Slartibartfast

Yeah, buggying as well. Though, save one Flexifoil 4.9m Blade IV I haven't any gear at all here I'm afraid. I had a reasonable amount of gear back in Adelaide but when I moved here a little over 4 years ago I just brought the single kite with me and expected to slowly rebuild my collection but I just haven't got back into the game again, mainly because I haven't found any good sites to fly and haven't had any buddies to explore with. Given how frequently I managed to bang myself up previously I thought it unwise to set off to a remote location on my own, so since moving here I've largely given the sport up completely. It would be great to get back into things again though: 😀

I've been out of the scene for many years but moved to Canberra a few years ago and would love to get back into the scene. What kind of flying are you into?

You could try asking for material at a local drop zone (skydiving club). I worked as a packer for several years before getting into kiting and I can assure you most drop zones have plenty of retired parachutes laying about the place. Parachutes are made from F1-11 ripstop nylon and become porous over time, just like kites. Modern parachutes (and by modern I mean made in the 90's or later) are generally made from a material called "ZP", which stands for Zero Porosity (note they actually meant Zero Permeability but got the name wrong). ZP uses strands that are coated in silicone to reduce the permeability of the fabric but over time and not to mention many a violent opening, the silicon wears off and ZP fabric basically becomes F1-11. Another interesting thing to note about parachute material is that the strands that make up the cloth are not twisted. In most cloth the fibers that are woven together are spun or twisted to make circular 'yarns' that are then woven. This makes the cloth stronger but parachute material is woven from un-spun strands such that the fibers are able to squash flat once the weaving is completed. This reduces the porosity of the fabric which in turn reduces its permeability. I'm not sure if the same is done with kiting material but I suspect not. I suspect the additional strength of twisted yarns outweigh the benefits of reduced permeability for kites and certainly the kites I have check appear to have twisted yarns. It might be the case the these new "super fabrics" they use in these deluxe kites do use unspun fibers but I haven't examined any. Using unspun fibers would improve performance but would also reduce the lifetime of the kite. By the way a brand new parachute is incredibly difficult to pack! Packers will generally charge extra for the first 10 or so pack jobs because they're so damn hard to get in the bag. What happens is tiny slithers of air get trapped between all those layers of silicon coated fabric and the whole bundle becomes almost unmanageably slippery. Many a time I have placed my knee on a nicely folded up parachute while attempting to get it into the bag only to have the guts of the stack come spilling out all over the place. It's amazing how easily this happens with brand new ZP canopies.

For those that missed it, it was a video of people flying para-gliders down ski fields, similar in concept to this: The actual video posted above was better than this one but the general concept is the same.

Well, my money's been refunded, so I guess all's good. Of course I would have preferred to have the kite but at least I'm not out of pocket

Hmm, things went a bit weird... I contacted the guy and asked if he'd be willing to send it to Adelaide and said I would like to pay him through PayPal. He wrote back saying that would be fine, postage to Adelaide would be $33.60 and PayPal fees would be $7.72, so I send him $191.32. He received the money and said he'd send the kite the next day but then later that night I received an email saying: Weird? So at the moment he has $200 of mine which he says he'll return to me rather than send the kite because it's too much of a headache. I hope it works out.

Oow, that Venom is exactly what I'm after. Been after another light wind kite since I busted my 13m Venom II and that 16 seems perfect!

Cool, sounds good. I'll gladly grab one of those of you. Thanks Sinbad (: (:

Yeah, I have tried both Bunnings and Stratco. They mainly have steel wheels and the few plastic ones they do have are for a much smaller axle diameters. They also don't really sell them on there own. I have been thinking of going to Sysmic rims with Midi XLs, just haven't been able to come at the expense. However, given replacing a plastic barrow is looking like $90 perhaps the $300 to upgrade to Midi XLs is starting to look justifiable

Anyone know where I can get a replacement rim from? I see Briskites has then but their only listed as a complete wheels (including tyres and bearings) and acutely cost more than the Sysmic 4x8 rims.

Yeah, that's what I was concerned about when I mentioned the "departure angle" above. For my next attempt I intend to bring the rear wheels closer and raise them a little. As it is it already pokes above the roof rack by an appreciable amount and I don't want to push it much higher but a little extra clearance at the back would indeed be welcomed. Also, if I raise the rear axle too much those tyres will start to obscure the taillights and I'll have to look at wiring additional lights to the rack. I'll be able to plug them into the trailer socket, kind of like those towing boards you sometimes see on boats and alike but I'd rather not bother if I can get away with it

So you wheel the buggy up to the car front wheel first, yeah? Then basically you stand the buggy upright with the front wheel in the air, letting the side-rail/swan-next rest on one shoulder (and possibly shuffle forwards a little to get closer to the mount) then, grasping both side-rails, you essentially lift the whole buggy vertically and drop in into the rack, one side first then the other. Is that right? My buggy weighs in excess of 60kg and is an exceedingly awkward shape to lift. While I probably would be able to manage it that way it would be quite an effort and not something I would look forward to :s

I originally planned to mount the bug facing this way too but ended up deciding to mount it 'backwards' so I could simply wheel the buggy up to the mount, lift the axle in then tilt it up. How do you actually lift your buggy in with it facing 'forwards'? Do you kind of stand it up vertically then lift the whole lot, or do you somehow flip it upside down and back it in, or what? My bug's pretty heavy and simply lifting the axle into the cups is best done with two people, I'd hate to imagine how I'd go getting it in the other way round, especially on my own. How do you do it?

The trig's not really that important. I'm just pointing out that traveling 10 degreese of straight down wind at 2.5 times wind speed seems infeasible.