Bought – Flexifoil 10.5m Ion III (3)

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.

Kite Riding Upwind - How To/Tutorial

I've seen a few people hit my blog looking for 'riding upwind' so I thought I'd write a small entry as it's one of the later skills you'll acquire after basic kite flying, staying on/in your board/buggy. The same technique applies whatever you're doing really.

Riding upwind is usually needed for you to get back where you started from and saves a lot of walking. :)

A few basics:
You need power! It's impossible to ride upwind without a lot of power as you're going to put the kite at the edge of the window, which only uses a fraction of the available power. Imagine it uses about 10%. So, if the wind is only light then you're not going to have enough to get you going.
If you're struggling you can produce more power by diving the kite through the powerzone but this is best left to when you're competent as sining the kite to generate power and learning to ride upwind will blow your mind!
This can be the biggest hurdle when you're still learning as you're probably still not confident in high winds (POWER!!) so don't despair if you're having trouble getting upwind, it will come.

Upwind riding
As I mentioned before, you're aiming to go slightly upwind if you're current position so get yourself moving and then bring your kite as close to the edge of window as you can.

So you (BLUE), kite (RED) and wind (GREEN) under regular flying would look something like this...

With the kite at the edge of the wind window you can see how the wind hits your kite and sends it in a slightly different direction taking you with it. The power is less so be prepared for slow steady progress. Remember, the closer you get to the edge of the window the less power you'll have and ultimately the kite will die.
So, aim slightly upwind of your current position get the power in the kite and edge/turn hard against the wind.
The trick is in going upwind as close to the limit as you can get.

 If you're going upwind too much then you will loose a lot of speed, possibly stop and drop the kite. To prevent this just head back downwind for a little while and then edge back upwind, you're route will look like an 'S' shape with the upwind portion hopefully longer then that downwind one.

I hope this, helps everyone. Please post comments as it will help me improve this How To.