slides would fold a wing tip. The trickiest one was to fly side slide upwards - this always folded it. The above sounds too negative since I judge this foil seen through the glasses of framed Revkites. The above being said, it is a very maneuverable kite on its own: In the sales text it said that the Smithi Pro wouldn't pull so hard and that one should use light lines to enhance the low wind performance of the kite. According to Christoph Fokken (the designer), the Smithi Pro got better low wind performance than the larger Smithi due to the materials used in the kite. Well today wasn't the day to calmly explore the low wind properties. When I got the recommendation to go for the smaller Smithi Pro due to the low wind capabilities of the kite to better fit the low wind in my area, I felt a sting of disappointment fearing that I hardly would feel the pull. There was no need to worry - I got a pleasant and forceful pull without any worries that I'd snap any frames or change delicate properties by permanently stretching the sail or just having a general feeling that I just shouldn't. I did not want any more pull though, since I only got 40kg lines out today. Now I need to wait for the regular power kiters to show up here on some future session, so that I can do some kite control showing off (I hope). There is one test I'd like to do with this kite and that is to add (tape) something flexible to the wing tips to postpone the collapse when attempting side sliding. For this test I'd use the plastic foil construction tape since it leaves no residues. Whatever flexible beam used of whatever width, should be flexible enough not to crack and while possibly even so soft that it can follow the shape of the foil. Another approach could be to add a 1.5mm (?) carbon rod along the LE and the wing tip? Unboxing/inspection of the Smithi Pro in progress.