Re: A great kiting evening

Subject Re: A great kiting evening
From abw@peritas.com (Andy Wardley)
Date Wed, 24 Jun 1998 11:32:07 GMT
Newsgroups rec.kites 
David Lindgren wrote:
> Fixed my active bridle - sheep shanks (well something like that
> anyhow) instead of overhand knots.

Cool! I did the same with mine, but switching from larks heads to sheep shanks made the lower leg longer and shifted the whole lot too far outboard. I struggled with it for half an hour before realising what I had done wrong. By then I had to go home.

So I've still got a Box with a near-perfect bridle that I just need another half hour to fix. 

> did not go anywhere (stayted 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.

Sounds like your bridle is set up perfect. What I now know is that a kite that is set too far outboard will not do a decent Fountain. The reason is this: too far outboard means that the outhauls are too short. When you pop an Axel, there is too much tension on the outhaul which lifts the wing into and over the Axel, and at the same time pushes the nose away from you and down towards the ground. With the nose pointing down so much, the kite follows it.

This is the hard part about designing a new bridle: recognising a bad flight characteristic and then knowing (or learning) what to do to correct it. 

> 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.)

Ground Zero. Jumping off the ground into a Flat Spin. 

> 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)?

A little more wind may help. Too little wind and you get no lift, too much and the kite won't play dead. 

> I also managed the best rising flic-flac of my entire life (still in
> no wind) starting from pancaked on the ground.

Cool. 

> 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...

Cool. These are all things that the Active Bridle seems to do very well. 

> I'd love to be able to repeat that...

I call it a "Manic Backspin". Easiest of all on a Matchbox but it's very much repeatable on a Box and in the right wind, an OS, too.

Dive down on one side of the window and pop the outside wing (outside of the window) pretty hard while giving slack on the other. It's important to get slack in quikcly enough so that the pop throws the nose up into a Backspin position.

Here's a brand new one: imagine a Flic Flac. You have the kite Faded Out (nose away) and you pop both lines evenly to "Flic" the kite back into a Fade In position. Instead of popping both hands, pop one fairly hard and the other a little. The kite slaps into a Fade and immediately does a 360 rotation on it's back. This is a <something> Backspin. Just haven't decided what that <something> is yet.

If you think of Carl's Backspin where he pops Fade Out, Fade In, <pause>, and then Backspin (+Backspin, +Backspin), it's like that but with no pause between Fading in and spinning. It all happens in one smooth move.

Incidentally, I think Carl's sequence of Backspins should be called a "Rubber Band". "Rubbert Shorts" being Carl's nickname. 

> 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).

Yep. The Active Bridle does some seem to do some amazing things to the Box. I've been playing around with bridles on this kite for the last 3 or 4 years and it never ceases to amaze me how versatile it (the kite) is. This is by far the best bridle I've designed for it (or any other kite) yet.

Even though, I do so myself... ;-)=

A