Took the Scorpion out for a ride today!!!!
Truly an amazing machine. A friend took me to his regular flying field at a secluded lake where there was nothing but open space and snow.(soon gonna be my regular spot me thinks) Winds started fine, but half way through set up they promptly died. After waiting for two hours we gave up flying our trainer kites and went home.

Later this afternoon wind picked up to 24km/h and I got to fly it. Being stubborn I attempted several times to launch myself. I was successful once, but once in the air I somehow had my left in and out lines crossed. Took her down, fixed problem and got my Brother to help get it up so I didn't waste more time and away I went. I love the auto-zenith! It had me nervous the first time when it swayed to one side, I thought it was going to stall but up it went. I got lifted a couple times on purpose. One was about 5 feet, another I was on a 10 foot hill and the kite picked me up and floated me to the bottom quite gently. Truly thrilling!! Since I was only static flying I didn't use the trim strap at all. Seemed comfortable right where everything was. Next time I will try out the snowboard, hopefully next weekend at the lake cuz I really love that spot. Sorry I didn't get any pics cause my camera seems to not like anything below freezing. But I assure you that when I get some that they will be posted right away. Sorry for making this long I just had to share the stoke.

:wee:

Shaggs

Mmmmmmm yummy. Love the scorps!

yeah I think this is really gonna be my go to kite. Hope I can get the self launch down but don't mind having a friend help. When I got home I laid it out in my basement to dry from laying in the snow. To help out I used a table fan and stood it right in front of the inflate opening. It took literally by watch 23 seconds to be fully inflated. Now if I still had my inverter in vehicle I'd be tempted to bring it out with me to help with pre-inflation. But I suppose if the wind won't fully inflate then I probably couldn't fly anyway.

Just wait till you get riding with it man! They take on a whole new (just as thrilling) life. Totally feeling your stoke! Can't wait for all us d'ArcSiders to come together.....met another one today. Might be enough for our own festival ; )

yea thats my go to kite. as far as launching by yourself, you will get the hang of it. the only bit of advice I have for you is just take your time. Every time I rush I forget something or screw up the launch. Take your time, let her fill up all the way, and you have it up in no time.

I'm going to post a video on how to launch a scorpion without bowtieing it. Dude the scorpion is a fast fun lifty kite. I can't wait to use my new 10m scorpion (thanks invertedforce)

In minimal wind when it is hard to inflate I open both zippers (upwind and downwind) to facilitate the airflow. I close the downwind zipper when the kite is kind of inflated. If it still needs some air I close both zippers and roll myself from the upwind tip down, to move the air to the other side of the kite. Then open the upwind zip and fill it up completely. Now it's ready to go (and once it's up if you keep moving it it'll fly in almost no wind).

I always launch hooked in with the powerstrap all out (in full power): rear line tension allow you to control the speed of the kite when it goes up. Never had a problem.

AV

Shaggs, glad to hear you had with the her today. I was a little intimidated by the shear of the kite. 7.5m had been the largest before the 16m Scorp.
I loved that kite, but had to let her to fund other kites. Hoping to replace with either a 10m charger or (crossing fingers) a 10m Phanny2.

Enjoy. :tumble:

Well Shaggs, what color scheme did you get? Self launching is pretty easy, do yo have the video for them? Wind Sunday here just sucked so ended up playing with the Snow Board and ski's. Think I'll stick to Ski's...lol

Hey Mac, what was the Arc guy you met flying?

16m VII. Nice kite. (I'm just happy to see more of them out there.....we're in Flysurfer country for sure!)

Thanks for the info guys much appreciated.
@Wolfee

My kite is Sky Blue/Black/Red. I don't have the video, but I think that I saw it online a couple months ago so I'll look for it.

The first time I launched I had the inflate open so I corrected that. I can't figure out if I should run the lines through both launch assists. :dunno: I think that maybe I was on too much angle or not holding the lines high enough cause I had issues getting the downwind tip to flip up enough to catch wind. It would just flap a bit then roll over on the rest of the kite. Maybe an inflation issue but it seemed completely full. I've watched all of Carlb's videos on youtube as well as a few others. I think it may have been me trying to rush things a bit too much. I'm confident that next time out I will get it to happen. Hopefully I can get out early enough in the day so I can spend time practicing launch and lands enough to get it down. I have now read the bar and kite manuals 4 times through, and seem to have picked up all tips.

Just curious. In the manual it has a suggestion to launch unhooked, is this the best method or does it work the same hooked in?? So far though I can't stop thinking how fun the kite was to fly, and look forward to taking it out with the board.

Shagg, I always launched hooked in, and only used the down wind launch assist. Funny thing for me was, I had to learn self-launching due to being the only power kiter in my area. Had help once at sunset beach. Didn't work out to well. Damn near put Monty in the hospital, lol.

You'll get the hang of it.

Shaggs new 16m Scorp flying at Sunset Beach

Shaggs new 16m Scorp flying at Sunset Beach

Shaggs new 16m Scorp flying at Sunset Beach

My first attempt at arc flying was with the 15m Phantom in nothing winds ... it filled ok and I tried to launch, but it'd only get a few feet off the ground then just sit there, no matter how much I yanked on the front lines then would sort of fall off to the left or right. That went on for like 20 minutes till I bow tied it then when I put the bar down and went to sort the twists out, noticed that the deflate zipper was open :embarrased:

Closed that, filled it up again, launched and a tug on the front lines put it up to zenith. There was so little wind that I had to work it to keep it in the air ... tried the Vortex 10m when I got that in nothing winds too and had no issues getting it up.

When you set up, are you laying out the lines down the trailing edge? So when you go to launch, the lines are actually downwind of the kite?

Last time I launched the Phantom on that fateful day all I had to do was tension the downwind lines by walking backwards a bit and it rocketed into the sky.
The other times, I gently gave only the downwind front line a pull to get that part of the tip to curl up into the wind then took a few steps back to lift the whole tip ... gravy!
I'll admit that my launching arcs is limited to a dozen or so occasions but aside from The Zipper Incident, I've had zero issues ...

The Phantom has had launch assistant tabs added by Carl (I assume) and I only put the downwind front line through it - again, if you're gentle with the pull it'll lift the tip right into the wind.

As for assisted landing - screaming TIP! TIP! GRAB THE TIP! NOT THE BLOODY TRAILING EDGE THE TIP! THE TIP! didn't seem to make much difference

Good to hear that you got to test her out. Isn't it the best feeling when it starts to climb and you feel that power bite and the kite just soars. That's when you know you've got to get riding (on anything).