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January 2004Here's me flying a Gemini Ultralight in Stoke Park, Guildford, UK. The wind was light, but steady, and the sun was shining in clear blue skies. Trick of the month is an Acid Bath - a combination of barrel roll, backflip and acid drop. |
Here's me flying a Gemini Ultralight in very light wind, with bright sunshine and clear blue skies. Trick of the month here is the Acid Bath. It's a combination that starts from a fade and progresses with a 180 backspin or barrel roll, followed by a back flip and then an immediate acid drop. It's very effective when you can make it all flow together into one single move. You have a quick spin, a hard flip and then a sudden drop. The contrasting moves combine well together and provide an effective punctuation mark, especially if you acid drop all the way down into a crisp landing on the tips.
Backspins and barrel rolls are very similar tricks and it's often hard to identify one from the other (not that it really matters as they both look good and have the same end result). If the kite stays flat and the nose spins away from you then it's a backspin. But if the nose stays pointing towards you and the kite rotates more around its spine(s) then we call it a barrel roll. In reality, the kite very rarely does one or the other and usually sits somewhere between the two extremes. So it doesn't really matter too much what you do, or what you call it. Either way you start with the kite in a fade and end up 180 degrees later with the kite on its back, nose away from you, and with the lines running over the leading edge and under the kite. From here you pull on both lines to back flip the kite through 360 degrees (around the axis of the spreaders), straight back into a deep turtle, but now with the lines running clear off the trailing edge. At this point (ideally while the kite is still flipping back), a quick jab on both lines drops the kite straight down into the acid drop.
You'll also see cascades going down, up, across, and nowhere (that's "cascade", "fountain", "river" and "puddle" respectively). Some axels, multi-axels, flat spins, flic-flacs, backspins, lazy susans, a rung or two of a Jacob's Ladder and a Dead Launch (which we show twice because the sunlight makes it look so nice).
The music is a piece called "Earthmover" than I downloaded from a free music web site (as in legally, royalty free for non-commercial use), but now I can't find out where I got it from to give the appropriate credit that is due. I'll keep looking...
| 00.00 | Credits |
| 00.10 | Dead launch, axel take-off, fly round into cascade, shove-it into fade, 180 flat spin out, dropping an extra axel on the way out. |
| 00.25 | Fly in, spot cascade (aka "puddle"), axel shove-it into fade, flic-flac, half barrel roll into backflip and acid drop to land (half-barrel + backflip + acid drop = acid bath). |
| 00.37 | Axel take-off, shove-it into fade, half barrel into backflip and acid drop (i.e. another acid bath). |
| 00.43 | Axel take-off, fractured into a fade, flic-flac and yet another acid bath. |
| 00.48 | Axel take-off and fly out, once near, once far. |
| 00.53 | Let's see that dead launch again, this time in slo-mo! Check out the lovely way the sunlight catches the kite for a fraction of a second. |
| 00.56 | Power dive into 540 flat spin and out. |
| 00.59 | Cascade across (aka "river"), fractured into a fade, and a 360 backspin which almost drops it to the deck, ready for the elevator sliding out. |
| 01.07 | Power dive to fade, into 540 backspin and out. |
| 01.12 | In from the right, snap stall with a little slide into an axel and out. |
| 01.14 | Dive down and flare into slo-mo fade, then a quad backspin to the ground. |
| 01.23 | Pull over for the flip up into fade and then acid bath. |
| 01.27 | Axel take-off into cascade up (aka "fountain"). |
| 01.34 | Rolling drop into double axel and fly out to left. |
| 01.39 | Power dive into 180 flat spin and up out. |
| 01.40 | Flic-flac down into a fade, 180 backspin / barrel roll, backflip, 180 lazy susan, flip into fade (half backspin + flip + half lazy + flip = one rung of Jacob's Ladder) |
| 01.48 | Fly down into 180 flat spin to tip stab, hold, axel off the tip, then double it and out. |
| 01.57 | Fly in and splash the puddle with a couple of axels to a tip stab, then fly out. |
| 02.02 | Rolling in to a double axel. |
| 02.06 | Axel and a half, fractured into a fade, a flic, a flac, half a barrel roll into a backflip, then a full shove-it out. Recover to a brief stall then axel and fly out. 02.15 Power dive into snappy fast flic-flac, roll and fly out. |
| 02.19 | Fly in from right, flare out and flip into the fade. Half a backspin, flip over into a full lazy susan, then acid drop to the tips. |
| 02.24 | End credits. |
| 02.29 | Safety meeting :-) |
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