Hey,
New to traction kiting, but have been flying stunt kites for some years... I want to use my new traction kite (Ozone Little Devil) to surf sand dunes... Question: What kind of board sould I use? Shouldn't the wheels be rather wide? Is it possible to surf sand dunes on a board without wheels? Thanks...

Sand dunes, as I know them, are rather soft and most ATB wheels would easily sink especially with the added side pull of the kite.

If your dunes are hard, you may be able to move a bit with a large kite and big wheels, though I doubt you could make it back to your starting point.

A board without wheels would only be good for straght downwind runs at low speed. Plenty of drag with this setup.

Doomwheels,
Thanks for the reply / advise... Yea, the sand dunes I wish to surf are rather soft. But there HAS to be a way to surf them!! 5 miles long and 2 miles wide, on the northern California coast, lots of wind!... DuneBuggy wheels??, modified boogie board with cardboard on bottom to reduce drag??, skis?? What do you think?

Here is an idea just for you...
http://www.doomwheels.com/gallery/kiteskate/troy_bonny.gif

It's a wakeboard with ATB trucks mounted upside-down on the top of the board, snowboard boot bindings and "Rollease" (sp?) for the wheels. You could use buggy bigfoot wheels just as well.

This pic shows the TOP of the board.

It was built by my friend Troy Navarro for the Bonneville Buggy Enduro back in 1994. I easily got this thing up on 2 wheels with a Quadrifoil 75 in high wind the day before the event.

We rode it on a hard surface, but something like this may work for you on the dunes.

You know, one advantage to soft sand is that you can do some big-air jumps and land them softly. Even though a raw deck (no wheels) would not go very fast, you could focus on jump tricks using the board as a landing surface sliding from one jump to another. The sand/kitepower load you could build up with the board would help launch you higher in the air.

A word of caution... dunes have tricky wind currents and steep drops. Dune winds could pop you up perilously high and then foldup your kite dropping you like a stone. This should only be attempted by well experienced traction kiters.