So I made plans to go out today and have a session and meet up with a local metro Atlantan who is growing an interest in kiting (Randy has been on PKF here and there and attended JIBE). I think he has a landboard, a 3m HQ hydra and 5.5m Born NASA wing. The initial forecast was calling for 10mph wind from 11am through the afternoon, which is typically a good sign. But when I checked the forecast this morning, it was looking like we may get skunked.

I met Randy around 11 at one of my favorite parks and we both fought to get kites off the ground. He had to leave to meet a contractor at his house, so I took a break and at my lunch. I felt the wind starting to arrive as I was finishing eating and ended up tearing up the field with the 8.6m RII about 45 minutes after he had left. I'm guessing the wind was blowing about 8mph and gusting into the low teens, and what's more is that it was relatively smooth and stable wind which is not all that common around here.

So as I continued on for about an hour or more the wind was picking up even more, but I was doing well with the big one so I held out... Until I got a little too close to the main drag of paved road connecting to the parking lot and running along side the field. A gust picked up and pulled me to the point that the kite was over the pavement. As I'm cranking down on the brakes with my feet in Fred Flintstone position, the kite is still pulling (now over the parking lot island) and sinking down DANGEROUSLY close to a light post, I was able to finagle it to the left and land it in a wad in the 10-15 foot space between the light post and a tree!!! LUCKY SAVE!!!... But still cars are entering the park and I have to drag the kite across the road and stake it down while traffic awaits. Luckily there was no damage to the kite, and a near miss for having to climb a light pole or pluck a huge Reactor out of a tree.

That's when I packed up the Cookie Monster and pulled out his little brother, the 5.5m RII to close out the day... It was a good confidence booster of a day, rockin out with the 8.6m in higher winds than I've used it. I did make a very poor attempt at a Deadman's turn, but am pretty sure I was moving too slow and made the turn too wide. This will likely close out my season for a while as I'll have a LOT of schoolwork to do for the majority of the summer and the summer wind around here is super lame, but that is yet to be determined for certain.

Thanks for reading along.

cool man keep rolling

Great story bro, glad you didn't have to climb a tree. I'm prepared. I have a 32' and 24' ladder on my truck at all times for work.

Light poles are scary things.

Sounds like it was a great session bud

Skim, I was soooo going to post that! LOL

I completely forgot about that... AWESOME!!!

I had the same experience when gust decide to pick up and blew me off the control and I landed on the rocky road between the field. Went home with red knees :-( that time I learned to wear pads, we may have unexcepted things waiting to happen!