Paul LaMasters

eat ketchup sandwiches all summer long if you have to, but the money spent on "the real McCoy" revolution kite is money that has been well spent (even invested well!)

in NO wind you want the kite square to the wind, you are maximizing the available pressure (without any movement on the part of the flier) In high winds you don't even want it available as square at all! You want to bleed pressure off of the leading edge, even when going forward. Balance point, .... where is that darn stationary hover? (imagine using only one finger on each handle, find your "spot") In the beginning of flight lessons the difference in lengths between tops & bottom leaders is at least DOUBLE, as your skills improve that proportion will increase, (I am at 3-1/2 top lengths for every one on the bottom, my measurement is a "fist full", 10 hours a week since '96 on mostly Revolution kites) it must back-up inverted from resting on the ground, leading edge down, or your tuning is not properly engaged. It is only the tiniest of differences between forward and reverse flight, ... where is your neutral?

you want to fill the kite sail with air pressure, so you drag it into a wind tunnel and measure different effects. What happens if you angled one wing away from you and pulled one towards yourself slightly? Well air pressure bleeds off one side more and the kite starts to change directions. There are only four methods of control ~ move the handles together, so tops are now pointed at your nose (forward) ~ move the handle tops to now point at the kite (Reverse) ~ point one thumb only at the kite and it rotates, either clockwise or counter-clockwise The kite must back-up inverted or you need to adjust the tuning. The kite has the most pressure when it is square to the wind (not angled forward because you want to go forward) If you feel the kite needs tuning always adjust the DOWN first, see if you are filling the sail with pressure. Little tiny differences between the knots (for tuning) is a huge advantage, you might not want a two inch correction, maybe an quarter of an inch dials it in properly. checking for even line lengths is like a front end alignment on your car. Without a neutral, your ride will pull wildly into the wall as you speed down the racetrack. when everything is right, you will be able to perfectly balance the flying handles on a single finger of each hand and maintain a stationary hover. where this balancing point is located is a deeply personal preference developed over time. You can change where that balance point is for comfort during the day too! Fill the sail with pressure and find your neutral (balance point), the kite will slow down dramatically and your control will shoot upwards

Welcome and enjoy!

As much as you are enjoying yourself, I almost hate to write anymore. add "an inch of down" (minimum!) to your tuning set-up, that is wild beast just waiting to be broken and ridden hard. The kite surges forward suddenly, you add input and regain control. You want it more neutral, so it only goes forward if you ALLOW it to. Go back to inverted hover practice, de-tune some more forward out of the handles, think slow and reverse, s-l-o-w-e-r. Racing to the top of the wind window in forward flight is not what the revolution experience is all about, control. Land it into the hole of an empty soda can, balanced on top of the fence post, that's the rev way to fly, that's the video I want to view!

Hey Paul, I think picture #3 might be you... I wasn't sure. If that was you, I'm sorry I had my camera & bag in my hands when you offered to let me try that awesome looking Shook Mesh. I really wanted to try one of those... next time ! Yes that was me on the 135% mesh, took me a couple of days to get it all dialed-in to my liking. Push kids out of the way next time it's handy, otherwise I always go for the cutest child who's nearby for a quick experience of piloting

Weird,.....Fall winds! I started yesterday on a Zen/diamond custom, eventually wound up on 135% Shook mesh with 3 wraps mid-day, finished up on a Gibian Masterpiece full sail on a Black race frame.

60 foot length lets you be both close to the kite and lazy in low wind personally, you can throw & catch with abandon on the 1.5 platform, maybe even a Zen , those are wound on a set of 15 inch no-snags, ready at any moment to crowd interact. 120's are great, bigger picture and slower in flight, team worthy (if the wind will allow 'em) I use 100'/50# so often I have it wound onto two different sets of handles, 15 inch no-snags and 17" titanium long throws, great length in a calm with the Zen or team flying in low wind on 1.5s keep cutting 'em down shorter and shorter as they get raggedy, until you wind up with indoor lengths Figure-of-eight knot usage and no sleeving is necessary, (building the stopper knot into the loop before it's formed) I prefer LPG indoors (90#) and Skybond outside #50, 100# (or 170#/not used yet, but ready if it's blowing hard enough to warrant such an extreme) Indoors?, a set of 12 footers and set of 22s depending on how much room overhead is offered it really depends on your location, what line length fits where you intend to be flying?

how much repairs are you willing to do sir? I have a couple of kites that could use a new trailing edge, that means a couple of panels need to replaced with new icarex fabric and the center vee will need to be recreated as well Tattered but still flight worthy (okay, beat unmercifully until replacement was necessary as the wife said they were "visual embarrassing to our family") Thye are currently held together with duct tape you need frames too? Those items for sale, sails I could probably make freebies, but you get what you pay for, so no squawking about condition You need lines worthy of team flying, that's not some discarded leftovers from the community, that will take a financial commitment and not a one & done either the group is in for hundreds of bucks, even if the sails are provided for free. PM me if you want to discuss further and good luck with the team either way. -plm

Whether they be flyer or spectator, all attendees had a great time at this event. I used the whole bag from 4 wraps\135% mesh to diamond travel frames in a pair of Zens. Flew a bit of Pairs, some Team and individually both inside and outdoors, day and night. Mixed it up with new friends and shared laughs with old ones too (not our ages, but our number of years of acquaintance) No pics sorry! -plm

breaking a spar should be viewed like falling when downhill skiing,... you're not pushing yourself hard enough to the edge if you never fail. I still break sticks, (started Revs in '93, hooked bad since '96), 3 or 4 spars every year, I'm kind of proud of those accomplishments. Usually by throwing it into some "suddenly too close" object leading edge first. the other day I broke a Diamond travel frame stick in flight on the Zen, but I was violently flipping that big ole sail inside out too (flick-flak) and suddenly a sonic boom fell upon us <LOL!> I had five replacement sticks with me, but each one has a ferrel and I needed the one w/o,.. naturally!

Think of the flying device as two kites connected by a little piece of fabric in the middle, one in each hand. You can move them together or independently! There's a relationship between the two halves also. You get the maximum amount of wind pressure on the kite when it is square against that direction of air movement. Imagine holding a sheet of plywood in front of the wind tunnel. You can bend it against the wind direction (forward or backward from square) and bleed-off some of that pressure. So on your kite set-up, you're going to have adjustable leaders affixed in-between the flying lines and the handles. A series of knots allows for easy movement of both the tops and bottom flying line positions. In the beginning, your top leaders are double the length of the bottoms, soon though that proportional difference will increase further! Currently I'm 3-1/2 times longer on the tops. All this difference is like driving your car with both feet on the brake,... you're on a steep hill, it's icy and dark, there are no guard rails and the tires should have been replaced last year. That is how you are going to fly a quad. It can only go forward if you allow it to, only as far as you want, the natural position is a hover in position. You could hold that all day long in any orientation. You own it! How you get to this level of control is entirely up to you. You can take years like me or you can crash course with others guiding your basics. Eventually developing your own feel and style. What feels right to you on the ends' of the lines today can change in the future. You can change a rev component and test some premise easier than on most other kites, going back to "stock" is super easy. A group of people can explore a whole bunch of possibilities in quick succession. What happens if you jerk on one line violently in flight? What about a light weight (& Flexible!) frame in a heavily vented kite? Do you prefer that, as opposed to a stiffened frame kite with more sail area? When do you fly on clothes line (thick 140 or 170#) as opposed to using a kite with more venting? Naturally there are more elaborate changing you can make, customizing the kite to your liking. But without some firm basis of comparison you wouldn't know what feels "better". Share with others, soon a group can develop and you'll have more opportunities to experiment with friends. Nothing is more rewarding! Go out and meet other fliers,... I know that's bucks for travel instead of new kites. But the knowledge and exposure to the latest, greatest stuff is there also. You want a piece of that, it's an addiction that always needs to be fed. Time on the lines can not be purchased, otherwise I'd be the best flier (thanks Barbara!)

We marvel at Rick Harmer's efforts with a dually kite, simply amazing,.... in a absolute dead calm too. But he probably has ten thousand hours of practice honing those skills. Sure his equipment is all first rate, properly balanced and tuned, but that doesn't mean a thing in my hands! So we forced him into quads, so we won't be constantly humiliated. Lots of own dualies, few of us can fly the stitching out of 'em. Now a quad on the other hand, I can show you every flailing trick I can do in about five minutes. Take an excellent dually pilot and stick 'em on a quad,... oh my God! Will Sturdy walked onto the field once, borrowed my kite and promptly trounced us all badly on open quad ballet, my schictk isn't stock, never touched it before. The kid could do a falling leaf all the way to the ground like it rode on laser beams. At the last possible second he would knock the hat off of ants and recover forward flight again, or just casually tipping the water over a pond. Disgusting levels of amazing control. Hey, Mark we should keeping work on our own weaknesses. I can snap stall but not fade, HA!

make sure you don't push the spars away from flush with the leading edge though,... tighten the "tops" first, never just the bottom elastics

you know it's just short pieces of string and little bits of plastic fittings to hold a carbon point125 tube on each sail. You can make 'em removable easier too, just like your flying lines attach to the bridle, you do take the lines off to go home right? Add little pig-tails to each end-cap so install and removal is quicker. Add little release knots too (onto the truss lines) so you aren't picking the spectra fibers or braid apart to get the loops off more knots are tangle points though

Tell Eliot ,.... "you want it fixed while you wait", .... he's never heard that one before <HA!!!> Go for french bridle and make him install that too, grab a set of 15 inch "no-snag" handles, if he has 'em. Try some Skybond flying lines,.. don't leave any space on your credit card, drool over a Masterpiece Shook "progressive mesh" with a set of Diamond frame tubes and Green Race. Try a set of P-90s in a travel frame arrangement. what about lighted LEDs that are waterproof and slap right onto the ends of the magic sticks? Surely you can't leave those laying on the counter for 12 bucks more? Help out a store-front kite merchant with a real inventory of quality and desirable products. Heck they are the nicest folks besides, maybe you just go say hi and bring them lunch?

Eliot would provide you a loaner rod if you asked him nicely & in person, a lesson with his bride at the whalehead club wouldn't kill ya' either

dugard's has been flown in eight mph, surprisingly responsive almost down to mid-vent bottom end wind conditions. Not much surface area, but no venting's weight either. The framing can be light but I'm assuming Paul's is on green race, used almost exclusively. He and Eliot slapped one together as a cooperative effort (shook's pre-made SUL leading edges) with Alden's phone guidance. The second one Paul did himself with the left-overs. You can buy these as masterpieces thru Rev, maybe your dealer too (ASK), but it's a not a very good value per square inch of fabric <HA!> When you want one in each hand at the same time though, then you can appreciate what a light pull does for comfort during a long session. When everyone else cowers in fear from the big gals blowing in from the sea, this kite design laughs and continues on unabated.

limited only by your wallet, At a minimum you'll need something for no-wind/SUL conditions, certainly a high winder kite too, everything else is just in-betweeners. After 20+ years, I carry just one Rev bag with a dozen or so steadily used kites and few that get mixed in or removed out depending on mood or weather. I think I own about 60 of 'em. Most of my "A bag" is dedicated to low wind, indoors and SULs, but I can fly when the coast guard won't leave the harbor too. Revs come in different sizes 6 feet to almost 10' and I have some that are knock-offs in a vastly reduced sizes, (Dugard's six pack stack of 36 inch leading edge and 2 Ames six-pack stacks of 42 inchers). There are different design considerations available,..... the indoor, the Speed Series and the old faithful concept Various custom builders come up occasionally for you to collect their wares also The cost of travel to fly with friends greatly exceeds any actual kite purchases, at least for me, probably by a factor of ten!

NYM vent suits your budget and needs, it's a great kite and worthy of your consideration, go for it! A shook mesh is worth the money ONLY if you have it to spare,... the 100% would fly for you in 10 and take your beyond 30 mph comfortably. He also offers a 135% mesh which I have seen flown when others are on mid-vents, it could probably be fun in a 40 mph gust. Alden Millers' design "Vicki" can be flown in steady single digit winds too and take more wind than is required to overturn a city bus on that high side!

Nevertheless, a dozen feet of 100# hi-test bridle line mailed in a #10 envelope is not that much of a financial investment, but the return for these said funds is truly priceless! You'll fly the kite an inch above the ground, inverted as a preference, because of the confidence gained through practice. Every kite can fly forward, most to the top of the window,... "quad-line effect" on the other hand?, that revolution kite is all about one word control, that control comes from active brake line pilot inputs. Change the leaders and change the kite's performance capabilities. What a cheap fix,... heck send me your address thru a PM and I'll provide it myself, if funds are a major concern. This is a must fix, I would stop you on the flying field and demand to change your set-up immediately, YES it is that important! Don't waste time learning w/o this feature incorporated into your equipment. There are lots of schools of thought on how to arrange longer top leaders. My approach is to have the tops a stationary length, (maybe a couple of very closely spaced tuning knots available) and that overall top length is the size of the gap between the two handle attachment points. it just about reaches all the way across! The bottoms are going to be only long enough for you to generate forward lift, barely and with effort on the part of the pilot. If the kite will not back-up from an inverted position on the ground, you do NOT have it tuned properly. This "Down emphasis" is not how the factory gives lessons, they want you to experience the thrill of a vertical climb in forward motion. Forget all 'bout that, in reality you need control of the kite inverted and an inch off of the ground. Quad-line effect is magical

smooth & graceful or flailing jerks, high wind or low, all day session or a quick fix after work, ... each session has it's own needs for line lengths as well as handle choice. The size of the kite matters too! Small kite or very light weight float indoors you can get away with shorties, high wind means you want less wear and tear on your grips and forearms unless it's just a demo and your back sitting again watching others in a couple of minutes I carry custom indoor mini-shorties 8" 1/4 inch diameter (1) and Rev's stock indoor 14" handles (1) 13" no snags (1) 15s no snags (4 sets) and a set of 19 inch titanium customs which are a preference when given the opportunity to use 'em. The curvature matters too, these have most all of the metal's bend up at the top, straightening away to the bottom, grade five tubes, 3/8 diameter with fishing grips crafted by Glenn Haynes, which have since the photography was taken, been scrubbed throughly clean & bright again.

first thing to remember "you want the top end-caps FLUSH w/the leading edge when you are finished" with all the forthcoming adjustments. Tighten those tops and then work on the bottom elastic knots. On a low wind kite you can affix the cap to the sail/frame with a zip-tie or bridle line on top. The sail is correctly tight without any deformation visible or wrinkling present -

Roll 'em up tight and seal closed with velcro sleeve one: 3 custom Ashworth indoor quads in a thin plastic map tube sleeve two: 3 zens, sleeve three: 2 B-pro SULs & 1 Polanski custom, sleeve four: 2 "Old Glory" SULs & 1 40% Shook, sleeve five: 2 75% Shooks, and 1 100% Shook sleeve six: 2 B-Pro mid-vents and 1 B-Pro full vent eighteen kites, plus a large handful of spars, 8 sets of handles with line in place, 3 stakes, a fix it repair kit, light-sets and several small tools. I also carry two REV banner pole ground pegs plus I roll the rev bag around another map tube that contains 1/2 a dozen shook mini banner revs on poles, sticks way out of one end, but strapped to the transport sand cart it's just a taller handle.

that's the ones we use too John,... almost a disposable cost for that 2 man size,.. I think we paid like 40 bucks a piece