hey Dudes !

I feel all alone in here in Sydney !!
I appear to be the only one kiteskating.
I have some home made skates

http://www.extremekites.com.au/gallery/members/Peewee2/Peewe...

I was wondering if anyone can give me some personal feed-back on the Nordic Powerslide skates used as kite skating skates?

kind regards

I've never heard of the Nordic Powerslide.
Low ankle support may be an issue since every offroad skate has high boot design.

Peewee, welcome to kiteskating!

Interesting skates. Let us know how the monorail system works out. I'm curious if the boot attachment points start tearing out after prolonged use.

You should start skating along with fellow Aussie buggiers so that others may get into it. I've heard you have plenty of dry lakes and salt lakes over there.

The monorail setup is the result of 1 year of trial and errors from your original design which I have to say is pretty good.

I started with some shopping trolley wheels and steel tracks.
I didn't want big wheels despite the advantage on rough terrain.
The skates were good but the solid state wheels were physically very demanding on my knees, so I purchased some pneumatic wheels from a trolley parts manufacturer.

I then realised that the skates were heavy and the steel tracks bent after a jump...
I found this aluminum profile and after trial, it was stronger than 2 steel tracks on both sides.
There are no spacers, but nuts to hold the shoe track.
It's pretty strong and there is no tosion despite the one track setup.

Unfortunately, last week, i was riding in gusty conditions and I found myself about 5m in the air and by the time I pulled the breaks, i landed a bit hard... the tracks bent on impact, which in a way was good because it softened the landing.

I have now placed an order with a metal merchant to machine an aluminum platform in an "H" shape made from a block of 4cm high by 55cm long.
The tracks and shoe platform will be in one block.
I am also going to purchase some "agressive inline skating shoes" with no tracks. They are equipped with 2 screw attachment points under the shoe, which I will fix on the platform.

I found that the wheels I am using are a good mix for football field, hard sand and gravel.
I wanted to buy the Nordic Powerslide trainers, but they cost a lot and the wheels are too thin and the diameter is not good enough to go upwind.

I have been clocked at 78Km/H on those skates in 35kn wind on a double football field and they were wery steady.

I like your spirit and thank you for planting the idea of putting big wheels on conventional skates !
I would not consider for a minute having both my feet stuck on the same board !

By the way, I have also had a lot of fun with water skis at the ocean with my 6m kite, in front of some proud kite surfers who were making fun of me until they realised that I could go fast, upwind with a land kite and 2 planks !!
I have had my HQ Crossfire waterproofed by a dry-cleaning shop with a silicone coating. Providing the kite doesn't fall on the leading edge, you can recover form a crash and waterstart quite easily.

I don't have much money to spend and it has driven me to innovate when other kiters have just gone to the shop and purchased the latest equipment...

Thanks

Hey Peewee,
I DO love your City !!! A am happy to see you are going your own way ! This sport didn't develop because people only did what they were told was the " NORM " . Please tell me more about you kite - water ski experience !? I'm considering giving it a try ! I assume short, fat, trick skis would be the ticket ? Did you get airtime ?
So far I have found Coyote rolerblades work well. They can actually be picked up pretty cheap ( about $100 ) on Ebay. Over here at least. The build quality is amazing. The shorter footprint makes turning and sliding very easy. I'm finding they run stable at some pretty good speeds.
A tip from on here for foil flyers is to take a mesh laundry bag with you. If you drop the kite you can pack it in the bag for the swim home.
Balls on ya' Mate !!!!

Hey !

Vancouver... do you speak French?
I am French, I have settled in Sydney about 15 years ago.
I was brought up near Bordeaux on the beach side south-west of France and when I was just a brat, I witnessed the 2 Dudes who created the original Flexifoil stackers.
They used to do all sorts of crasy stunts at low tide on the beach, jumps, buggy, waterski...
You don't hear much about this but those guys were tops.

On my side, I bought some second hand water skis and considering their surface, they carry you better than a board. the technique is the same as on snow or with skates really.
I get started on the sand 3/4 back wind and then I start carving upwind.
I only have 2 kites: HQ Crossfire 3m and HQ Crossfire 6.3m
I'm 65Kg so 12kn is good for traction on water and 15kn is good for some jumps.
After drowning my kite twice and getting knots by having it tossed in the waves, I decided to waterproof it. As it comes from HQ, the kite sinks in about 30seconds... it soaks the water like a sponge !
And once it's sinking, it's quite impossible to pull it....
So, I visited a friend who is in the drycleaning industry and asked him about waterproofing ripstop nilon.
He got my 6m kite coated with some teflon based coating and gave me a spray to recoat it at home.
The kite is nice and crisp and it floats pretty well.
I have also patched some of the air inlets a bit in the stile of the new PKD buster or the new Ozone Samurai. I only have 6 inlets open.
This mod works pretty well and the kite doesn't deflate as fast when hitting the ground or the water... so it floats longer providing no water gets in the open inlets.
I also have the bridles equipped with a home made 6 Pulley UDS system (Universal deopwer system) and I run the lot on handles like the Pegas Chimera.
It's harder to handle, especially when using depower but I have a good "Liquid Force" waist harness and I have the handle harness strop connected in the middle of each handles instead of the main lines attachment point.. it acts as a pivot to change the angle of the foil.

I'm very tight with money and I have had to make the most of what I could get. I'm also pretty happy with my modifications.
See, I still find that handles give you more versatility compare to a bar, especially for kites which have been designed for handles in the first place.
With this depower system, you can "twist" the foil slightly to make it turn fast by changing the angle of attack on one side of the foil only...

For my skates, I only spent money on wheels. I bought some locally made 20cm diameter by 5cm wide pneumatic wheels originally designed for heavy duty trolleys. The core is made out of injected plastic and the bearings are sealled. They each cope with a 75kg max load.

I've tried all sorts of ways to connect them to the skate shoes and the unilateral aluminum profile is by far the best.
Since I have made some progress now, I'm having an aluminum chassi made by a metal workshop out of a "U" profile.
It's going to be very strong and quite light. I would like to buy some "agressive inline" skate shoes to put on this chassy because they are strong and easy to screw and they also have good ankle support.
Also, by having this chassy-frame design, the level of the shoe base is going to be only 1.5cm higher than the wheel axel.
The lower to the ground the shoe is, the more stability you get and it's easier to "stick" to the ground when you lean at an angle compensating from the pull of the kite...

I like the whole setup because I can have my 2 kites + handles + harness and helmet in a small size back-pack and my skates on a strap... and off I go with a minimal amout of gear for some hours of fun !

78 (kilometers / hr) = 48.5 mph. Nice That is fast!

Quote:

Originally posted by Peewee I have been clocked at 78Km/H on those skates in 35kn wind on a double football field and they were wery steady.