Wildchild

Trying to kick a board off your feet during a crash is more dangerous.

I agree it's probably the fact that they weren't pulling the brakes on hard enough. I've let go of the 7.2 Blade on them in fairly heavy wind and it's depowered completely with the killers attached to the end of the leader lines. I tend not to use mine unless it's really silly, having got them caught around the top of the steering head while gybing the buggy and then having no end of fun trying to free them. Think the problem is the Kite Essentials ones are so bloody long! The fancy doubling up idea is great until the first gust of wind makes them slide to their full length! Might have to modify them a bit before I use them next. They do make me a lot happier about letting inexperienced people fly my kites though. D

yeah, sometimes, although it's quite awkward trying to come up with the board pointing in a useful direction (ie not square to the wind). D

Do you know how hard it is to think of kite related words beginning with I??

Fourwheel Board (at) 'Ighspeed vs Mountainboard Inline 5urfing?? You're trying to turn this into a two/four wheels debate aren't you. Dave

- You have every single kite you own staked out on the grass, and by the time you launch the right one, it's the wrong one. - You are flying at lansdown, bath.

Wildboar's point is an excellent one, there are a lot of people on this forum getting on their high horse about dog owners, but banning dogs from all beaches is about as absurd as suggesting that kiting should be banned on all beaches. Perhaps dog owners should have to keep dogs on leads on certain beaches at certain times of the year, be banned from taking their dog onto certain areas of beaches at certain times of year. Certainly the law should be enforced regarding picking up of dog mess. Otherwise, they should be left alone where they aren't harming anyone. Likewise, perhaps kiters should be limited to certain areas of certain beaches at certain times of the year, or even banned on some beaches during high season. Perhaps they should be required to hold insurance to use some beaches. Otherwise they should be left alone where they aren't harming anyone. There is two much generalisation at the moment. Neither kiting or dog ownership is dangerous in itself. Irresponsible kiting and irresponsible dog owners are a problem. I agree though that the 'trial by media' and councils doing what other councils do tends to lead to everyone being tarred with the same brush. Bit more mutual understanding needed methinks. On the skateboarding front, I read a letter in the paper a few weeks ago, the gist of which was that the local council had recently decided to give over an area of a park to build a skate park. This was apparently going to result in a variety of evils including throwing bottles, attacking pedestrians, drug abuse, etc, etc. The same thing is true for all of us. The 'local newspaper moral majority' is out to get anyone who doesn't fit their definition of 'normal'. Unfortunately, the people who write to newspapers are also quite often the people who write to their local councillors... Dave

I quite often find myself buggying in nasty gusty conditions, so grinding to a halt underpowered and pointing in a bad direction happens sometimes. When you start to lose power it's a bit of a contradiction - you need to turn upwind to keep tension on the lines, otherwise the kite will stall, but you don't want the buggy pointing upwind when it powers up again. It's usually best to edge upwind as you slow down, but be ready to turn hard downwind - if you are going to stop, then you need to judge it to use your last bit of momentum to make the turn. If you find you are stopped with the buggy pointing upwind, then you can get out of it by turning the front wheel hard downwind, and leaning right forwards to try and get the pull of the kite as close to the front wheel as possible - since it's the only one pointing in the right direction - this will pull the front round as the kite powers up again. Alternatively, turn the front wheel upwind and carefully power the kite up behind you - I'm not talking about haring off in reverse here, just pulling backwards a few feet gently to allow you to steer the buggy back onto a sensible course before setting off forwards. Hope some of these help in avoiding those OBE's Dave

A 'major advancement' which is now considered an unnecessary complication and is pretty much obsolete. Dave

After my first play on sand at Saunton a couple of weeks ago - Sand all the way! And I actually found it easier to go upwind on sand than I ever have on grass - probably combination of cleaner wind and bugger all rolling resistance. Only downside of course was the wipeout in which one of the footstrap bolts on the Flex-Deck made a 3" long and quite deep hole in my leg, resulting in a sudden end to the session and a trip to A+E to get stitched back together. Ahh well, stitches come out tomorrow and it should be nicely healed up in time for the X-Zone games - By which time the straps on the Flexdeck will have been 'modified'. Dave

There's various places to kite, you can still just about fly on campus although there isn't the space for any wheeled activities (bloody new halls of residence). Lansdown is the nearest place I've come across for Buggying/Boarding and is serviced by the Park and Ride buses if you don't have any transport. Bristol's only 15 miles away, and Weston-Super-Mud is probably about 20 beyond that. On the kitesurfing side of things Poole Harbour is reachable (about 75 miles) if you have a car. I ran the windsurf club last year and we always used to go down there. If it wasn't for the fact the windsurfing club has just ceased to exist (because I wasn't prepared to run it single handed going into my final year and noone else could be bothered) then I'd recommend that as a handy way of getting down to the coast. You never know, someone might restart it by the time you get here. Basically, I don't think you'll regret it. You will miss having a car but there are ways around it. And hey, you can always bring a car down after your first year. Dave

i learnt to buggy with a single Super 10 (given the weight of my buggy, this required considerable wind!) because it was the only kite i had at the time. I also taught one of my housemates to buggy with it the other week A three stack should get you moving quite happily. The only problems are: 1) you need to make quite big arm movements to steer a two line stack, and this is awkward (but possible) in a buggy. 2) unless you are very powered up it will be harder to get upwind than with a four line (traction) kite. go for it! Dave

I did the exact same thing. So are you starting at Bath this year? What course you doing? Dave

Sounds familiar. Hehe I've got a nice trip 'to stay with the gf's family' lined up this weekend. Too bad they live in N.Devon, her dad has a kite, her brother surfs..... Hard life isn't it Dave

it says very explicitly on the first page that it is only meant to be somewhere to host videos, so if you think it's crap (which it is)....tough ****. D Edit: I've just looked at your site. Hahahahaha. At least I admit mine's crap.