Jun 14 2010
Light wind kites
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.
