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Black Dog


Breezin
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So glad the 100 degree weather has passed for awhile. Yesterday nice winds 8 to 12 mph. 20 degrees F with light snow falling accumulating to about 3". Gorgeous day! The BD is made of ripstop polyester. Handles the wet best out of my kites. I call it Mudder. I've stained a couple of my white kites in the wet so Mudder is the only one I fly. First time with a BD I let it go to upgrade. Missed it so I got Mudder. 3/4 kite so it's fairly fast. Kite is really responsive and wrist/finger movements are usually all that's required. Kite is really tricky but asks for smooth inputs unlike the Hydra, Nighthawk or Addiction that can be popped over and over. Out of my kites it is most similar to the Mongoose. When flying as kites get quicker with wind speed I've gravitated to holding my arms cocked, close to my side and hands close together. Issue that I've had with the kite is wing tip wraps. Because of hand position I'm late or forget to throw my arm wide. Cascade, Wap do wap, and the like end up in a tip wrap more often than not. At times even coming out of a roll up. Not very good yet so most of that is pilot error.Still. Watching tips get wrapped yesterday time and again I got pretty frustrated. The leading edge tunnel stops pretty short of the tensioning line and then the end cap. The way the knots are and the bulky end cap catch the lines in 4 different ways. I've thought about taking off the endcaps and electrical taping the tensioning lines. That still leaves the abrupt straight ending of the tunnel a serious snag point. It's worked well on my Zephyr and Hydra but they have longer tunnels . While flying I made a plan and the frustration went away.Going to lengthen the tunnel ending in a v shape a 1/4 inch above the wingtip. Put 2 holes at the end so a line can pull the dacron closer to the spar. Hopefully this will make wing tip wraps less common. Course more practice will do that too. Sure do dig having Mudder. Quite the kite.

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