Because Nic O’Neill over at Fortunafound.com is preparing for this windless festival a little bit different compared to the previous years. Rather than a normal festival, this will be an online one, and you can find all the bits and pieces by following this link!
Not having to be there in person makes this a great opportunity for both you and me to participate and contribute to the international kite society! All you need to do is to create and submit two videos to the Fortunafound website.
Rather than me going on about how to and so on, just check out this link, and I guess you can find an answer to any of your questions about the ‘festival’.
So…. what’s all this dust blowing about then?
Well, In order to make one of the videos required to participate, I will need a few zero wind kites, so I dove into the pile of kites and found the good, old Feather, originally by Buena Vista, but my version is made by HQ Kites. That kite has given me loads of pleasures flying in very low or no wind, both indoor and outdoor.
However, when assembling it I found one of the Avia Skinny spreaders was broken. Replacement required, but did I have any Skinnies left in my spare rods bag? Nope, none left, so I had to go for the second-best, replacing both lower spreaders with two SkyShark 2PTs. Not quite the same as the Skinny, but close enough.
Hacksawing off a few centimetres and VOILA! The Feather is yet again ready to fly!
4 responses
How would the HQ Feather compare to the Prism 4D or HQ Shadow (the two most light wind duals that I can relate to) if you have had the opportunity to compare?
Avia skinnies: https://www.andykites.com/catalogo-catalog/stecche-rod/skinny/
Hmmm…. I’ve never flown the Shadow but judging from miscellaneous videos on YouTube is guess it’s more trickable than the Feather.
The 4D is (much) smaller than the Feather and also a bit more twitchy in the air. If that’s a feature or a flaw you must decide yourself. More trickable too.
The Feather is very stable in flight, straight trajectories and sharp cornering is well in reach. Flatspins are on the slower side and it can hold a fade (given a reasonably steady draft) forever. IMO a great kite for learning basic indoor/no-wind flying.
Brings a smile to my face every time I fly it! ?
Just doing 360ies and up and overs, how would the Prism 4D compare to the HQ Feather? Which one would require most work just to keep it in the air?
Now it was several years since a last did a 360ies with the 4D and the HQ Shadow (been mostly quads for 3.5 years) and I hadn’t been doing them much in total even before that point. I found that it was much work.
I know how to do the bridle trimming of the attachment point of the lines of dual line kites when there is wind to have the stall easily available for different (reasonable) wind ranges. However I haven’t got the corresponding feeling for this bridle trimming when it comes to indoor dual line kiting. Would you have any idea how to do the bridle trimming for indoor using the same kite, or in other words how far back that the nose (of the kite 🙂 ) should go back from the pilot if you compare light wind piloting (within the normal wind window) to zero wind piloting?
> Just doing 360ies and up and overs, how would the Prism 4D compare to the HQ Feather? Which one would require most work just to keep it in the air?
I don’t have much experience with the 4D, so I won’t jump to any conclusions, but I have a hunch that the Feather is the easiest to keep in the air due to its larger sail area and size.
…just my 2 cents….