First day of the hols and I'm already bored, little to no wind and it's southerly so it's no use to me anyway ... may as well go annoy the groundskeepers at the Notogawa park.
Hot as hell, road sign said 37°C but at least it's not as humid as it was last week.
Arrive at the park with my Rebble and Ace and tramp down to the river bed to enjoy the nice flat cool grassed area ... /rant bloody old people are taking over the WHOLE public park with their stupid gate ball ground golf croquette game - there's bloody metal spiky flags all over the river bed now! Sigh ... I think one day they might come and find them all at the bottom of the river ...
So back to the soccer pitch (hard packed dirt) to set up with the Rebble first. Quick flight with the handles - phew only enough wind to keep it in the air! Switch to the bar ... whoa that works sweet! The Rebble is my first kite and the power lines are about a foot longer than the brake lines - the bard works perfect without any trim so I guess for my newer kites I'll have to meddle ... play with the Rebble for a bit, end up walking backwards across the field but am enjoying the speed and ease of 'depowering' the kite and how well it turns! Reach the end of the pitch, test the safety - boing! - no problems so pack up the Rebble.
Out comes the Ace. I removed the pulleys from the pulley handles for the bar ... the pulley handles worked ok but without a back-strap, it was (and still is!) impossible to apply brakes on this monster! The wind has shifted to northerly - quick flight with the handles ... damn what a beast! Switch to the bar and pop it up ... nice! Needs a bit of trim on the brake lines - I guess the power line connector is too short like Jovver said - sorted that out and now she flies good! Power is much easier to handle with the bar and through the harness (duh!) and it turns a little quicker.
Reverse relaunch is a little trickier than with handles and you lose a little finesse, but I think on the whole it's a great bit o' kit! Now I'm going to try to make something like the PKD bar :D
Showing posts with label ace 12. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ace 12. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Uber light wind sessions
Took my mother down to the beach to get some handle time on a 4-liner (Cult) is sweet F.A. wind. She got about an hour in before it died to almost nothing. I was flying the Ace 12m at the same time and finally there wasn't even enough for that. Packed up, went home.
After work, went down to the Biwako Museum park with the Shockwave for a quiet fly ... the wind that had picked up during the afternoon died just about the time I walked out of the office - great timing! The Shockwave is so light though it'll fly in a gnats fart. And there was tons of gnats around and I guess they were into the bean curry stew so I had it up in the air for a good while.
Got sunburnt too - summer must be knocking on the door!
After work, went down to the Biwako Museum park with the Shockwave for a quiet fly ... the wind that had picked up during the afternoon died just about the time I walked out of the office - great timing! The Shockwave is so light though it'll fly in a gnats fart. And there was tons of gnats around and I guess they were into the bean curry stew so I had it up in the air for a good while.
Got sunburnt too - summer must be knocking on the door!
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Pansh ... it's Chinese for "Drawn and Quartered"
... or maybe just "Pull your arms from body or throw you into sky, your choice suckah"
Had a few sessions with this monster so far, this being about the fourth.
My little beach at club Locus had good clean onshore winds that would be Crappy on any other kite but were Gravy for the Ace this afternoon, so I thought I'd see how my DIY pulley handles worked. And maybe have a setup and test flight for the Core 6.7 that just arrived!
The Ace flies much better on a back-strap (and no doubt, a harness) so you can take all the power through your body and then use the brakes by hauling on the bottom of the handles. This is, not surprisingly, much more effective than trying to fly it like a regular fixed bridle kite on handles.
The pull is just so relentless through the power zone as the kite moves slowly from one side of the window to the other ... massive long scuds downwind! You've got to keep an eye on it though cos it'll race to the edge of the window and collapse if you don't stop it, resulting in at best a near total collapse or at worst, a bow-tie. Thankfully, the small amount of wind needed to fly the Ace means you can just drop the handles and sort the kite out without worries of it flying away ... have to watch it rushing to the zenith too; didn't like it for pendulum jumps cos it's so slow to turn and unless I got it right, would collapse at the end of the jump too. Keep it moving though and you're rewarded with monumental pull.
The DIY pulley handles work nice.
I modified my old Rebble 5m handles, which were strangely an inch longer than the Ace 12m handles. Had no idea about leader line lengths so gave it a generous amount for the brake leader through the pulley. Again, they work best with the harness as you take the power through the back-strap and just steer with the brakes, hands at the bottom of the handles. It'll turn on a wing tip quite crisply, or very near to it.
Thoughts on the pulley handles ...
The closer the knot is to the handles, the less throw you seem to get on the brakes but it's easier to pull.
The kite seems less fussy about the relative lengths of the brake lines but they need to be longer or the pull on the brakes is reduced.
The pulleys seem to limit the amount you can actually pull the brakes too: unlike on regular handles, you can't stall the wing tip by hauling the brakes all the way back. The way the pulleys seem to work, when you've used up all the travel in the brake leader but keep pulling on the handle, it actually pulls the power line too, like you're doing a pull turn with a good dollop of brakes on. So far, this is a good thing; and you can still back-stall the kite fine ...
We'll see if the pulley handles are actually the best option, need to do more testing versus regular handles.
Didn't even get the Core out of the bag, got distracted by the monster Ace! Probably just as well, cos the Core looks brand-spanking new (thanks Ripsession Kites!) and the beach is somehow very dusty so kites, shoes, pants etc end up filthy.
Had a few sessions with this monster so far, this being about the fourth.
My little beach at club Locus had good clean onshore winds that would be Crappy on any other kite but were Gravy for the Ace this afternoon, so I thought I'd see how my DIY pulley handles worked. And maybe have a setup and test flight for the Core 6.7 that just arrived!
The Ace flies much better on a back-strap (and no doubt, a harness) so you can take all the power through your body and then use the brakes by hauling on the bottom of the handles. This is, not surprisingly, much more effective than trying to fly it like a regular fixed bridle kite on handles.
The pull is just so relentless through the power zone as the kite moves slowly from one side of the window to the other ... massive long scuds downwind! You've got to keep an eye on it though cos it'll race to the edge of the window and collapse if you don't stop it, resulting in at best a near total collapse or at worst, a bow-tie. Thankfully, the small amount of wind needed to fly the Ace means you can just drop the handles and sort the kite out without worries of it flying away ... have to watch it rushing to the zenith too; didn't like it for pendulum jumps cos it's so slow to turn and unless I got it right, would collapse at the end of the jump too. Keep it moving though and you're rewarded with monumental pull.
The DIY pulley handles work nice.
I modified my old Rebble 5m handles, which were strangely an inch longer than the Ace 12m handles. Had no idea about leader line lengths so gave it a generous amount for the brake leader through the pulley. Again, they work best with the harness as you take the power through the back-strap and just steer with the brakes, hands at the bottom of the handles. It'll turn on a wing tip quite crisply, or very near to it.
Thoughts on the pulley handles ...
The closer the knot is to the handles, the less throw you seem to get on the brakes but it's easier to pull.
The kite seems less fussy about the relative lengths of the brake lines but they need to be longer or the pull on the brakes is reduced.
The pulleys seem to limit the amount you can actually pull the brakes too: unlike on regular handles, you can't stall the wing tip by hauling the brakes all the way back. The way the pulleys seem to work, when you've used up all the travel in the brake leader but keep pulling on the handle, it actually pulls the power line too, like you're doing a pull turn with a good dollop of brakes on. So far, this is a good thing; and you can still back-stall the kite fine ...
We'll see if the pulley handles are actually the best option, need to do more testing versus regular handles.
Didn't even get the Core out of the bag, got distracted by the monster Ace! Probably just as well, cos the Core looks brand-spanking new (thanks Ripsession Kites!) and the beach is somehow very dusty so kites, shoes, pants etc end up filthy.
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