The calendar tells me we’re in the middle of the month of March, but that can mean a lot of different things up here in my neck of the woods. The weather can be anything between full winter and heavy snowfalls to warm, sunny and springlike. This morning the mercury had dipped just below freezing, but the sun was shining and the winds were on the rise.
Starting work early sure has its benefits. You’re allowed to leave early too, and on a day like today, with a few hours on my hands and a car full of kites, …. guess what?! Yes; I went flying!
From the easterly winds this morning, the wind direction had changed during the day, and a nice breeze clocking into something like 7 to 8m/s (15 to 18mph) was coming in from the south. Just like forecasted. So my plan was to take that ten minutes to drive to one of the local beaches called Paradise Beach. As its name implies, yes, it’s a pretty nice place. Too crowded to fly in the summer, but today I had the place (almost) to my self! …or at least that was what I expected because when I hopped out of my car at the parking, my car was the only one there.
Judging by the windspeed, ventilation was the way to go, so I grabbed a handful of vented kites, stuffed them into my kite bag, put the rucksack with the rest of the stuff on my back and started to walk through the forest down to the beach.
I could feel the wind growing stronger as the threes thinned out as I was getting closer to the beach and when there, I immediately knew that I could use a full vented quad kite. The wind was coming straight on to the beach and it was really cold actually, but nothing could keep me from flying in such (close to) perfect conditions.
A few months ago, I added some extra venting to one of my semi-vented QLKs, and that kite was my choice for the day. I know from experience that kite would have no trouble with the pretty strong southerly winds sweeping across the sandy beach.
I started out flying on a 30m (100ft) set of lines and I set up the handles with my new leaders that I made some days ago. And with the flying lines attached to the third knot both on the upper and the lower leaders, I started to fly!
And…. what to say…?
Absolutely awesome!
The new leaders/setup and that full vented kite of mine was the perfect combination for the current wind. Fingertip controlled and the kite did everything exactly like I ‘told’ it to. Straight lines at high or low speed, crisp cornering, super stable hovers and long, sweeping side slides. Wow! I forgot all about the cold conditions and the rest of the world for that matter and found comfort inside the bubble of mine, flying my socks off!
I had so much fun that I almost forgot to shoot footage for my next tutorial, the inverted side slide, but I kind of woke up from my ‘dream’, got out the GoPro and started to film. After some time I gathered I had enough footage for the tutorial, and headed into that freestyle bubble of mine again and did some more filming.
I looked for some interesting camera locations and cool angles and I did find a few. So let’s not waste any more time talking. Let’s roll the video!
