> It's impressive watching him in person -- he's the most
> carved-out-of-oak guy I've ever seen, what with standing out
> in the sun
> and wind bare-chested for decades and all. It also blows me
> away how
> variable the wind can be and not affect him -- I have
> different kites
> for different levels of wind, he just digs his heels in..
I haven't flown competitively for the past two seasons as the
cost of competition has gone up so much. We're doing stunts now
that my collection of kites just will not do. Instead of buying
a couple thousand dollars in new stuff, I've just been nursing
my old stuff along as long as possible. Last competition I was
in the others were doing manouvers which would have caused mine
to literally fall apart or out of the sky. A major benefit of
the modern stunt kites, though, is that they don't have nearly
as much pull as my older ones and are much easier on my wrists.
Powerkiting? Once or twice a year I setup my rig and attempt to
do a little "flying". Unfortunately, either the kites aren't as
powerful or the "payload" has increased. :(
Powerflying is a real hoot when eveything is working right. A
friend of mine had two 16' (yes, that's sixteen feet) flexifoils
that would produce hundreds of pounds of lift. Unfortunately,
they were so long that they were nearly impossible to turn.
We'd only fly these things at the sand dunes (Silver Lake,
Michigan) and would launch ourselves off of one dune and make it
nearly to the top of the next. I was a little bit more chicken
and didn't like flying 200' above the ground hanging by just my
hands so I'd just stay in the "maim and breathing tubes"
altitude. I was more than content with flying *only* 600 feet
or so. John went over 2000 feet one time.
If we tried that today, we'd be drummed out of the kiting
community for our lack of safety gear. We sure would draw a
crowd, though.
In my last year of competition, I was attempting to fly three
stunt kites simultaneously. No, not in a stack, but
individually. Had I not crashed and burned, I probably would
have placed. Took me two hours to detangle the lines. During
practice earlier in the day I was practicing the routine and
some idiot kit comes along with a $5 plastic kite and tries to
fly it in amongst my kites. Not good. His elcheepo yarn for
kite line cleanly sliced through two sets of my kite lines and I
had to chase $1000 worth of my kites down the field. Since I
was paid to be there, I just had to smile and not rip the poor
kid's kite to shreds.
AG
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