dbcrx

Wow! Puts me to shame!

That's the one we got. It is very nice. Plus we just got it in time and will soon be recieving a free bluray player and the starter kit (2 pairs of glasses and a movie) to go with it.

Not sure about Peniche, but down in the Algarve there's wind pretty much all year (exept for now as I have a new kite!) You sometimes have to wait till the afternoon, but there's usually some wind. Weather forecasts here are pretty much a waste of time though. It's very localised and unpredictable. I've seen forecasts for hardly any wind when there's been about 30 knots and forecasts for 20+mm of rain in an hour which turn out to be a lovely day!

We've just been through this. Basically the quality goes from plasma through LCD up to LED. If you put them all next to each other you can see the difference quite easily. However, once you've got it home you probably won't notice so much, which is why we settled for a slightly cheaper LCD (although we did go 3D). Most will be HD ready by now. The only other thing we made sure we looked for was the frequency (some called it motion plus or something). A higher frequency of 200-400 will make moving images smoother and less jerky.

Can't say for sure as I've not been that far north, but Peniche should certainly be good for surfing as they've just held the Rip Curl Pro surfing there last week. Looks like they've good some nice flat spots for kiting as well though.

You may have to compromise a bit, or just spend a couple of days doing each others sports. The best surfing is on the west coast whereas most kiters go along the south coast. Although you can kite anywhere, the popular spots are Tavira, Faro or Alvor. If you were to stay somewhere around Lagos then Alvor is quite close and the west coast is only about 30 mins away, although you'd want to hire a car for that. Plus you'll have anything else you could want in Lagos (shops, restaurants, boat trips etc). To make travelling easier, I believe surf boards can be rented for not too much money. There's a few schools/clubs around, but I've heard good things about these guys: Alvor Kitesurf Center : School . Shop . Camp - Bem-vindo!

Cool. Thought that was probably the case. Got some better winds forecast for the weekend, just hope they've forecast the rain wrong! Meant to say too that I was very impressed with the auto zenith. Obviously I've read about it, but it's quite hard to believe until you experience it. Even with such little wind I could just let go of the bar and the kite sat there behaving just the same as my kids single liners!

Just managed to get out for my first flight on my newly acquired 13m Venom. Wind was only 5-6 knots, but I managed to get it up and flying. Looking forward to having a go in some proper wind now before booking a lesson for the water. Couple of questions though. Firstly, can any other arc owners confirm how accurate this guide is - http://www.kite-fantastic.co.uk/articles/mx5alan/arc-wind-range-calculator.html It recons 8-20/21 knots for my weight on land, which leads me onto the next question regarding the power adjuster (on the bar). I'm guessing it was due to the lack of wind, but the adjuster strap didn't really seem to make much difference. If it doesn't, then 20 knots is going to be bloody scary as even in the 5-6 knots I had I was able to force enough power out of the kite to get scudding up the beach. Pulling the bar in made a bit of difference, but only gave a little extra power. So will the depower be more noticable (make more difference) with more wind? Or is it just that I haven't got the hang of this whole depower thing?

That cost more than the fucking TV! Some people are just insane! Anyway. We're sorted for now. We've compromised a little on the TV and gone for an LCD 3D, in the hope that we can still afford a nice holiday next year. Going to leave the sound system for now and see what it's like with what we've currently got.

It does have an optical output, as does my TV decoder, but my current surround sound only has one input, so I'd have to keep swapping the cables over. Plus, from what I've read, HDMI is the better option because it is digital all the way - not converting from digital then back to digital, and you only need the one cable for each device. I think I've talked myself into a new kit. Going to go back today and have another look. I may compromise on the TV though and get a slightly cheaper LCD version.

As far as I can make out, the amp decodes the sound, but because the HDMI cables send the picture and sound in one cable, the amp has to be capable of taking the signal in and then sending it onto the tv. But I could be wrong - this is what I need confirmation on.

So the optical output from the TV will only output the TV sound, not reroute any sound that is being fed in from an HDMI input? If that is the case, then it looks like a new sound system will be needed as well then. Think I would prefer a new one anyway to be honest, as with the HDMIs we can keep the cable clutter down a bit. Only thing is, I believe that as the video will be routed through the receiver we have to make sure that is 3D compatible as well. In which case that Yamaha one wouldn't do the job. (Unless we used extra cables for the audio seperately).

I'm sure there must be a few techie experts here that can advise me on this. I had a quick look on a couple of AV forums and was just instantly lost in the hundreds of sections! We're going to be getting a new TV soon and so thought we'd go mad and go 3D! The one we're looking at (Samsung) will come with a free 3d blueray player as well, and we have an HD cable TV box too so both can be connected to the TV with HDMI cables. My question is about the surround sound though. We currently have a JVC DVD player with surround sound which has 1 optical input. Can I just connect an optical cable from the TV to the DVD player to listen to blueray and tv in surround sound? Or, seeing as the dvd player is going to be redundant other than for sound, will it just be easier/better to get a new AV receiver speaker kit and just go HDMI all the way?

If you can manage to get out 90% of the time on just one kite, then I'd say it isn't worth getting any more. But then I can't afford to just go buying kites. If you can afford it then why not!

Time to plug the wife! http://katie-danielle.webs.com/ The gallery is all her own work, obviously. We're working on making prints available at the moment. But also check out the "news & stuff" page. She regularly posts links to all sorts of artists - some weird and wacky and some just truley amazing.