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This is cool

I love the 3D. It will fly as long as you can feel the air on the back of your neck.  I had a great time flying it today, along with an Aerobe (more on that kite later).

I tried flying an Acrobatx in the same wind and it was like flying a rock. I bought the Acrobatx so that I could learn how to do “tricks”. It is supposed to be a good trick kite. Tricks are more than flying the kite forward. In fact, as far as I can tell, tricks are done when the kite is almost stalling.

That’s not me (not even close) but it is an Acrobatx kite.

I have mixed feelings about my quad line kite. It’s a Revolution 1.5 SLE. Revolution kites have an online community. I am what you call a “lurker” in the Rev kite community. I don’t participate in the forums, but I do read them.

Like all communities, the people involved have a passion for whatever the community is based on. I have to keep that in mind when I observe the community from the outside. Some people treat these Rev kites like a religion. It’s hard for me to relate to that.

Quad kites allow an amazing amount of control. They’re like hummingbirds. They can stop, go in any direction and fly backwards. There are teams of people that fly in choreographed formations. They are the synchronized swimmers of the sky.

I can fly a quad kite. I am just a beginner, but it’s not that hard to fly one. I am to the point where I can have fun rather than wonder if I am using the right technique to control the kite. The question is, how far do I want to go with this?

Last night the wind was perfect. The park’s flying field was almost empty. I started with a 2 line stunt kite with a 100 foot tail attached to it. The challenge was to see what sort of curves that I could create with the tail. The kite drew several onlookers. Cool.

The wind was still good so I thought that I would whip out the quad kite. I did what I could do with it: starting and stopping in multiple orientations, flying upside down and sideways and in reverse and so on. It was boring, so I landed it and went back to the 2 line kite.

What’s wrong with me? Based on some of the passion that is visible in the forums, I thought that once I had a quad kite I wouldn’t go back, but I went back.

Maybe there’s more to it than just the kites. Maybe some of that passion comes from the community. It might be about the team flying and people helping each other with common interests. I am an outsider, but I would be willing to bet that quad kite passion is as much about people hanging out together as it is about flying the kites.

I am convinced that fractal art would not exist if it were not for the passion that is generated in the fractal art community. I know that many people have a hope that fractal art will become greater than it is, but I think it has already arrived at its final destination. Fractal art is the community.

I bought a Prism 3-D kite last week. The 3-D is advertised to be able to fly at winds from 0 to 10 MPH, which is cool because I have been frustrated several times when I have tried to fly without enough wind. The Prism marketing literature says that the 3-D holds the indoor flying record of over 6 hours.

I understand the laws of physics well enough to know that some form of energy needs to be pumped into the system to overcome friction and gravity enough to lift a kite into the air. In other words, there is no such thing as a 0 wind kite. Even if the wind is generated by human movement, it still needs wind. The marketing literature says that walking backwards is enough to keep the 3-D in the air when there is no wind.

OK. I tried that and it didn’t work. It was disappointing because that kite cost almost 80 bucks. I used the 20 foot lines that came with the kite. The idea behind the short lines is to control the kite in “3D” by flying it in all directions. I ended up walking backwards all over the crowded park, mostly dragging the kite along the ground. When I reached maximum embarrassment, I packed it up.

I tried it again last night, this time with 50 foot lines in a slight to calm breeze and a park with fewer people. It was great! The longer lines gave me enough time to compensate for my lack of experience with that kite. When it was calm, walking backwards briskly really did keep it in the air. I’ll practice a few more times with the 50 foot lines and then try it again with the shorter lines.

Prism has replaced the 3-D with the 4-D kite. When I asked the kite shop guy what the difference was between the 3-D and the 4-D, he said that it was just a different year, giving the impression that it was almost the same kite. That’s not exactly true. The 4-D is bigger than the 3-D, but it can be stored in a smaller space. The 3-D doesn’t fit in my kite bag. The 4-D would have. He didn’t have any 4-Ds in stock so I couldn’t do a direct comparison. He gave me a deal on the 3-D and I don’t regret buying it (now), but I would buy the 4-D at full price if I had it to do over again.

If you have a kite collection and you have to travel to open space like I do, storage is a big deal. My kite bag is a former Christmas wrapper roll storage bag. The green material with the red handles looks a little funny on the beach, but that’s OK. It works.

FYI – The 50 foot lines came from my Micron. After the success with the 3-D, I hooked up the Micron to see how it flew in the same wind, or lack thereof. That kite wasn’t going anywhere, even without the tail attached. I wasn’t too surprised. The Micron is a tiny kite that needs a lot of wind.

Whenever I go to the coast I fly kites. The destination has always been the coast with the waves, sand and tide pools. It hasn’t been kite flying. Flying is just something that you do when you get there, but that has changed.

After years of crashing and abrasive sand, my old stunt kites were wore out beyond repair, so I tossed them – at least that’s how I just justified the purchase of several new kites.

I wanted to step up from the cheap dual line kites that I had been flying, so I bought a Prism Quantum. The first time that I flew that thing it had me wondering what I had gotten myself into. Stunt kite flying is interactive. You establish a relationship with your kite. It tells you when it wants to fly and when it’s flying, it tells you when it’s happy. The Quantum growled at me the first time that I flew it. It didn’t just growl, it wanted to let me know that it might be in control, not me. I have never had to brace myself when flying a kite. I have never had to watch my footing to make sure that I didn’t get pulled over. That kite told me that I needed to pay attention to that sort of thing now. Talk about interactive. You have to use your whole body when you fly that thing. It’s cool.

Having caught a bit of kite fever, I thought that I might try a quad line kite. When asking around, I was told to do a search on “team iquad” and watch the videos, so I did. Do it for yourself so that I don’t need to explain why I bought a quad kite – a Revolution 1.5 SLE.

After flying dual line kites for years, I was feeling pretty good about myself at the first flight of my new Rev. It can’t be that much different from a dual line kite, but that thing brought me down into the depths of humility. All I could do was stall it and flip it over. I got to the point where I could fly it up and down, and then stall it or flip it over. I have a lot to learn about flying that kite. At this point it isn’t fun to fly because I have to think too much.

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Last Saturday I took my nine year old granddaughter and daughter to a place called by kite fliers, “Kite Henge”. It’s only about 1/2 hour away and it’s worth the drive – much better than 2 to 6 hours to the coast. What a great park!

Anyway, I couldn’t help but think of my dad that day. When he took us fishing he spent most of his time taking care of us. He loved to fish but he also loved to fish with us, even if it meant that he couldn’t fish much himself. I get that. I understand why he was willing to sacrifice his own fishing time so that we could have ours. You kind of have to be a dad or a grandpa to really understand, I think. It’s not really a sacrifice.

Rather than taking the time to learn to fly my new quad kite, I taught my granddaughter how to fly a stunt kite while I watched my daughter bring the Quantum into submission. A good time was had by all, but I am going to have to go back there, alone.