Stories of my trials and tribulations around my weird life of computer game development and my hobby of power/traction kiting.
This blog is my personal opinion and does not reflect that of my employer or any other person.
I recently bought a used Ion3 with the intention of plugging the gap between the 9m Atom and the 12m Atom. The main problem I have is that the 12m Atom is quite a heavy & slow kite so the bottom end of the wind-range is deceptively high. This means it rarely sees the light of day.
I’m also hoping that the Ion re-launches a damned site easier than either of the Atoms do. They’re particularly bad and I’d even go as far as to say dangerous on water as they’re a complete pig to re-launch on water.
In an ideal world, the 10.5m would be a single kite quiver but I can’t see that happening. It may languish in mid-table obscurity but time will tell.
Well, I went out this evening for my first twilight fly at Herringthorpe. The wind looked pretty good from my window so I plumped for the 9m Atom and intended to do a bit of boarding too. If nothing else I'd get some time to learn the kite including relaunch some more before heading out on the water. I also wanted to double check it held it's pressure for a long period under normal flying conditions.
Herringthore Playing Fields The inland wind conditions were suffering from the usual huge swings in direction and gusts. It's the norm really so it wasn't a blocker. The site looked clear and it was a nice warm evening.
Launch After setting up the kite I tried really hard to self-launch but it was frustrating to see it spin around and do everything *except* launch. It made more infuriating after I tried the techniques I'd learned for the Ozone Light during my kitesurf lessons. It simply wouldn't launch and I thought something was wrong.
After much rushing about it eventually launched but it wasn't right. Sluggish turns, unresponsive, falling out of the sky, etc. Not happy really, especially when it came down in a lull and wouldn't go back up. It would only fly on max power trimming and fell out of the sky on slight bar pressure.
Tweak I eventually downed the kite and decided to tighten the back lines a bit to instill some more responsiveness. I tied an extra knot on the pigtail, reattached the back lines and tried it all again.
The Atom was now more like the Instinct - it launched much easier, handled better, etc. etc. I'm now much happier with it. Relaunching was now a doddle too so it was mission accomplished!
It's a shame the wind was so shite!
Summer Games Just as things were going well a load of people turned up and proceeded to setup 3 cricket matches that basically consumed the whole of the playing field. I guess it was some kind of local match/league but my safe flying zone was not unusable so I was forced to pack up. It didn't help that people were driving their cars around the playing fields. :(
This weekend was the RaceKites.com meet at Bolton-Le-Sands.
Journey Saturday started with a few of us, Bibbler+Suicide+Antler+myself, meeting up at the service station on the M62 ready to continue to voyage at 6am. It's been quite a long time since I've been active at that time in a morning but the motorways were clear and we made good progress.
We arrived at Red Bank Farm at around 7:30 to find some RK veterans were already there as they'd stayed through Friday night. We pitched the tents and generally prepared for the day ahead.
The campsite was on a hillside overlooking the bay and it made for a spectacular sight across the expansive sands we were to be on later.
There was very little wind at this point and the forecast hadn't predicted much more so it was a bit of a long shot.
Also, local info told us that we needed to get down on the beach early as our access route with the buggies through dry sea channels would be blocked once the tide started coming in.
It was an excellent turn out and I got to meet old & new friends.
Kiting Paul and I setup on the beach and we were off pretty quick as the winds were good and the beach was amazing.
I was flying my 13m Venom and Paul was on his 10m Access, both of us were in our RS Buggies.
It was a great day on Saturday and we both got speed personal bests of 30.0mph for Paul and 34.9mph for myself. Although for the most part we were pretty well matched for speed.
Slight downwind runs were definetly the fastest elements, and there was a turbo boost when travelling through the wind tunnel caused by the offshore winds running down a small valley and onto the beach. I also learned that cloud cover compresses the wind and accelerates it so it's something to watch out for.
It was really good to be going so fast and my venom 13m and atom 9m did me proud, with the latter just gaining an edge as it's faster at turning and pulling the bar in really is like pressing an accelerator - amazing! It's definetly opened my eyes to the power & versatility of SLEs, never mind the fact they're a damned site easier to relaunch than an arc.
Sunday was on the brink of a wash out as the winds struggled to come through, there were many cases where people just got stuck out on the beach when the wind just vanished. It was a strange site to see all those buggies and kites just parked, waiting in anticipation for the wind to return enough so they could get home.
I too got caught out there once when the wind disappeared, in the end I got fed up of waiting as it was lunchtime and my sandwiches were only a short walk away. Why sit baking in the sun when a short walk will get you some long earned food? So, I packed up my kite and dragged the buggy back to base.
My GPS told me I covered about 40miles on the Saturday and I dare say Paul covered about the same.
Sadly there aren't many pictures or video as we spent most of our time out flying!
It was a truly excellent weekend of buggying and I have the bruises to prove it. :)
