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Mike Eibey

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Everything posted by Mike Eibey

  1. Welcome! You'll fit in just fine here. Thats an amazing story by the way. Very sorry to hear about the loss of your father. I'm sure he's very happy to see he has passed his love of flying on to you.
  2. I think that's what I'll start with. Just do the lower spreaders and see how it reacts. Those nitro rods can be tricky to switch to because alot of the fittings don't fit directly with standard parts. But I'll let you know what I think about it once I get some flight time. Hopefully this weekend.
  3. What's everyone's opinion on the skyshark nitro rods? I've found that kites with them don't feel too different but it seems I can get some faster rotation out of them essentially on tricks like the taz. Wondering because I'm considering reframing a kite in nitro but also wondering if just making a set of nitro lower spreaders would alone give alot more stiffness.
  4. Just in case anyone out there runs into this or a similar problem here is what I did to resolve this issue with alot of success. The best solution I found if your set on using the nitro rods is to instead of just gluing a 7mm ferrule inside is lower spreader, you need to order a stick of p100 skyshark along with the typical 6mm/.24" ferrule. Cut a chunk of p100 and glue that in each lower spreader just long enough for the ferrule to slide into. About 2 inches on each spreader. The p100 essentially necks the nitro rods down to a more standard ID dimension which then when used with the standard sized ferrule allows you to use a standard 6x7mm center T. On top of that if you have any issues with spreaders snapping near the end of the ferrule you can allow the p100 to extended a few inches past the ferrule inside each spreader. Just adds a little support to this area. The weight is negligible in my opinion. Before doing this if my turbo leg on the bridle was longer than about an inch it would snap the spreader even in light wind (5mph). Very frustrating. Now I can run the turbo leg at full extension, about 3 inches, in 15 mph winds with zero problems. This may be a unique issues because I couldn't find much help online but hopefully this finds someone frustrated with a similar kite or bridle and helps get someone back in the air for a long time.🙂
  5. I haven't seen that muzzy line but I'm about to look for that next time I'm at the sporting good store. For sleeving I've been using white dacron line I get at the same sporting store. It's like $1 for 50 foot. Really cheap. Black sharpy one line black on each side. Black is left, white is right.
  6. Getting better with the taz. Can get them either direction about half the time. I think one thing that can make this trick more difficult to learn is that, atleast for me, I you can get alot of tip wraps if the setup and slack given aren't really good. Or if the last input for the spin is to aggressive it can pull the kite to fade. I find myself having to think about this trick alot more than other tricks when setting up and executing. One of these days it'll be muscle memory, it's just not quite yet.🙂
  7. I have a Nirvana 3e that tends to just eat up lower spreaders. Kite has never been in over 12 mph winds. The kite is framed in Skyshark nitro. 5 seconds into first flight it snapped the lower spreader right after the ferrule. I replaced that rod a day or 2 later and went back out. Literally the exact same snap about a minute into flying. Next outing I had made a new set of nitros spreaders with the ferrule tapered way down to not have any sharply loaded area, I also made a set of 5pt spreaders as a back up. Both rods I used some heat shrink over the ferrule area to add some extra support. The nitros this time lasted a few outings and reacted great. Kite felt perfect. Few outings later and one snapped again. Put on the 5pt and then one snapped a few minutes it. This time it also snapped the center along with it. Kite has had no big crashes at all and is not abused by any means. I guess my next step is to replace the center t with a new 7mmx7mm t which isn't the easiest find and replace the lower spreaders with 7pt. Has anyone else had this problem with Nirvanas placing a huge stress on the center T area? I'm also going to throw in this is the only Kite I have with a reverse turbo bridle. I'm under the impression that moving the outhauls larks head knot away from the other 2 bridal lines and toward the flight lines would slow the kite down, load the sail heavier, and move the tow points out. And moving the outhauls knot towards the other bridle lines would be a bit more geared towards lighter winds and be closer to a 3 point bridle. I'm wondering if this bridle setup could be atleast part of the culprit. I might be completely wrong in this area though so any advice is appreciated.
  8. That email notification of "congratulations Michael" has to be the biggest let down of the year. Haha Bur congratulations!
  9. I made another lower nitro spreader and put a serious taper on the ferrule going into it. Both spreaders broke just beyond the ferrule each time. This seemed to cure the problem. I out about 4 hours on the kite today really getting after it hard and didn't have one problem. It may have just been really dumb luck. All seems to be good now!
  10. I finally nailed 3 decent tazs today. All going left to right. I hit about 10 more that were extremely sloppy. Happy to have done it myself finally but still need more practice until I can really claim it as a trick I own. Made serious improvements today though.
  11. I tend to only fly the quads when the wind is too heavy for messing around with tricking the duals. Never flown a vented quad though, only standards, so this would be the perfect kite to add to the bag. I'm sure the fact I nearly only fly std quads in 15mph+ wind makes things worse but my quad flying is nothing to write home about at the moment. Pretty twitchy. 🥴 I mean I can keep it in the air no problem and fly around but it's no where near what I see some of you guys doing.
  12. Lately the main practice has been on the dream machine sul. I tried a few times on the nirvana std when the wind was up and was getting closer. The nirvana was the only kite I got a taz on but it was pretty rough looking. I'm pretty sure it's the last input that's giving me trouble but also wonder if I need to get more speed into the kite leading up to the flare. It seems other people on the videos carry alot more momentum into the trick.
  13. I'm not sure if it's just the nirvana puts you much strain on the center t and spreaders at that connection or if I've gotten 2 bad spars back to back. I first thought it must have been a bad cut, but once I replaced the first broken one with a new one that I cut on the opposite end (small end) and then added electrical tape to the large end to strengthen the ferruled section. Still broke immediately at the ferrule twice. I even tapered the ferrules end to spread the load out slightly. Maybe they glued the ferrule in too deep? It's always the non glued side breaking.
  14. I wish I hadn't have ordered that nirvana in the nitro version. I mean the kite is really good. But the nitro rods don't seem to be all the amazing. The lower spreader has broke twice both times about 2 or 3 seconds into flight in 5-10 mph winds. Luckily both times my deepspace spreaders worked fine as temporary replacements but I'd expect more from such expensive rods. I'm not going to reframe the entire kite but I'm going to make some new 5pt lower spreaders for it along with one last set of nitro spreaders.
  15. For fast tricking the deepspace is where it's at. Mainly because it won't do tricks slowly. I wouldn't say it's my favorite kite for this exact reason but it definitly has its place in the bag. Even a lazy susans need to be done with intensity because of the shallow turtle. It's a really great kite though if you want to trick quickly.
  16. I enjoy looking back at things like this and remember how much trouble I was having getting certain aspects of tricks that I can now confidently say I own. Now I'm trying to get better at being able to hit the yoyo from the lateral roll after the fade inside the jacobs ladder. I get it about a quarter of the time correctly. It's nice to be able to sit there and hit rung after rung after rung now of the JL. By far my favorite trick at the moment.
  17. Definitely still do not own this trick by any means. I technically got one taz out of about 50 tries but it was very sloppy. I'm gonna keep at it though. I think that last input is where I struggle the most. I think i usually pull to hard because often flip the kite into a fade from the flare. I can get some rotations but it's usually is not sufficient enough to complete the trick. More slack often seems to send the kite into a weird rotation that ends up in a snagged wing. I'm gonna get this trick some day.
  18. Awesome. Thank you. I'd heard there was a good company down near San Jose but couldn't find them online. I'll give them a call soon.
  19. Does anyone have a good online source for dynamic rods? Seems skyshark is very easy to source but the dynamic rods I'm striking out on finding a good online supplier.
  20. I actually flew an HQ Arrow last summer in about 45 mph wind. It's the full size, not the little arrow. There's no hope of standing at all haha. It drug me down the field and showed no mercy. It's a blast to do every once in a while. That kite is lightening fast. It did however eventually snap one upper bridal leg, which put the remaining load on on the outer spreader which of course snapped the lower leading edge, lower spreader, and ripped the sail a bit. 🤕All repaired now though. Those arrow kites are kind of a pain though. The standoffs are so short and the sail is so shallow that getting it launched and sail loaded can be somewhat tricky.
  21. Wow. I literally placed an order for an R-Sky Nirvana 3E nitro about 2 weeks ago. Got that in just in the time...
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