Petedj

Its interesting as BWS kites are bigger than the size they say they are.

Thanks Norm. My last lesson i actually did use my kite for the very reason you explained, regarding kite size wind etc around 15knts is best. Landing , dumping it in the water etc was all covered if thats what you need to do when no help is about. I even did numerous drift launches on the water. Its been nearly 8 weeks since my last lesson and i was getting all jittery.

Kite control is good, well that's what i was told by my instructor anyway. He told me i was good enough to keep myself out of trouble and get myself out of trouble. Hmm , i think im just at the nervous anticipation stage.

So im itching to get up on the board. If i go to where i had my lessons there is likely to be nobody there and would make it risky to launch with me still learning. If i go to Altona im likely to get in the way. Should i just rock up to Altona and hope for the best that someone might help me get the kite up. I'm at the stage right now where i really want to get out there and get up on the board but I'm shittin myself if something goes wrong. Is this normal? i seriously feel all at sea right now, i want to get out but don't want to get out if you know what i mean.

The plan was something like that , didnt eventuate. Although seeing that i haven't got up yet id rather stay out of peoples way.

Well i finally finished the board. It took longer more because i was being picky about the pads etc rather than it being hard, was rather easy actually. Complete with Cab bindings. Not the best pic but its all i could get as my cam aint doin too well. I seriously could have made this board look a million dollars with a bit of extra work. But i didnt want to spend a huge amount of time on something that may fail anyway. I now know how things react and go well or bad together, that's enough. Tried a few things , patched it up and tried again. It's 140 x 40 3 layers of glass on the bottom and two on the top with an 8mm cedar core that was reshaped in the middle of me making it, lol I didnt measure the fins , just lined em up and drilled. All up with the bindings , fins and handle i think it cost me about $100 Bindings $40 fins $20 handle $5 There is the bottom, the spots you can see is gold fleck through the resin on the bottom. And this one with the fins on the side Yep , i just drilled through the board and threw stainless bolts and washers in and sealed them on the underside. Seriously, there was nothing hard about making it, just getting all the stuff together was a bit of a pain. For my first attempt i think it went pretty well.

I just noticed that kitepower in geelong is closing

lol yeah , i made the board , now the straps are bitin my rear, but with my 21st wedding anniversary in two weeks id better not get too risque on the money spending. I know , a nice set of foot pads and straps for my wife, ill just check if they work.

Well i kept going with it and got the top sheet on, it went ok. So i wanted to get the bottom done and get the board going cos i don't have one yet and want to get out practising. So i put down the first sheet of glass and mixed up the resin. problem there was that i was going to use two lot of resin but when i measured it out i forgot all about this and put in double the amount of hardener in the single mix,,, OOOPS So i had to get it spread and the glass down before it went off, in that 37 deg day, yes yes i know . It clumped up and i knew it would turn out a bit bad but went for it anyway. It has a few voids in it as you can see but they are between the bottom ( outside layer) and the board. The outside is smooth with no dry spots. So i kept going with it, ill probably wreck it anyway I shaped it using a power plane then finished off the rail curves with the hand sander you can see in the picture. I'm just going to give the rails a hot coat and then that's all done. Just need fins and straps now, i saw a cheap board but it was bought the day before so i have to wait to get the straps at least. Ill make some fins from aluminum. I went out looking for wetsuit booties as i lost one of my el cheapo ones last lesson. Can you believe anaconda ones are $59, you gotta be kiddin me. I went onto wetsuit wharehouse and got some for 29 with free shipping, at least something worked out ok. Im spewing i missed out on that el cheapo board. Chears

So here i was right , about to buy a board to get out there and get heaps of practice in at trying to get up and then pow, school fees x2. It was like the simpsons episode where homer still says the pig is good untill . Then pow 4wd breaks, then pow house aircon breaks It's gone. Lol

What a pity the Altona Surf life saving club doesn't have something like this or a live webcam, that building could then be useful for something other than protecting the odd swimmer from a stray sea urchin that has rolled up that way

For anyone interested or doesnt yet know about this. Here is a link to real time winds from the altona outer reef marker from the Altona yacht club. http://altonayachtclub.org.au/weather/gauges.htm Down the bottom has the real time stuff

I have changed the kite since that as well. When the bladder connection popped off the whole kite went down , meant we had to drag it back in. Id hate to do that in deep water. I have put ozone line clips on the tubes between the LE bladder and the strut bladders . Now i can close them off once pumped and at least some of the kite will stay up if a leak happens.

Well had my second lesson down at point henry and to cut a long story short,, i wasn't able to get up However i was very happy with the lesson because of the confidence it gave me with my kite. 2011 LF Havoc 12 First off i set up my kite. This was great as id never had it out of the back yard. We got it ready to put up and noticed that one of the lines were switched about (pigtails) . Center to back and visa versa. However that was only on one side, i changed all of the tails around but didn't realise than one side was right Instructor laughed a bit as he was going to put up the kite first time and check it out. Asked if i wanted him to be looped out into the bay. My reply was "better you than me Joel" So up it went, comment from Joel was "she's a big girl" and "there's some power up there" and probably the most important was , "It's a good looking kite" . So he handed it over to run some body drags and i found it really easy. I went higher up wind than i could go in my first lesson and went a lot quicker whilst doing that. Then all of a sudden PFSSSSHHH , a big rush of air. Landed it in the water and found that one of the tubes connecting the LE to the strut valves let go, he pushed it back in and , we back in and checked it out. Couldnt see why but reseated the valve anyway and pumped it back up. Then OMG the tangles in the lines were amazing. Seaweed and crap were in them as it was my turn to launch the kite. There was a mass tangle in the middle as some seaweed hooked it all together. I walked to the knot and fiddled a bit and to my surprise it all just released and untangled. Also one line had half hitched itself around a pigtail, something he said he hadn't seen before. So up it went , almost, the wind dropped. Sheeted in and I kept it up and was warned to be ready for it to pull hard and yep damn it was about to pull hard but i was able to keep it under control. We then did a drift launch and i commented that it was exactly like a relaunch only that you mean to have the kite on the water, that worked pretty well and i was surprised how easy that was. So it was time to try get on the board. We were in water just over waist deep. I just couldn't get the hang of keeping the kite at 12 with one hand , grabbing the board with the other, putting it on my feet and keeping everything square. The water was deep enough that i was fully floating. Damn that was hard, all this new stuff to think about all at once. Needless to say the kite hit the water a lot, yep a lot. I re-launched it a lot and most of the time rather easily and the kite didn't spring a leak again , so that was fixed good. By this time i was well and truly stuffed. So Mr instructor went for a cruise with it while i regained some energy. I guess we had about 20 minutes left when i tried again. This time i was able to keep the kite at 12 with my left hand and i was able to get the board on and keep squared up. I managed to get the power stroke where it needed to be quite a few times and got up for a bout 2-3 seconds each time. I kept turning the board to far up wind and would drop back in whilst pulling the bar to the left and down it came.Plenty of power , just not straightening up properly, once i thought screw it and i went over the front, splat!!!! After a few of these i managed to keep the kite up even though i went under water. I think he wanted to keep going even though the lesson was about to finish, i was just to stuffed though. Yep i was a bit underwhelmed about not getting up , but in a way i am glad i didn't. I had the feeling that i was able to fluke it and get up early, what happened when i crashed it, how did i get the kite up and get the board on etc. I spent plenty of time learning the kite and in the and was able to get it to do what i wanted, not what it wanted me to do. I crashed and got it up again over and over. Kept it up after id went under over and over and did that near the end without needing to think about it. I really spent about 35-40 minutes trying to get up and a lot of that was trying to get the damn board on and be able to keep everything controllable Really happy with what i learned Good stuff

Thanks, may just show up for a look see, not sure the lesson is going ahead today anyhow, wind dependent