Not the most exciting video ever - low wind and very small kite, but I'm putting it up to show how I installed a rudder on my Stand Up Kiting board. Going dead downwind is the slowest point of sail and you can't do it for long until you have to head back upwind, so having a rudder is key to making this a much more useful way to go. (Didn't use the water kite because the NPW 21 flies in less wind and as hot as it was in and the wind being light, it wasn't getting very wet.) Tried it a few days later at the lake in a lot more wind - the rudder worked better than the sailor......(Probably should have added a bloopers section.)

Nice stuff Randy! Loved the music. Go sailor go.

I would bet that with better cooperation from the wind you would make some very decent tack & jibe...do you think just a couple more meters line length might help?

Randy I would really like to see how you set up that rudder idea, would you email me some pics sometime?

Oh, and I also would bet that bloopers would be ok here too! :P

1oldkid, I'll send some pictures. Longer lines would be great, but if the kite goes down getting it back is not that easy. Flying off the handle makes it easier to land it on the board.

I do have a two line winder, but that's more for sitting down, and it not that easy to let out the line while you are sitting, the board is moving and the wind is not that steady. Ultimately, I think that's the way to go, but I've just finished a 2.8 M NPW 9b water kite which should provide a lot more power if I didn't make the lines too long to launch and land from the deck. Its a trade off - flying off the handles is much easier, but less power to work with. This is all pretty much a work in progress.

That's cool randy. Regarding using lines versus no lines, I was reading a kayak thread on XK and thought of you. They mentioned using an LEI kite on 5 meter lines. That way if it crashed, it would be easily retrieved. I'll bet you could even make an LEI

Maybe. Just need some plans, but not sure about making the bladder....A local guy has a 6 meter LEI he wants to sell, but he may want too much money. We'll see what happens. I really like the idea of being able to launch it from the water since that provides a lot more possible launches than the few places you can actually do it from the lake (which are often crowded and difficult launch. A good friend of mine got thrown onto the rocks from a place on the lake and took him 3 weeks to recover.)

Hmmmmnnnnn.

How about making a leading edge sleeve where you could slide those foam tubes(pipe insul. or kind they see for playing in pool)....?

May be enough to help re-launch from water drop..?

Easily replaceable,and similar weight of the plastic bladder.

I dropped my NPW in the water using it to pull two of us in a Sunfish sail boat(without sail). It got water logged right away..so I had to reel it in like a fish...but I was flying right off bridal(no fly lines) so I only had to pull 6-8 feet of bridal line 'til I got kite up onto boat deck and was able to throw it up again, but with a lot of difficulty. If it had a greatly hydrophobic Nylon coating maybe it would have sat on the water instead of be 'absorbed' and wet-weighted....But I also thought about those tube things at the time ..

Randy, I'll see skimtwashington's excellent suggestion and raise him $50. I like where his head is with the leading edge being floatable but I see two potential issues with his design. First, those tubes people float on a HEAVY. Second, the aren't overly flexible, and I fear you won't achieve the concavity you are seeking for proper flight.

Here is what I'm thinking. For kite material utilize a thin waterproof tarp material (I think you wrote about that before). Here's the twist. Sew BUBBLEWRAP into the leading edge (I'm thinking the one inch half-a-ping-pong-ball variety). I would think it would stay flexible if you cut it into several long one-bubble-wide strips as compared to rolling it up. Light, strong, boyant and inexpensive! :bisou:

I did something like that and it worked as shown in the video below. I used pipe insulation foam in along the back of the keel and in the nose of a NPW9b. It works about 3/4 of the time (6 of first 8 tries I think), but there are some issues. Of course, things never work quite the same when you are on a moving board or boat and there is wind and chop, etc. The biggest problem, I think is that when the kite hits the water, you will still be drifting toward it, while its not moving as much, so you lose line tension and maybe can't relaunch. If you could paddle away from it, might work. I may go back to that, but now I'm pretty much working on the stand up set up. BTW - you can stop a NPW from sinking by just putting a balloon, or foam pipe insulation under the the T-ties in the nose. My water kites typically don't sink, since the plastic floats, but you can pull the kite under the water if you pull too hard. Main reason I've gone to the stand up is that it takes the water launch and relaunch out of the equation, and I think will work on SUP type boards or similar, which is a popular sport until the wind blows. This might change that, and I've got the gear to work with.




BTW - thought of bubble wrap too, and might try it, but don't think I need it with the water kite.

KITE THE HOOCH!!!! Awesome Randy... I'm guessing thats Azalea park right?

Love the rudder innovation too!!!!

And the vid you just reposted of the water relaunch... was that the shore of Lanier or Allatoona? I can see what you told me about with the Corps. of Engineers dropping the water level down in winter... looks like a good buggy spot possibly!

Yes - Azalea and the water relaunch was Allatoona. Here's a very segment of a potential future blooper vid, but does show the kite floats. Lake Lanier last weekend, more wind and boat chop than necessary, but enough to show things don't always go according to plan. Did get a good turn out of it to return to shore. At this point, I'm pretty sure adding longer lines would not make anything easier, but, I think for sit down in a kayak, it would be a lot easier to keep balanced. So much boat chop on the lake this time of year that its pretty tricky. But I've managed a number of times so far as shown in my earlier vid on the first page,which was before the rudder. Engaging the rudder involves stepping back a bit which was my undoing at the time, I think.

More experiments - mainly in light wind since its that time of year. Tried a very simple design called the Moco - which is one of the easiest possible quads to build. Looks like it would be fun for stunt flying, but tried it out on the water. Fewer bridles - less tangling, so its very light. Basically - its a sqaure of material with some bridles. Like to see what it would do with actual wind.....

Nice little kite Randy! Your music for this video was cracking me up. I felt cast back in the '70 TV-land scene!

I may be out of wind for a while, so this will summarize what I've learned so far in trying to marry kites and Stand Up Paddle type boards.

1.) SUP boards are not fast, at least for anything other than surfing in waves. Inland, flat water SUP boards are not fast as say a kitedurfing board or buggy. As far as speed goes, the board is probably more important than the kite. The kite I'm using now is almost a parachute. Much simpler than the NPW's I started with, but seems to work about as well. One key is that light weight is probably the most important factor in the kinds of winds I usually get with deep lulls. Its much more convenient if you can keep the kite in the air. Also - fewer lines - fewer tangles which is important when needing to launch and relaunch the kite from the water when the wind drops.

2.) The board I'm using is not even a proper SUP, but rather a windsurf trainer. Its is too wide (100 cm) and too short (280 cm) to go very fast, but it has a center fin which makes it possible to sail across the wind, with a rudder. W/O a rudder (and probably a centerfin or centerboard as well) you can get some control over direction by placing the kite to the edges and pushing down a rail but sailing across wind is not possible. The width of my board does make it easy to do this and keep fairly dry. Without a much bigger kite it is not going to exceed hull speed (4-6 mph for an SUP) and get planning. I may rent or borrow a conventional SUP and try it the next time a windy day comes along and see how it goes.

3.) A bigger kite is the obvious answer to going faster except that if the lines are too long, launching (and relaunching which is far more important) from the board is very difficult if not impossible. I maxed out at 2.5 M. I build a 2.8 M NPW9b, but I'm afraid it may a bit too big for me, since I'm not very tall. (However, it will be plenty useful for landboarding.)

4.) Longer lines would enable getting much more power out of the kite, but the same problem exists as having a kite that is too big. I would have to launch from shore and then as soon as the wind drops - end up with a very wet kite. I've used a 2 line winder, but that's not as easy to work as one might hope. It is probably the ultimate solution, however and one I will probably continue to work on.

5.) Despite all that, I think on a proper SUP board, one could go as fast (or faster) with a kite as paddling in reasonably steady winds of ~10 mph or better. If so, this works out pretty well since it seems to be at about that windspeed SUP becomes a lot more difficult.

6.) For inland waters (at least the ones I'm using) the "street kite" mode is a good way to have a very accessible kite/SUP setup that can be used from about any launch. Since the local area lacks reasonable kitesurfing launches (suitable for a beginner) this offers a reasonable alternative, though its more of a mellow way to spend the afternoon when the wind is up and down a lot, than get a big rush from windsurfing or kitesurfing.

A radial new design. I think it may have promise. I'm hoping this will lead to a sponsorship deal as well with a certain fast food company as well.

Pretty cool...

Try the Elmer's Glue folks..?