Welcome philm63

[John Barresi]

Hello @philm63,

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[philm63]

Thanks, John. Just got into the hobby/sport last month while I was flying my 2-year old's little plastic kite - got to thinking about when I was a kid; I used to build and fly kites made from paper and soft pine sticks, and any old spool of string. Tails were made from strips of an old cotton bed sheet with knots tied in them. But they flew!

Engineer, Father of one (and another one on the way...), and just moved to Ohio from Georgia to find that, across the street from my new house there is a small open field, and on most days the wind goes anywhere between a gentle breeze and 10-15 mph. Some gusts, some turbulence, but decent wind and I thought; why not get a kite of my own?

So here I am - my ITW Spider has about 5 or 6 flights on it, already cut my stock lines from the original 80 ft down to 65 ft to speed things up, and am practicing away as often as the wind (and my schedule) will allow. I'm watching videos and seeing tricks I want to do, but still realizing there is a lot to learn about kites and wind and flying in general... which is why I am here.

[Mikelp3586]

Welcome@philm63


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[makatakam]

Hi, philm63 (Phil?), and welcome to the forum. Anything you want to know about kiting can be found here. Don't be shy about asking. We've all been down the same road and are ready to help, but stay away from that Barresi guy. He'll do anything to get you addicted. 

Seriously though, welcome, and I look forward to crossing lines with you someday.

[SHBKF]

Wow!  What a great first post.  Keep em coming.  We all like to hear the stories from your journey along the path of kiting.  Take your time or go as fast as you wish.  The field of kites is a vast expanse.

Welcome to the KiteLife, SHBKF

kite similar to my first one flown on the streets of Cuyahoga Falls back in the day, way back....

[Exult]

Enjoy this time of exploration. Thinking back on my own time as a beginner I almost envy this stage of having started in getting going and starting to discover, though I don't believe that there is ever an end to learning.

After the initial left/right control makes sense, start on landings, stalls and just barely flying - perhaps by making small jumps (decimeters)/landings on a low wind day. Stalling and landing is certainly a part of it. A cart wheel recovery (which increases the effective training time by saving you a lot of walks) doesn't even need to be taught at a very good/large kite field (though you happened to have one just around the corner!).

21 hours ago, philm63 said:

So here I am - my ITW Spider has about 5 or 6 flights on it, already cut my stock lines from the original 80 ft down to 65 ft to speed things up

A bit surprising that you during this early phase of learning wish for a shorter line and not one that gives a larger distance to the ground. Is the field very small or you feel like you would get better control with the shorter line? In my ears it sounds like you must have made some progress when even considering a shorter line set.

Regarding the choice of kite - go through a couple of crash/repair cycles until they become rare before you upgrade I think (not that I've ever tried an ITW Spider). Though replacing a RTF (ready to fly) polyester line can increase the response/control of the kite.

[philm63]

@Exult - The field across the street from my house is rather small, but I've also flown a 100 ft Dyneema line set I ordered along with the Spider. Actually thought I was ordering a 65 ft set, it came marked "65 ft", but I thought it seemed a bit long so I measured it - yup; 100 ft! So I flew it anyway and thought it was just fine albeit a bit long. I'll probably cut that one down as well.

Honestly, I'm a bit impatient, an A-Type "I want it all and I want it now!" type person, and the longer lines just felt too slow so I shortened the stock set figuring they're an inexpensive (read "cheap") nylon set, so the experiment really won't cost me anything. I liked the shorter lines because they allowed this small kite (57" tip-to-tip) to come closer to me thus appearing larger - I could see what I was doing better, and I have pretty quick reaction times so controlling this small kite at 65 ft is no problem.

I've started walking forward at the edges of the window to attempt a stall - haven't gotten there yet, but getting close. I reckon it's only a matter of time before I graduate to a larger kite. I'm willing to spend the money but I want to be sure whatever I get next will last me quite a while and one on which I can learn some slack line tricks as well as fly fast and accurate.

[Exult]

18 hours ago, philm63 said:

@Exult - The field

There is a difference between @philm63 and @philm63. The latter one causes a notification appear for the one who is addressed. To generate the latter, input an "@", then type the first few characters of the recipient slowly to make the list of possible names appear and then pick the right name.

18 hours ago, philm63 said:

but I've also flown a 100 ft Dyneema line set I ordered along with the Spider. Actually thought I was ordering a 65 ft set, it came marked "65 ft", but I thought it seemed a bit long so I measured it - yup; 100 ft! So I flew it anyway and thought it was just fine albeit a bit long. I'll probably cut that one down as well.

Get some sleeving (perhaps you already did?) and you can have a 65 and a 35 foot line set.

18 hours ago, philm63 said:

the stock set figuring they're an inexpensive (read "cheap") nylon set

Sorry for nitpicking, but the lines that go with the Spider are polyester... (sorry again).

18 hours ago, philm63 said:

I reckon it's only a matter of time before I graduate to a larger kite.

I'd say that larger kites are easier to trick/fly, but that I suspect that they crash more destructively. Larger kites are more easy to keep stable in a stall than small kites - noisy input is kind of low pass filtered or at least the input gets more averaged. If your hands know what to do (i.e. give slack) automatically one span width above the ground when the ground approaches rapidly, then the risk of crashing destructively is small. Having this ability, you are in the position of deciding the level of risk that you want to subject any new and more expensive kite to. However don't postpone the purchase of the second kite too long so that your learning slows down. After all, kites can be repaired.

My experience with smaller beginner kites is not so large - I did not start out with such a kite (not counting some sessions in the mid 80-ies). I instead started out with a DLK that had 213cm/7' span width and a rather low aspect ratio (Jam Session (-98?)) and has stayed most of the time in the 2m to 2.5m range. I lost count of the times I repaired the Jam Session, but I favor quite much ground contact and especially at the time (experimented with) quite hard input. A bonus was that when buying spares from the right kite dealer I always got a lot of hints. Occasionally during last two years I've started flying both larger and smaller DLKs than this range.