After a pretty windy and rainy morning, the clouds started to thin out and in the early afternoon, some patches of blue started to appear up above. The wind also started to ease just like forecasted. But, you know, with a car full of kites for almost any wind conditions, I headed for a beach that I thought would be exposed to whatever wind there was.
When I arrived at the beach, it was absolutely dead calm. Not even a whisker of wind. But like mentioned above, no worries. I have kites for any kind of wind conditions so I dove into the kite bag and came out with a couple of dua lined kites; the Feather and the Sweety. Great, but really different, kites for flying in no/low wind conditions. I walked down on the grassy field at the beach and assembled both kites. I dug out a 10m QLK lineset, separated the two pair of lines and hooked up the Feather to one pair of lines and the Sweety to the other. Ready to fly!
If there was an ever so slight draft, it was coming in from the water, so I lined up the kite accordingly. Take off and flying the Feather in no wind conditions on 10m lines is no sweat. The kite takes to the air and you can guide it around, not completely effortlessly, but pretty close. And 3D flying on 10m is pretty cool! Especially the Up-And-Overs! It’s awesome to see that kite 10 meters above you while it’s continuing to fly over you and to the other side!
I was ready to do some filming and went over to get my GoPro and my tripod. Got it set up properly and soon I was ready for some more flying. I launched the kite … or … no, actually I didn’t. The kite didn’t want to fly! Why?
Well, while I was getting the GoPro in position, the slight draft that came in from the water had changed direction by exactly 180 degrees. I no longer had the wind in my back when launching. Whoa, that happened quickly!
No worries though, I just had to turn it all around, and as soon as I had the now offshore draft in my back things got back to normal. The draft was still light enough to do 360’ies pretty effortlessly. Up-And_Overs were a tad more complicated.
Anyyway, heres’s some cool low wind flying with the Feather!
After a while, the wind picked up a little. (Yes, I guess you can see it in the video above too.) And I started to be a little concerned about breaking stuff. You know, the Feather isn’t exactly built for much wind with its rather fragile framing. So I decided to change kites and add some more lines to the fun.
I walked over to my car and once again I dove into my kite bag. This time I came out with a couple of A-Quads; a Standard and a Semi-vented. As I returned to the beach I assembled both of them but I quickly concluded to go for the Standard.
So I did and in the light and somewhat unstable offshore breeze I was playing with the kite just inches over the water. Yeah, I did dip it into the water a few times to spice up the flying.
Here’s a quick compilation of the QLK flying!
