Fractured Axel

Having a complete mental blank on this one.

I know the theory: rock the noes back, smallish tap on the lines to let it roll foward into the front flip and then pull evenly on the lines to roll up.

It's the second part that gets me: the kite either rocks forward 20 degrees and flies off, rocks forward 45 degrees and doesn't give me time to react quick enough for the rotation pull or occasionally (1 out of 40 or so) comes the full 90 degrees and I'm so shocked I mistime the pull. (I also have a tendency to pull the front flip unevenly on the DS and have it rotate round into a fade, but at this stage I'm more concerned about getting a consistently deep front flip.)

I've stared at Trick or Treat and Randy G's videos 'til I'm blue in the face and both Bryan and Ben have both tried to show me how to do it face to face with limited success (think this is more down to me than their tuition!!).

However if anybody has got any pearls of wisdom out there in terms of what I might be doing wrong, could they please chuck them in my direction!

Weapons of choice are the DS (Std & UL), Talon and Sin, so any kite specific tips would also be appreciated.

Thx,

Jon

I'm no expert at this.. but you've kind of told yourself the answer in your description I think.

Break the trick down to the 3 parts :-

Tilt back (push)
Flick forward (pop)
Full roll back (pop)

This trick is all about accurate leverage to create the required momentum. I would say that the angle of the first tilt back is important to generate enough leverage to cause the kite rotate forward to the belly down position. So practice this step first until you get this part perfect. This also includes getting the eveness with regards to both hands to stop any undesired rotations. If you don't get this right, then the following stages will get progressively harder.

Looking at Randy's video.. it looks reasonably far back for his kite.. maybe 45 degrees.

The other thing to note is you don't *have* to do it in 3 steps. If you don't get the kite flat enough on the first attempt.. you can keep on rocking the kite back and forth until you generate enough momentum to cause the kite to be nose towards you for the perfect roll up angle. You often see people do this after having missed the first attempt.

Another thing you could try is to add some nose weight or tail weight which will help to get the momentum going meaning that you'll need less of an angle in which to roll up. Once you get better, you can reduce or remove the weight.

Yet another thing to try is to try this from the ground on light winds.. pull on the lines gentley until you can let the nose fall forward and just before the walk of shame position do the roll up tug.

Not sure if this helps or not

Thanks, Dave.

Spent some time with Mike F on Wednesday in less than ideal conditions (1-4 mph with odd gusts significantly higher and from every direction you could imagine until 3 pm and then an onshore 12 -14 mph almost immediately thereafter).

After a bit of guidance from Mike, we managed to sort out where I was going wrong and have at least improved the success rate in getting the front flip so most of the time I'm now achieving at least 45 degrees forward and also getting a much higher proportion of full front flips.

Far from perfect yet, but I'm at least at the stage where I need to tweak technique rather than worrying about why it won't rotate forwards.

Hopefully more practice in better winds will enable me to improve the front flip and then work on the timing for the roll up move.

Stick at it and before long you'll wonder what all the fuss was about