Re: Flic flacs
| Subject | Re: Flic flacs |
| From | abw@cre.canon.co.uk (Andy Wardley) |
| Date | Wed, 10 Jun 1998 11:30:18 GMT |
| Newsgroups | rec.kites |
David Lindgren wrote:
> What is the classic flic flac orientation?
Nose down. Fade to Pancake or "Fade In to Fade Out" as we now like to call it.
Well, that's the classic Flic-Flac but we talk about sideways Flic-Flacs and Inverted Flic-Flacs (nose up), so I guess it's more common to mean the motion of the kite rather than any specific orientation when we talk about "Flic-Flacs".
The name comes from a gymnastics move which is a back handspring. If you watch the underground car park fight scene at the start of the film "Highlander" there's a point where the bad guy does a spectacular series of Flic-Flac across the ground to escape from Macleod (why he didn't just run away is beyond me, but it looks pretty cool). Although that's not strictly what the kite is doing, the motion reminded of that guy doing his Flic-Flacs so that's what I called it.
The correct spelling is "Flic-Flac", capitalised, hyphenated, with c's and no k's.
The gymnastic definition is:
Flic-Flac
-
also known as a flip-flop or back handspring. Take off one or two feet,
jump backwards onto hands and land on feet. This element is used in a
majority of tumbling passes on the floor exercise. It's also used a great
deal on the balance beam.
> They are both the same kind of motion, but does one of them become a > reverse flic flac?
An inverted Flic Flac, I guess. "Reverse" normally implies motion in the opposite direction whereas this is the same motion but in a different orientation.
(The kind of mechanics you might expect a robotics expert to understand :-)=
> And why is it that I find the former (ie fade-pancake) flic flac much > easier to perform than the other?
The kite is stable when facing up and is harder to shift from that position. The kite is unstable when nose down and is easier to shift from that position.
That's my guess.
A