Power Kite Forum

NASA 2 star 4m

alasdair macleod - 12-5-2020 at 08:56 AM

Hi laddie & lassie
Not been on here for a long time.
I bought this NASA 2 star 4m kite on ebay a couple of years ago. It came with two handles & set of four lines.
Took it to a beach to see how it flys didn't go well.
It was trying to fold up all time i was flying it.
It would only fly ok if kept a bit of pressure on the brakes lines.
To much and it would fold up again.
So gave up on it and stuck it in the boot of the car and forgot about it till last week when I came across it again. So decided to stick it on ebay. Didn't know how much it was worth now.
So tried looking up on Google came across a vid of NASA 2 star that a very cool laddie had posted you'll all know him John Holgate. Look at his vid the kite was set up with a three lines & bar set up. No wonder it didn't fly with 4line set up.
I'm a bloody idiot for not checking in the first place before flying it!!!!!! On order now HQ bar three lines set up.
Lesson learnt!!!!!!

NASA - Elephant of the Kiting world?

jeepersjoey - 12-5-2020 at 11:28 AM

I am sure that Windstruck & Cerebite will chime in since they are experts with NASA wings.

I have flown them enough (always on 4-line, not 3-line) to know that you can absolutely fly using 4-lines and two handles. Also, the NASA wings are extremely brake-bias.

You must fly with the brakes on SLIGHTLY.

A good way to figure it out is that when the nose is no longer folded in and flips back to the fully engaged postion you know that you have the right amount of brake.

The trick is to figure out what amount of brake you need so that the thing does not fly backward.

NASA wings do NOT fly like normal 4-line fixed-bridle kites.

Go try flying again and add a little brake and when the kite is "full" you are now at the optimal power/brake pressure.

Beware, the NASA wings are EXTREMELY powerful. Think of an Elephant. Not really quick, but if it gets unruly, you will get squished.

Best of luck!
Paul

Windstruck - 12-5-2020 at 04:23 PM

Ah... the venerable NS2. Always nice to hear about someone flying those. I personally prefer to fly NasaStars from handles much more than via a bar though both are of course possible. The trick I've found is to use so-called Z-bridles as shown below. iPaul's (Jeepersjoey) and my good friend John (Cerebite) has a more elegant way of bridling with sliding elements, etc., but I'll leave it to him to describe.


[img][/img]

alasdair macleod - 13-5-2020 at 05:24 AM

Thanks Jeepersjoey for the info.
That makes more sense.

alasdair macleod - 13-5-2020 at 05:28 AM

Quote: Originally posted by Windstruck  
Ah... the venerable NS2. Always nice to hear about someone flying those. I personally prefer to fly NasaStars from handles much more than via a bar though both are of course possible. The trick I've found is to use so-called Z-bridles as shown below. iPaul's (Jeepersjoey) and my good friend John (Cerebite) has a more elegant way of bridling with sliding elements, etc., but I'll leave it to him to describe.


[img][/img]


Thanks Windstruck
So i'd need to make or buy a z bridles set of lines to help fly it with Handles.
That makes sense.
So which way do you like fly it handles or bar set up?

Windstruck - 13-5-2020 at 06:21 AM

A Z-bridle sounds fancy and is something you can buy (from Born) but it is extremely simple consisting of just three long pigtails. The Z consists of two pigtails of equal length and a third (brake line) slightly longer. The idea with B-K NS kites is that you primarily fly them as two line (L/R) with all bridle lines under tension and then you give a couple of lower bridles a little more tension to apply the brakes. Applying the brakes on these kites isn't exactly the same as when you do that on a conventional rectangular foil kite. Too much brake pressure and you'll collapse the kite or make it fly backwards.

I personally do primarily two types of power kiting; static and in the buggy. In the buggy I almost exclusively rely on my RaceStar DPs. I do carry a NS4 on a 10m 4-line handle setup in my buggy bag as an emergency limp-home backup as I typically ride on the Ivanpah playa and could be in trouble several miles from buggy camp.

For static I prefer the interaction of flying a NS4 on handles. I'd get bored quickly flying that way on a bar. BTW, the typical three line NS set up is essentially flying the kite as a two-liner with the ability to scrunch the nose of the kite for a sort of poor-man's DP. You don't change the angle of attack of the kite, but rather just make it a crappy flyer thus decreasing pull. In the buggy this will cause the kite to drop even further back in the wind window (it's pretty much a side flyer already so you don't have much room to play with there). You can scrunch the tip for a short off-throttle but if you're rolling fast on a low friction surface you'll have to let the kite expand again to full power or it will go to the ground behind you. Where the 3rd line shines is if you pull the chicken loop since you'll be attached to the kite still. That's best for in my opinion.

As you live in Scotland it may be possible to just buy some z-bridles from the company. Otherwise just make some and experiment. Good luck!

Ed Cline - 13-5-2020 at 06:59 AM

Here's a z bridle and a bar for nasa that I use.



alasdair macleod - 13-5-2020 at 10:41 AM

Quote: Originally posted by Windstruck  
A Z-bridle sounds fancy and is something you can buy (from Born) but it is extremely simple consisting of just three long pigtails. The Z consists of two pigtails of equal length and a third (brake line) slightly longer. The idea with B-K NS kites is that you primarily fly them as two line (L/R) with all bridle lines under tension and then you give a couple of lower bridles a little more tension to apply the brakes. Applying the brakes on these kites isn't exactly the same as when you do that on a conventional rectangular foil kite. Too much brake pressure and you'll collapse the kite or make it fly backwards.

I personally do primarily two types of power kiting; static and in the buggy. In the buggy I almost exclusively rely on my RaceStar DPs. I do carry a NS4 on a 10m 4-line handle setup in my buggy bag as an emergency limp-home backup as I typically ride on the Ivanpah playa and could be in trouble several miles from buggy camp.

For static I prefer the interaction of flying a NS4 on handles. I'd get bored quickly flying that way on a bar. BTW, the typical three line NS set up is essentially flying the kite as a two-liner with the ability to scrunch the nose of the kite for a sort of poor-man's DP. You don't change the angle of attack of the kite, but rather just make it a crappy flyer thus decreasing pull. In the buggy this will cause the kite to drop even further back in the wind window (it's pretty much a side flyer already so you don't have much room to play with there). You can scrunch the tip for a short off-throttle but if you're rolling fast on a low friction surface you'll have to let the kite expand again to full power or it will go to the ground behind you. Where the 3rd line shines is if you pull the chicken loop since you'll be attached to the kite still. That's best for in my opinion.

As you live in Scotland it may be possible to just buy some z-bridles from the company. Otherwise just make some and experiment. Good luck!

Thanks wee laddie.
That's a lot of help! Cheer Ali

alasdair macleod - 13-5-2020 at 11:02 AM

Quote: Originally posted by Ed Cline  
Here's a z bridle and a bar for nasa that I use.




Cheers wee laddie. That brilliant it shows it in great detail. Cheers Ali

Cerebite - 13-5-2020 at 11:10 AM

Although what I use is very similar to a Z bridle it is in actuality more of a "choke"system. I use a short section of paracord or smaller line on each side and larkshead it to the pigtale on the power lines and then use a small plastic "D"ring on the brake side. This has the effect o keeping the power and brake from getting too far apart and "holding" the power in the kite.
it has been a while since I made/ measured my chokes but I want to say c. 10 cm of length for kites under 8 m and c. 20 cm for big kites.

As Paul and Steve stated the NPW is very much a brake oriented kite and you fly it on the edge of nose collapse.

alasdair macleod - 13-5-2020 at 02:09 PM

Quote: Originally posted by Cerebite  
Although what I use is very similar to a Z bridle it is in actuality more of a "choke"system. I use a short section of paracord or smaller line on each side and larkshead it to the pigtale on the power lines and then use a small plastic "D"ring on the brake side. This has the effect o keeping the power and brake from getting too far apart and "holding" the power in the kite.
it has been a while since I made/ measured my chokes but I want to say c. 10 cm of length for kites under 8 m and c. 20 cm for big kites.

As Paul and Steve stated the NPW is very much a brake oriented kite and you fly it on the edge of nose collapse.

Cheers cerebite
So there a couple of way's to set up the kite to fly it.
Thanks wee Laddie

alasdair macleod - 13-5-2020 at 02:17 PM

Hoping to get out more this year here in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland
Between work, a carer for a parent for over 10yrs.
Now we are still in Lockdown in Scotland for the COVID 19.
Not had lot of time to get out and play.
But hopefully I'll be able to play this year.
All you laddie & lassie stay safe.

borokite - 11-10-2020 at 06:57 AM

This will be my first post on the forum and forgive me for the poorly written text, I am writing with the help of a translator. My main reason for joining the group was due to NASAS, I am passionate about kites in general but I wanted to make a traction kite to learn to skate and NASA NPW5 was the simplest I found. I picked up a lot with the lines, mainly because the beak was opening and closing and it had a strange behavior, I wanted a kite to use with a kitesurf bar, so it was very difficult to adjust, until trying to understand the brakes, measuring lines and such, when I was almost giving up, I found out what my problem was and got an excellent flight. My first one has 3.9 but now I'm going for a 6.0m NPW9b. Follow the link to my video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeB7InT02mw&t=42s

Randy - 11-10-2020 at 08:19 AM

Welcome to PKF.

It does look like it is flying well. It appears you are using a two line bar. Normally they fly better with 4 line handles. If you want to stick to a bar you might want to add a 3rd line connected to the brake attachment points to use as a safety release, esp. on bigger kites.

This page shows are very simple modification to the NPW-5 which gives it a much wider wind window. I make all my NPW 5's this way.

http://users.telenet.be/claeskites/page1.htm