I had a really bad session today. I am really glad I didn't test fly my new (to me) guerilla 15m or 13m, that could mave turned ugly fast.

I had been anticipating this session for a week now, all 3 weather websites I use were saying ther would be a nice 20-22mph breeze gusting to 27, perfect range for my venom.

When I got out to the lake The wind was lower than the wind prediction. I launched my venom and could barely get going. I kept thinking to my self I should land my venom and get out the 15m guerilla from the trunk of our SUV. Suddenly the wind picked up and I got lofted a few feet off the ground unexpectedly. I had a decent landing but I was extremely overpowered. I trimed the kite in as far as it would go but I still couldn't hold an edge. After 15 seconds of getting pulled down wind, the wind dropped back down was crazy gusty. Like a 25mph gust straight into a 15mph lull. Being a noob, I could ride about 10 meters then would get hit by a gust or a lull, fall, and go farther down wind.

Finally after a few minutes of crazy wind, the wind became very smooth. The only problem was it was only blowing 10mph, to low to get back upwind. I decided to wait out the lull so I let the kite auto-zeinth and relaxed a bit. After a while a monster gust came and inverted the kite, followed by a rapid increase in wind speed. I didn't have the bar in my hands and the kite was dive bombing straight down through the power zone. I flagged the kite and the line got jammed, causing the kite to death spiral. The kite slammed into the ground pretty hard and finally flagged properly.

I decided to call it a day for trying to snowkite, I walked with the kite back upwind I could static jump for awhile. The kite was acting weird though. The wing tips were twitching and the kite would bolt from side to side and didn't respond well to my inputs. After I got about half way back to the SUV the kite luffed and bowtied before It hit the ground. I got it undone 4 times but it kept re-bowtieing. Then I noticed that one of the spars had snapped. Knowing that my session was over, I flagged the kite and packed up.

I am thinking the spar had snapped when I flagged the kite and it slammed into the ground. The spar is pretty busted, the whole section is busted the full lenght into multiple slivers. Good thing I have some brand new aluminum ones to replace the busted carbon ones.

At least you knew to go to safety.

Sounds like you have some real lousy winds there. Nothng worse than strong and gusty.

Good info as always, Snake. I had a similar day on my 18m Guerilla complete with 5mph lulls followed by gusts that were scaring the piss out of me. My big problem was wind direction changes, though. I was at zenith, out of depower trim and had to flag out / got tangled, etc. I learned a lot that day.

Do you think an LEI or a foil would've done any better, or was it just a lousy day in general?

I always use the safety. 2 minutes of relaunch sure beats 6 weeks of no kiteing and a $1000 less in your kite fund. The winds are really bad here too. I don't think a kite other than an arc would even be fun to fly here as the gusts would get really annoying. I am going to try the small lake again as all the gusts seem to be toned down from all the trees on the shore. I definately won't go back to the big lake for awhile and all my sessions were bad there and the one at the small lake went perfectly. The awesomest part of that session was smashing all the snowballs that the wind made.:D

Just chalk one up to experience :bigok: not a bad day. I had a similar experience with my 10m Venom I. One CF spar splintered after a solid hit while trying to land in a gust. The carbon rods don't take axial loads very well so now I have them spiral wrapped with plastic electricians tape and so far they have not blown up again.

Watch the snow upwind of you - if there is loose snow on the surface you can usually see a strong gust coming toward you like ripples on water (it helps if it is a sunny day) - if it is a wall of snow you know you are in for a super burst and can prepare before it hits.

Any idea what caused your safety to snag? That should be looked after.

Are your winds just very gusty? or are they turbulent? or both?

I think current LEI's behave better in extreme gusts and turbulent conditions. But, uncomfortable to fly when you are not used to feeling like your attached to a jack hammer all the time.

I had one of my recent arc additions out today for testing, and had a similar experience but the opposite end of the spectrum. Had the largest one out, but winds were shifty and fluctuating anywhere from 3-10mph. I still managed to squeeze out 30 min or so of flight time just to get used to it. Even though I didn't do any buggying/boarding due to poor winds, it was still a success in my book.

I've had some success using Rev SLE rods as spars for the ends. They seem to work well, even survived a couple LE crashes when I attempted to loop the kite but failed. May need longer lines.