Fractured Axel

Hi everyone

When I first got into this kiting malarkey, I found it a bit difficult to get my head round all the possible tricks and how you were meant to start each one. Being a bit of a visual learner I decided to try to set them out in a kind of primitive flow chart. As time went on I added links to video trick tutorials that I had access to. I still find it quite useful and it serves as a sort of progress chart. I called it the ‘Trick Tree’.

It occurs to me that my rather feeble (and probably inaccurate) efforts could be improved on by the members of FA and that maybe we could, between us, produce a useful reference document for people new/newish to the sport.

I have run this past Andy, King of All Things FA, and he has suggested that there are two ways people might like to contribute to this process of improvement:

1 Directly editing the Trick Tree as a Google Doc here:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key= ... Fc6A2kBbHw

2 Making corrections/suggestions/contributions on this thread after viewing the gif which Andy has put up here:



Either would be very welcome!

I don’t want to be precious about either the content or format of the Tree – I will be happy as long as it ends up being as practically useful as possible.

For what its worth, my early thoughts are that I think that it might be cool if, not only did the Trick Tree show the main (easiest?) way to enter each trick and how each trick flows from another but also that each trick had a brief description, a link to Wiki and html links to videos available on line (or via Trick or Treat etc).

Anyway, enough waffle from me, over to you for help please…….

That's a nice idea, needs some tweaking but nice.

Didn't get it at first, but read your text & had another look, that makes really good sense Mark.
Good thinking actually, useful for noobs like me to see what leads into what

As a person 'newish' to the sport - and struggling progress much pass the first column - this looks great, it has already made some things clearer to me.

Is it possible to have some kind of difficulty rating added in, or a recommended order in which tricks could be learnt? - Not so much a lesson plan as 'don't expect to do this, if you you can't do this'.

I'm sure any info in this tree format would be highly valued, particularly by those of us who only get to fly on our own...

yan

Great idea Mark

Very nice idea.

Between turtle and crazy copter should be french flic flac. And I think comet should come after axel. The two machine tricks should come after half-axel. Perhaps have a section on ground tricks too.

I think it is an absolutely brilliant idea, and should replace the obsolete and needlessly flabby list of tricks on the wiki (link not working from here btw).

Good work!

Really nice idea. I actually consider myself of the 'half axel' branch...at least that's where I have progressed the farthest.

Admittedly, I am relatively basic on some of the other branches....

Let's debate the tree!

I would disagree with Al about the comete.

For me (imho) is part of the half axel branch. I have had loads of success with this trick by thinking of how it is related to the half axel cascade. The comete in my mind is easiest to understand if thought of as a series of halfs...R...R...R...R, etc. as opposed to the cascade's L...R...L...R, etc. (This comes to me from others, actually...not my insight.)

obi

Not actually at all importantly, my Computer Science brain is shouting that it's not a tree, but a collection of nodes and pointers, because you can (for example) Pancake->Fade and Half-Axel->Fade. Thank you, Niklaus Wirth.

It could be enhanced to show difficulty through rightward progression. The chart implies Fade and Yo-Fade are of equal difficulty, which is possibly not the case. The amount of difficulty is going to be a source of argument/debate, of course.

Oh wow, super idea Mark. I'm a kinesthetic learner, and a resource in this format is going to be of great value and support to me in finding structure through the progress of tricks.

You have my support in contributions to the project as I myself make progress and are able to document my hands-on aproach to learning tricks.

Can anybody a better system to host and present the data?
A Google spreadsheet is fine but it would be nice to have interactive links to the resources with icons. For example, you could use the chart as an index to locate forum discussion threads relating to the trick.
I think the hosting system should allow user membership with graded editing rights. So std users can add/edit links but only admins can make changes to the layout, and so on.

Slow Dog wrote:

The amount of difficulty is going to be a source of argument/debate, of course.

...add to my wishlist, a user difficulty rating voting thing, so there's a general consensus over the grading of the tricks. Of course this doesn't take into account that some tricks will be easier to learn on one kite and not another, but it's not about that, it's about grading the average personal challenge encountered.

Thanks for the responses guys! It seems that this one might 'fly'

@Sub - I thought myself that there might be a better way of handling the Tree's physcial evolution and I suppose that that might be the thing to get sorted first before we get down to the content, then the look of it etc.

I have to declare at this stage that I am neither sufficiently competent to manage the 'techy' side of this project or experienced enough in trick flying to be the arbitrator when it comes to debating the 'best' layout of all the tricks. So it would be really good to have people (either individuals or small groups) with the appropriate abilities take on the management of those aspects. I said I wasn't going to be precious about this and I meant it - if my main input is to 'set the hare running' and then just chip in with things that are as much about taste as anything, then that's cool by me.

No doubt among the many highly capable folk who make this forum what it is (GREAT! ) will be people with some experience of organising collaborative on-line projects like this who can furnish us with some key direction at this early stage....

The balance I would hope for is that we are pretty democratic without getting bogged down in endless debate and the whole project gets choked to death! We shouldn't allow ourselves to come up with a camel (racehorse designed by a committee).

Excellent fun

Have you considered a mindmap solution. There's a good looking collaborative one at mind42.com. Had a quick play and it looks like it might be what we're looking for.

Fiction wrote:

Have you considered a mindmap solution. There's a good looking collaborative one at mind42.com. Had a quick play and it looks like it might be what we're looking for.

I gave it a quick whirl too: http://www.mind42.com/pub/mindmap?mid=3 ... fa04347b5e

I can't see how/if a 'child' item can be linked to more than one parent (i.e. linking Flic Flac to both Pancake and Fade) - any one else tried this?

I use mindmap for work all the time...just to organize my ideas for different projects.

You'll have to enter a trick twice, depending on where you start to do what you are doing...unless this mindmap is a newer version...which I think it is not.

obi

Looks potentially loverrly to me!


Even if it doesn't link 'children' we could always double enter tricks with a note attached indicating the alternative/easiest route....

Nice start Keith!