Hello from Minnesota!

I've been lurking on the forums for about a month now and figured I'd better register and say hello.

A friend introduced me to his Peter Lynn Twister II 4.1m power kite about 6 weeks ago. I supermanned about 3 times, tore up a ton of skin on my leg and was instantly hooked.

I'm a bigger guy than him and after asking him a few hundred questions about power kites I got myself a Twister 5.6 as soon as I could.

I'm still trying to learn as much as I can, and I'm excited about all the possibilities - kiteboarding on the water, mountain-boarding, snow-kiting (lots of snow here), and I'd love to try buggying too. I'm already thinking about the "next" step, and I see it would be a big one. Buying another, much more expensive kite along with the gear that goes with each different activity.

I've been showing my friends and family my kite and trying to do some jumping as well. So when I'm not checking the power kite forum, or other PK sites, I'm refreshing a weather page seeing if the wind will be high enough . Yep, I'm obsessed.

Anyone else around here from MN?

-skelman

Welcome from another flyer in Wisconsin. I am near Green Bay... you know, home of the World Champion Green Bay Packers. Uh, maybe it's safer to keep the thread on kites.

You have yourself a fun kite. Remember you will be on frozen tundra soon. Get the right safety gear. You've probably read the threads here. If not, do some digging.

Regarding next steps... after I got started, I flew 2 and 3m foils on handles a lot. I flew the smitherenes out of them and learned to fly them with my eyes closed. I will never regret it.

Regarding getting mobile... I started on a 7.5m depower, an Ozone Frenzy. (I weigh 185 and learned kite skiing to start out.) I was frequently underpowered but in hindset, I am glad I was.

Oh, and did I mention saving your money? Three kites won't be enough.:singing:

Thanks for all the welcoming words everyone... yeah it's probably best to keep the topic on kites here .

I'm still having lots of fun taking the Twister out for static flying and jumping, but you can only watch so many videos of people getting massive air on boards or waves before giving in.

Why do so many of you have so many different kites? Have they gotten that much better technology-wise in the last few years or do you just want to try every different kite out? I could see a few for different wind-speeds or for friends, but what gives? I like my Twister, and my thought is my next kite would be an expensive, depower that would be good on water/snow/land like a PL Charger, S3 Flysurfer, or HQ Neo 2. An all-around kite with a large wind range would seem like the way to go.

I'm a newb, so please feel free to school me with kite knowledge.

I'm also 6.8, 235#, so any gear or kite I get will need to be larger than most.

Thanks again everyone. I've been checking out lakawa.com too kiteyakker, thanks. It seems like there's lots of kiteboarders around here. I definitely want to give snowkiting a try too, so looks like I'll need to buy some more gear

It's a windy one today, might be a bit much for my Twister, but we'll see after work!

Hey hondamon!

I'm in a southern suburb of the twin cities, just the edge of civilization, where all the corn fields start.

Yeah, I pushed it last weekend too (Friday), and also hurt my heel...Well really my ankle. I came down so hard on my heel/ankle I guess it turned inward. I've had plenty of ankle twists from basketball, but this one went the other way and hurt like no other. I thought I broke my foot. Oops

Felt like an idiot because I had been so careful before then and instead this time I decided to jump when it was pretty gusty out. ~8 feet in the air moving way too fast did me in. So much for tuck-n-roll, heh.

Oh well, lesson learned. Time to buy an anemometer and be less stupid. This happened 2 minutes after launching my kite that day. A short time later conditions were pretty good too. I think I'll need more than a couple weeks to heal up from this one.

Send me a message next summer for sure! I'm still looking for that nice open field for mountainboarding/buggying near by. Snow and water are easy...