Friday
I left work and had roughly three more hours of daylight left. So before heading for the stable and our horses, I stopped at one of the local beaches to take the A-Quad for a spin.
Unlike Thursday, the wind had picked up a little. Not much but surely enough for some decent quality flying.
Here’s a short video of some Slick Moves as they happened yesterday!
Saturday
Om Thursday I went straight from work to a beach with no wind. It was absolutely dead calm. So my plan to fly had to wait and I had a quick photoshoot instead.
Today – Saturday – however, there was wind. Not much, but enough to fly a kite. …or should I rather say guide a kite. Because in really low winds, that’s what you do. You guide your kite about in the air and it can look something like this!
2 Responses
You seem to have a soft LE allowing you to kind of fine pulsing the kite forwards in the low wind (Slick Moves 1:50 and A-Quad in Really Low Winds 1:14). I have also found that a soft LE in my 1.5 std in very light wind has prevented me from going home and got piloting instead, simply because less effort was required for keeping it in the air (or sometimes rather made the enterprise possible at all). While I really like my soft LE on my 1.5 std and the amount of easily accessible continuous control in light wind it gives, my Rev Indoor has gotten me a bit curious about experimenting with controlled impulses of hard line pulling (other than aggressive forward start/stopping) and carefully work with handle angle to maximise the pull. To me (today?) the Rev Indoor LE feels too stiff, but it also tells me that when it gets curved I’m doing it right by getting enough pressure on the sail. Here “it” refers to when I propel the kite through the lines, not when gliding/coasting or catches/throws.
(Am I doing the above test with my Rev 1.5 B-series outdoors now to any large extent? Am I also frequently looking on what other things that are is transferable from the Rev Indoor? No! – Exploring the Fulcrum while writing a Fulcrum/Rev comparison is my current focus outdoors. However that topic seems to grow for every session instead of coming to an end… On the other hand, the Fulcrum is so forgiving when it comes to the axels so I think that the bulk practice I get there will spill over to my Revs.)
The confession of the day: Those calm flick flacks (Slick Moves 4:16) makes me feel a bit hurried. I have not even really started doing flick flacks and the number of things-things-on-the-field-that-I-look-into is too large to currently start attempting them in any serious way. None the less, if you would have any thoughts, subjective images or wisdoms on the matter feel free to share (and I’ll try to remember them for the future). Also I must say I’m a bit jealous on the many sessions you have managed lately.
Yes, I like that the middle rod in the LE is quite flexible … and is quickly springing back to normal when the pressure is removed. I find it both more suitable to my flying style and the kite feels more agile in the air, it responds better to my input.
At least that’s what I think.
Some time ago I modified a quad for which I didn’t quite like the feel. Too stiff and kind of … skittish in the air.
I re-framed it with a (much) more flexible LE and the kite got much better. At least according to my likings.
You can read more about this here:
* http://kites.aerialis.no/now-were-talking/