A great kiting evening
| Subject | A great kiting evening |
| From | dave@thelonious.new.ox.ac.uk (David Lindgren) |
| Date | 23 Jun 1998 17:44:41 +0100 |
| Newsgroups | rec.kites |
Last night was great. I left work at about quarter to six and was out flying by 6.30.
Fixed my active bridle - sheep shanks (well something like that anyhow) instead of overhand knots.
The wind was a gusty ~6mph although it did die off at times.
I started to be able to get 540s fairly consistently (by the Sam Eaton method) and the cascades weren't bad. I even managed a cascade that did not go anywhere (stayed same height in sky) and also once managed about four steps (or should that be spurts) of a fountain from about half way up the window to 3/4 of the way up.
Then the wind died. But instead of packing up and going in, I decided to play around with some ground stuff. The thing I wanted to get sussed was the pancake on ground - pop to fade - pop to pancake a little above the ground - 540 spin - fly away. (Maybe Andy'll tell me what that's called.) I managed it once and managed to get it to 360 out of the pancake a couple of times, but the rest of the time, the kite got back down to the ground too quick to fit in the rest of the rotation. Is there any trick to doing this (apart from a) practice and b) making sure the first pop lifts the kite quite high off the ground)?
I also managed the best rising flic-flac of my entire life (still in no wind) starting from pancaked on the ground.
I also (accidentally) managed what turns out to be a dive into a spinning fade (ie. at end of dive, kite goes onto back nose towards me but spinning around on its back). This spin lasted for about 540, at which point I picked my jaw off the ground and recovered. The funny thing was that it was supposed to be a 540 flat spin...
I'd love to be able to repeat that...
Anyhow, it was a most enjoyable hour and a half flying. And boy does that active bridle do great things to my BoT. I guess I'll have to buy some proper bridling line and put a permanent one on it (and take off the dynamic one).
Seems as though it might be possible to fly this evening too!
Dave