windofchange

Well, there's no humidity here in Vegas!

Just another picture for all of ya. This was taken mid morning at the NABX event at the Ivanpah dry lake bed. Feel free to contact me for details on the buggy if your interested.

Those are knock-off kites, copies of the Revolution Blast. They don't have the same flight characteristics as the true Revolutions do and I wouldn't recommend them at all.

It has been a year in the design and 4 months of building and we have finally finished up on 3 beautiful prototype buggies to unveil at the 2008 NABX event in Las Vegas. If all goes well these buggies will go into full production. This new buggy is called the Ivanpah buggy named after the famous Ivanpah dry lake bed that hosts the annual NABX kite buggy event. Construction is 100% stainless steel and built for all out speed, comfort and safety. We feel this is the best built full race production buggy on the market today. A special thanks goes out to Carlos (a.k.a. Popeye the Welder) for his inspiration and help with the overall concept and Buggy Bags from the U.K. for the seats, rail pads, splash guards and bags. We will be showing this buggy all weekend at the NABX and letting anyone who wishes have a demo ride in them. If you are not able to make it to the event, I have included a couple pictures below. More to come for sure!

I agree with the Hypnotist, it is a great kite that loves to flip. It is the easiest of the two to yo-yo. The E2 is also a great kite and can yo-yo just fine, the hypno is easier tho (IMO). Make sure that you get the Freestyle Pilot DVD with your kite, it comes free with the Hypno and the E2.

That's just awesome. I too am glad that you are enjoying the kite. Everything you posted about the Widow Maker is exactly how I feel about mine. Even John Chilese (The Godfather) snapped off a 1 1/2 rung Jacob's Ladder the very first time he put the kite in the air. It's one of the few kites that I have that he always wants to come over and take a spin on. The Widow Maker is a very under-rated kite....sad thing is that it parked my Deep Space, Sea Devil, and Quantum Pro. Thanks for the pictures and the post!

Thanks MtnFlyer. Your Nighthawk is on its way to you. Congrats on the lucky guess.

Yup, got a wonderful Christmas present. Thanks again everyone for entering into the contest and sharing my happiness with me and for all your wonderful and kind words. We have already sent out a couple of the winners kites and they should be receiving them soon. The others should be going out pretty quickly as soon as we finish up on the details. Thanks again all!

The winners list has been confirmed and a huge congrats to Big Bri. I greatly apologize for the mixup on the subscription, thanks for clarifying this for me John. Sorry to get your hopes up on this Kitedog but even though you didn't win the bonus kite you still get to walk away with the Prism Zephyr, a very nice win indeed!!! I still need to get the mail information from the winners. I have already received DWayne and Kitedog's info and your kites will be sent out as per our arrangements. Need shipping info for: MtnFlyer Big Bri and Mikenchico Congrats again to everyone and thank you everybody for all of your kind words. Winners, remember to post back here with some pictures of you and your new kites!

I would like to extend a special thank you to John B for giving me the opportunity to share this contest with all of the Kitelife Forum users. Without his permission and help this contest would not have been possible. I would also like to thank all the participants for making this contest fun for everyone. I had a wonderful time running the contest and hope that all of you had a fun time being in it. As said earlier, Joni arrived 100% healthy and strong. How healthy? 8 lbs, 8 oz healthy Mountain View hospital put down the official time of birth at 7:31 AM, December 9th 2007. SOOOOOO, I get to dance around with glee knowing that I have a beautiful new daughter and as said, instead of handing out cigars.....LETS HAND OUT SOME KITES! I used a very complicated method of calculating the times (I counted the hours on the clock from the time of birth to the closest guesses to that time) and this is what I have come up with. 5TH Place winner of the awesome Nighthawk kite from Premier.... MtnFlyer with a guess of Dec 11th, 10:00 am. Missed the exact time by 50 hrs, 29 minutes. 4TH Place winner of the Silver Fox 2.3 from Flying Wings.... Dwayne with a guess of Dec 7th, 9:00 am. Missed the exact time by 46 hrs, 31 minutes. 3RD Place winner of the beautiful Zephyr from Prism Kites.... Kite Dog with a guess of Dec 10th, 1:00 pm. Missed the exact time by 29 hrs, 29 minutes. 2ND Place winner of the coveted Barassi B-Series Revolution Kite Package.... Big Bri with a guess of Dec 10th, 10:45 am. Missed the exact time by 27 hrs, 14 minutes. And the GRAND PRIZE winner of the beautiful Widow Maker from Skyburner Kites is.......... Mikenchico with a guess of Dec 8th, 5:15pm. Missed the exact time by only 14 hrs, 16 minutes. Toyguy missed getting in at 5th place by only 1 hr and 22 minutes. The next closest was Belar at 76 hours 39 minutes. Close one for sure! Toyguy was also the first one to post a guess, that's kinda impressive. Now for the bonus Jumping Jack Flash to our subscribing winner! Mikenchico is not (yet) a subscriber so although you won the big prize, you don't get the bonus. Next in line is Big Bri....you won the cool b-series but you are not a subscriber either (yet) so no bonus kite for you. Kite Dog is third in line with an awesome Zephyr....and yes, he is a subscriber and also the winner of the Jumping Jack Flash! Congrats Kite Dog!!! See, it pays to subscribe. Not only would it have won you the bonus kite in this contest but you are also automatically entered into the Kitelife contests as well. If you have not yet done so, please become a subscriber for Kitelife. Not just for the contests but it also helps cover the many costs involved with publication of the Kitelife magazine as well as time and server expenses associated with running this great forum and the incredible Kitelife site. It also helps our kiting community grow into bigger and better things. Congratulations to all of the winners of this contest and again a big thank you from my family to everyone for participating and allowing me to share my joy and excitement with all of you. Winners, please e-mail or PM me with your contact / shipping information and we can get these kites out to you right away. There may also be some color choices, this can be finalized through PM or e-mail as well. Any winners who are outside the U.S. will also have to contact me for payment of shipping charges. Thanks again everyone now lets go fly a kite!

Well, there's no need to do any changes to the rules at all...cuz She's HERE! If you was waiting till the last minute then you waited to long. We're figuring out the winners right now and as soon as we have them all set I will let everyone know the time, date, and the lucky new kite flyers! Should be a little later today. Mom and baby are doing wonderful, they're both fully healthy and my life couldn't be better. Here's a small pic that I took with my phone so the quality isn't that great. I will have more pictures when I get my camera back. Thank you everyone from the bottom of my heart for participating in this contest. I am happy that we are going to be able to get these kites out for Christmas. Watch for the winners!!!

I have flown the HQ Shadow and the HQ Tattoo Zero but have not yet had a chance to fly the Tango. If it is anything like the Shadow or Tattoo you will be very pleased with it. I really have enjoyed both of those kites and highly recommend them. Let us know how it goes for you once you get the chance to fly it.

Well, this is a tough decision as far as the guesses go. By allowing people to re-guess it puts an unfair advantage to those who have their guesses coming up. By allowing people to still put in dates it gives a better amount of odds for the late guesses as there are less days to pick from. On the other hand, by people putting in late guesses they take the risk of missing out on the actual arrival date which would put a better chance for those who put their guess in early.....If the baby would have came already then those who waited or are just finding out about this contest would have missed out and the early ones would have had the better chances and the kites... Above all I want this contest to be fun! and Fair for everyone. Fairness is the key which is why I don't let family or the people who I fly with locally enter into the contest. (John Chilese, Bambi, Mike , Dave, Corey and a ton of others who are familiar with this and other forums) - the actual arrival date has been kept from them as well as to make sure there is no "leakage" of the time to other "friends" of other forums. So.....I have to try and think of what would be fair to everyone as far as allowing or disallowing guesses or multiple guesses. I will be working very closely with John B on IP addresses, logins and contacts to make sure that the winners are indeed who they say they are and that nobody has tried to manipulate the contest in any way. And I have re-read the original rules of the contest just to make sure that they are still what I considered to be fair before the contest started. My conclusion is to stick to the rules, by altering the rules at this point in time in the contest could open up a serious can of worms that I know we all don't want to experience. After re-reading them (and asking a few others to read them and give input) they seem to be as fair as possible for this contest. I realize the frustration in the guesses that have already passed but that is to be expected in any contest of this type. There are only going to be 5 winners and plenty of runners up. I did give this some pretty serious thought and also ran it by my wife to see what she thought about capping the guesses or not and she was a little indecisive with the same good arguments for and against. We'll continue on as it is unless a serious need for a change. I thank everyone who has entered the contest and I sincerely hope that you have received some fun and joy from it, myself and my wife sure have. If your guess has passes by then I give you a pat on the back and a "good try" award. For those who have been lucky enough to still be in the running I give a sincere "good luck" to you and hope that yours is the lucky one of many that ends up with a prize. Have fun everyone!

Play365, your time is logged. Best of luck to you and everyone else. It's getting closer every day!!!

Both are doing great Penny. Hard to say what's going on without giving away any hints at all. Wife's ready for sure, baby seems to like where she is at right now. We'll see what happens in the next 4 weeks tho. Again best of luck to everyone!

For your Rev, check your flying lines, chances are that the top lines have slowly stretched out over time and is applying more brake to the Rev II making it sluggish and hard to control in the turns. You can make a very easy adjustment at the handles or re-adjust your lines so they are all equal. I do not recommend making any adjustments on the bridle.

I hope that everyone has had an awesome Thanksgiving Holiday and had plenty to eat and/or was able to spend time with your loved ones. We still have no news to tell and the baby is being very stubborn. My wife who is running out of patience is going in tomorrow for yet another checkup and we'll see if there is any news different from the last checkup. She's hoping that she won't make it till tomorrow's checkup but as always - we'll just have to wait and see if anything happens. On a very positive note, we had a wonderful Thanksgiving and everyone ate way too much food. The contest is still going strong and I am sad to see some of the guess dates get passed up but we are all very excited about the guess dates to come. Each day that goes by increases the odds of winning for the upcoming guesses but is devastating to those guesses that have already been passed. I think/hope it is safe to say that the "expected" due date was not in the dates that have already passed ....but I obviously will not disclose when the actual date is to be. So those with guesses between today and the end of December, you've been lucky so far and I hope your luck continues We've been almost a full month into the contest thus far and I thank everyone who has entered and wish for the best of luck for everyone in the weeks to come!

The Freestylist is night and day to the Prism Micro(n) if I am thinking of the right kite. Awesome kite that flies very well. The Micron is a very small kite that flies like a bumblebee on red bull. The Freestylist is a very trick oriented kite that also tracks very well. It is designed to fly in the lighter wind ranges. The UL is good in 2-3 mph to 8-9 mph winds. The standard works well in 3-5 mph to 12-15 mph winds.

I have you down for the 15th of December as well Baloo, do you still want me to say BOO a lot now?!?!

Well, we're still waiting...............................................and waiting...........and waiting................. It's not looking to promising for ya Watty and it's starting to look pretty good for a lot of others. No news so far, got my cell phone hooked onto me and waiting for any news to come ringing in. I guess we'll just keep.......waiting......I need to go fly!

The Stranger is a different animal and like Slinger says can be a love/hate kind of thing when you are flying it. It backspins awesome but getting consistency out of it for other tricks can be frustrating at times. Every once in a great while you can see one up for sale on the GWTW forums, the price goes quite high considering that there are other kites on the market that trick much better than it for a lot less. Still it's a pretty neat kite. Here's a pic:

Wow, twins!!! How exciting that is. Major congrats and congrats to you Dninnz! Just an update: We're 12 days into the contest and still waiting. Mom and baby are doing good and we have passed up two guesses thus far which means that if the baby is to come within the next few days they are still in the running. Best of luck to you both and everyone else that has put in a guess. The contest is still going strong but time is running out every day that goes by. Get those guesses in fast.

LOL Baloo & Watty. If it was up to my wife she'd push today. Sorry for getting you all excited Baloo, just want to keep people up to date on whats happening...as much as possible without giving away anything. If I don't post then you may need to worry a little more cuz I might be in the hospital!

It pretty much depends on the wind you are going to be flying in. Tails add a lot of weight and drag to the kite. Tube tails add more drag than flat "ribbon" tails. In the stronger winds tube tails are no problem and should work in lengths up to about 50 ft or so (depending on the diameter of the tail). Flat transition tails should be no problem at all up to the 96' mark in the stronger winds but you will probably have to go smaller or take the tail off if you want to fly in the lighter winds. Bout the best thing I can suggest is try it and see how it goes.

Congrats back to you Mellow67! Do you know if it is a boy or girl yet? Well, it's been a week into the contest and still no arrival so we're still waiting. So far we haven't passed up any guess dates as the first of the month is pretty vacant for guesses. We're coming up on a couple in the next week tho so best of luck to those. I'ts still not too late to get your guess in if you haven't already done so. Good luck everyone!