Weekend Lofting

"DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME"
I just had to share this story, and that is the only point of this thread to share my story of the weekend . So a cold front has moved into the Idaho area this past week and towards the end of the week it caused some suh weet winds to come into town. We decided to make a little road trip to a place that has better wind that in town (two hours away). When we got there it was about 70 degrees and the wind was about 25mph and turbulent (even though this soccer complex is out in the middle of farm country :smug. So anyways as we started, my friend was a bit nervous to put up his 15m phantom but I was like dude! you can just pull your emergency release right away if it seems to be too much.

We got both of the kites up (his phantom and my scorpion). His phantom was perfect in those winds, we had the internal strap on his completely loose, and it was mostly trimmed in so it was quite manageable. My Scorpion was freaking SCARY. Because after the 25mph turbulent winds it became more like 20mph gusting to 30mph. The Scorp isn't as forgiving as the phantom so I ended up pulling the quick release. . . Anywyas, jump to the end of the day and we had both the peter lynns packed up and it was still 20mph gusting to 30mph. We pull out the 4m crossfire just for some "daring" fun :P . I had flown it earlier and was able to scud over 100 ft continuously which was a blast! So I dare tyler to take a go at it, he grabs it and goes... as he goes down the field he's moonwalking and doing some pretty sweet jumps and ends up at the other end of the field in about 30 seconds and ended his run with kitekillers deployed .

Ok, my turn on this thing... I weigh a bit more so the 4m is a little more manageable for me. I start the scudding and he dared me to do some jumps, and you know... You've gotta try and out-do your buddy right?! I take it across from 10 to 2 slowly and get a decent jump.

OK STOP:
So far, all day long we had held back, we were controlling the kites to jump as high as WE wanted, and to go as fast as WE wanted. We were holding the kites back and not letting them do what they truly wanted to do in these winds. This was the moment I let the kite loose (bad idea)


As i'm scudding i get ready for my next jump in my head i'm thinking (alright this is gonna be good). I bring to the left and let it ZOOM to the right as i run back and THWAAAAAAAAAP!! I get LAUNCHED. Not like a slow lift but like a youtube video where the dudes get TAKEN by the kite. While I was up there looking down I kept my cool (as much as i could) and had the automatic reaction to redirect, i kept thinking to myself as i'm falling "come on where's the redirect! COME ON! COME ON!!!!" just as i get a bit of lift again from the kite i go THUMP. I landed and deployed the killers breaking one of them. No injuries thank God and I'm glad I was wearing my knee pads ad the same time cuz those came in handy .

After talking with my brother, wife and Tyler we figured I was about 25-30 feet up (there were 10 ft soccer goals right next to where I was). 25-30ft is a little too high for me, ESPECIALLY with a 4m kite.

So that's the story.... now... what's the moral of the story?

my 3.2 is DEADLY in high winds. there is a very sweet jumping window that is possible with it, but the way it accelerates under power across the window gets scary. add its considerable lift to that and it's a scary package in high winds.

by the time the winds get to the point you describe i've usually gone down to my 2.5 dp power (a nice slow stable sled of a kite, great for high winds, and just barely jumpable) or one of my symphony 2-liners with a long tail on it.

"the difference between the low and high wind speeds is just too great at that speed"

BB nailed it. the wind force cubes in proportion to the wind speed, right? so 20 cubed is 8000 and 30 cubed is 27000. That's a more than 3-fold increase in power, about 330% to be a bit more precise. the difference between 8 and 12 mph (a reasonable gust range at that wind speed, and one i fly many times with a 6.5 blade and an ace 8) is about the same, but then the kite is moving a lot faster. i think the continued 3X increase of power in gusts at higher speeds with smaller kites just makes things very fast and hard to keep up with with.

I don't have a formula for increase of kite speed with wind speed, suspect its a wee bit more complicated. but as a general rule, halve the kite size, double the speed?

I think it's a bit more than that but for the moment that will do.

add the increase of kite speed with size to the windspeed/ power rule and i think, tho i am a mathematical klutz, that when you're lifted by a 4m fixed bridle things happen at least 4x quicker than when you're lifted by a 8m FB kite.

like you said, the power / lift ramped up much harder and more quickly than normal, but then what comes up comes down...

which brings me to part 2 of what BB nailed -- the bad float factor with small kites. it's definitely possible to get float with 3-4m fixed bridles in the right winds, but when they are gusty and you get that 3x power factor kicking in, you have to remember power equals speed, and when you've got jumping power with the smaller kites things happen FAST the kite crosses the power in hardly more then a second and then it's time to redirect.

what if the wind dies? no float. maybe some, like a bit better than nothing, but not all that much better. then you're going down.

and then the other other thing: whenever the wind changes power, it changes direction. the more it powers up, the more it changes direction.

we all know what happens when the wind gets on the wrong side of a powered-up kite: instant inversion, loss of power, and most like loss of float.

so when you add up the difficulties of kite speed, lack of float, variable power in gusts, and the increasing difficulty of effective redirection with increased wind speed, the sum gets nastier and nastier as you kick up the wind speed and reduce the kite size, and it gets nasty fast.

so i guess that the moral of your story of jumping on lifty small fixed bridle kites in winds gusting to 30 mph and beyond is to avoid "letting the kite have its head."

i enjoy letting my 8m have its head in 6-8 mph winds: it's the only way i can pick my feet up off the ground in those conditions.

flexiblade calls his 2m ace his "little killer". that's a pretty extreme case.

SO: given their head, small FB kites in big winds can act quicker than the kite flyer can react. and they can loft you, quickly, in the gusts. but without the wind, you won't have float. and you're not (sadly) in charge of the wind.

hope all that verbiage helps ya find the moral of your story... .

and no, i didn't mention de-power, but the gust-munching utility of, say, an arc really starts to make sense when the little kites start to act badly.

i just jump static myself, and never flown depower, just like to play with words when the wind isn't blowing.

glad to hear you survived your lofting.

you were taken something like this, right:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oveLq6j4JUw&feature=relat... (kite jump gone way bad)...

judging from your quiver, you're rushing up the learning curve a lot quicker than i am, but be careful while you're having fun out there....

That's some great verbage there that you all three have shared. I'm in the exact situation as you dylan... I would probably fly it again but i would not try to jump. I was flying it for awhile in those winds handlign the gusts no problem because I've had experience in those winds. (It was cool scudding with my back 3 inches off the ground and never touching the ground :D)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oveLq6j4JUw&feature=relat...

/\ yes, something like that but i had some redirection while in the air. I've gone through the thought process of "if this happens to me, this is what i do" because I've had it happen to me before but not to that extent. natural reaction to redirect is a good thing to have, even if you dont' fly in these high of winds ya know?

Oh, and what this also pushed me to do is to practice the parachuters landing technique. I want that to be in my head to use if needed

yeah, I figure after a point i'm rolling the dice, and it's fun, and i go higher than before, but i know that if i come back to the same wind it will seem a little less the master and i will be able fly it a little better.

like when i'm working up the jumps: every time i got more than a little higher than i did before i'd pack up and go home and think about it.

that was esp. true one time i did something at least head high (i was going to say 10 feet but you know what being up in the air does to your sense of perspective,eh?) back before i knew how to redirect, flew the kite right out of the window and straight into an instant front-stall, dropped lie a rock onto soft sand, and i was just lucky the kite hit the ground before it had a chance to power up again.

packed up, went home, and ended up getting the redirect how-to vids on youtube for the first time.

that was about a year ago.

anyways, bottom line: say all you want about being in tune with the wind and all that, but it's the adrenaline you get when putting that wind power to work on your mass with scary but very fun results that keeps us coming back, eh?

hmmmm...

btw, does anyone know where ange09 went? I miss that icon....

Here's the day and the kite before it happened...

Yeah, kinda funny how it looks that way. But in person it looks just like a 4m should smaller than a 5 :P.

Yes that was the first time we flew there, it's about two hours away but way worth it!