Nice indeed!

Thanks Sean

Anything new on the competition, John? Still working out the bugs?

no biggie,... just curious. :puzzled:

I'm expecting to be able to announce something any day now.....touch wood.....

My offer still stands. If I win, it goes to Spencer. (if rules allow that)

And has anyone seen this yet? Found it in a German kite magazine:



Now tell me there are not Peak traits there, looks so similar it's uncanny!

Wow BigE, great find! Like you've said, exciting times for sure! Sure it has some Peak characteristics, but that's not surprising that there's going to be some similar designs. After all, most of the major brands have similar designs for their foils, lei's, and depowers.

Forecast says 2-6mph today, but I finally have my NS3s! Hopefully things'll pick up a little tomorrow.

Edit: I couldn't resist at least getting the 8.5m in the air to see how it looks and it was certainly impressive. Whenever there was about 5mph of wind it would actually start to pull. I think if I had the space to build up any apparent wind I could get moving.

Steffen's been talking about the Ultra Star for 18 months or so but I hadn't seen any designs on it. Didn't know it was going to be a depower. Looking forward to having a play with one of those :D Can't agree with it being uncannily like the Peak though - I guess any moderate aspect single skin kite is going to end up looking like the Peak. I just hope it doesn't flap like the peak!

:D :D that made me lol The nominations for this year's flapping award are.......

Great find E!!!!
Man I like those. Course... I like just about any kite.

Agreed... very cool looking... Still likely to just stick with the NASA style though.

Its kinda funny though.. you can actually see the NASA wing shape to it.

Evidently, Steffen has two new models including the UltraStar to be released in the next few months - 2015 is shaping up to be Year of the Single Skin Kites.

Quote:

I'm expecting to be able to announce something any day now.....touch wood.....

hmmmm....atm I can only announce there's some problems with new servers...sigh. Hopefully, it won't hold things up much longer.

John, any hints about the other new kite? Is it a FB version of the Ultrastar?

Quote:

John, any hints about the other new kite? Is it a FB version of the Ultrastar?

It's a Lead Edge Depower system (I don't know the details) but it has a much wider window than the NS3. We should know more in a few weeks. :D

Thanks John. Very interesting.

So I flew the 7m NS3 yesterday in SUPER light wind (sub-10mph) in the buggy at JIBE... in fact I had to take the Tandem Hitch off the XR+ and use it rather than the Stinger to even get rolling, but I found I really enjoyed it.... super smooth and easy to fly. I was one of the few people able to be continuously moving.

One weird thing happened though, and I just really though it was funny. I looked down after I was done flying and the carabiner that attaches the 3rd line to the harness had clamped itself onto the chicken loop and the QR for the 3rd line had come loose. SO... I somehow undid the depower line QR and the hook on the harness became attached to the Chicken loop... weird!

sub 10 is doing good in the buggy. I'm not following you on what happened with the qr and depow line?? Do you attach the biner of the depower line to the special attachment that mounts to your existing spreader bar? If I'm following you correctly, if you would have hit the main safety, then the kite would not have still been attached via the 3rd line? I haven't had that happen yet.

Does sound a little weird - my biner's have stayed where they're suppose to be. Check for Gremlins.

It was definitely a gremlin style coincidence, and understandably hard to to follow... but it was 2 separate things that happened that turned into just a weird thing:

A.First of all I was NOT using the special attachment piece for the spreader bar and depower line. My Hook Spreader has a short 1/4 round bar welded in the middle of the hook that I clip the carabiner to for the 3rd line... its easier for me that way because when I use the special piece included with the set-up it ends up in exactly the same place
B. Somehow I hit and released the QR for the 3rd lines so the carabiner was still attached to my spreader hook.
C. Somehow after that ^^^, the chicken loop got hooked into the carabiner such that it was essentially permanently hooked into the spreader loop... weird!

Sounds like that would be impossible if you were using the separate attachment or clipped the biner with the opening up instead of down maybe. You might have accidentally stumbled on the reason for the separate attachment. It's easy to install. What's your beef with the born kite factory attachment method? :P

No beef.... just more of an ease of use thing... why add participants to the equation if its already easy to solve.

I may try it again a different way than I had it.

Just giving you a hard time. I'm not the Nasa Star police.

Quote:

I'm not the Nasa Star police.

Hah, now there's an idea.....we could form a posse !!

Quote: Originally posted by ssayre

Just giving you a hard time. I'm not the Nasa Star police.

Well, I'm terribly offended Sean... As president of your chapter of the JWC, I expect a formal written apology or I will henceforth renounce your membership and revoke your t-shirt and name tag.



no worries... that thingy just didn't seem to work so well for me, but I'm willing to give it a try.

Quote:

I will henceforth renounce your membership and revoke your t-shirt and name tag.

I'm JWC for life and have learned to embrace it. :D

Apology accepted!

Me too friend!

On Saint Simons Island this week (one step north of Jekyll Island) for Vacation with the family. Got the kids to bed early and still had some daylight to burn before sundown so I took the Peter Lynn Buggy up to the beach. I saw the forecast was pretty light air and when I got to the beach it was dead still. I sat through a little drizzle and said a prayer and the wind picked up to probably around 6-7mph a few degrees south of on-shore. I set up the 7m and had a nice little sunset session. I really only got one good run back and forth before it turned further south with the setting sun. Packed it up and walked back in the dark... nice.

Let me ask you guys though... Maybe its the super light wind I was in, but I was having trouble keeping the kite "inflated" when turning on the downwind tack. When I was moving slightly downwind and tried to turn back the other way I couldn't keep the kite in the air when I had the buggy turning... lost all my line tension... I had the same trouble on Jekyll last week. It seemed like what worked best was to bring the kite way up and start to turn so there was room to recover before it ended up on the ground.... Any suggestions?

Combination of light air and running slightly downwind will cause that. Sounds like you already know the solution. Keep the kite high on a turn. Sometimes when longboarding downwind I actually have to fly it back the opposite deirection if the turn and back to keep it up.

I will also zig zag what I'm riding to keep tension in lines when going downwind. I find that the stars are good going upwind up to approximately a 20-25 degree angle. Past that upwind and downwind are equally very difficult.

Let me re phrase. If the wind is blowing cross on at a 20-25 degree angle. Not sure if that's the same as heading.