Fractured Axel

Hi,

I've been flying for a few months now, can do a pretty consistant right hand axel (left hand is constant wing tip wraps), hold a fade (from the ground in the right wind), but have been having trouble with Half Axels and Pancakes. So I've decided to go back to the basics as I never really spent any time with them.

The problem is there are no local flyers and I'm not sure what I should be learning/practising to get the basics..

Any suggestions help would be great.

Thanks

J

Local to where? you might be suprised to find there is a marvelous flying site 5 miles down the road where FAer's lurk from time to time, or possibly not, be we can't tell without knowing roughly where you are.

Anyway, from a precision fliers point of view, basics would include holding a straight line (more difficult than it sounds!) a selection of push, pull & combination turns & where it's appropriate to use them, landings (2 point & leading edge), recoveries (cartwheels, leading edge take offs) and stalls (hesitation & snap). Getting a good snap stall can lead to tricks becoming an awful lot easier to set up, being able to hold a stall teaches you to move your feet, something you'll do a lot of during tricking. Perhaps you could move on to tip stands to practice balance & slack.

Standard disclaimer: My opinions only, worth what you paid for them.

Thanks Vee, thats a good start. I'm based in Melksham (half way between Bristol and Swindon in the middle of no where!).

A little tip with ummm, Tip Stands. (This is not a tutorial!)

On the ground set it up, get it up on the tip, hold it, then take off and do whatever....

Point is, do this every time you take off! First off it looks cool, secondly you'll be learning to hold a tip stand every time you launch

Worked for me.

Mark

You're kind of midway between the Avon kite fliers & Whitehorse Kite fliers. Of course there are quite a few fliers in the Bath area, some to be found on Lansdown hill, where there are also better flying days from time to time.

ok, well went out flying today tried to get a wing tip stand for take off, but then realised I have no idea how to get it to the tip stand... Any instructions on this?

I also noticed that my push turns are absolutly pants, I always come out with a wobble and generally oversteer - again any help/ideas would be great.

I'm flying a Prism E2.

Thanks!

In launch position, angle the kite so that one wing (the right, for example) is further back than the left.

Give a little pull or tug with the right hand and the right wing will try to launch into the air.

Next you have to learn to balance the line tension to keep it standing on one tip. That'll be a bit harder than actually popping it into position in the first place

Mark

You can get a feel for balancing a tipstand by using very short lines. You can take this extreme by practicing tipstanding on "leader lines". Leader lines are basically adding a metre or two of bridle line to the end of your tow points (where you attach your lines to). This is usually done so that when you are yo-yoing, lazy-susaning (or just getting into a big fat tangle) the lines act less like cheese-wire on your kite.

JamieS wrote:

I also noticed that my push turns are absolutly pants, I always come out with a wobble and generally oversteer - again any help/ideas would be great.

I'm flying a Prism E2.

Thanks!

Try using an adaptation of the old Dodd Gross technique, you need to learn muscle memory: Fly with your hands together (also a good way to check out your lines) and when you push with one hand you'll always have a marker to know how far to bring it back, that should eliminate your wobble, oversteer is a matter of practice I'm afraid. If you still wobble then try pulling with both hands after a turn.

When you're happy with knowing how far to bring your hands back, you can separate them again. This is actually important, as when you get up to alot of tricks, if you haven't unlearned the hands together bit you'll hit yourself in the chest a lot.

if you haven't unlearned the hands together bit you'll hit yourself in the chest a lot.

That however does not save you from smacking your knuckles into the mobile phone in your pocket and causing it to crash!

Mark

Vee wrote:

... if you haven't unlearned the hands together bit you'll hit yourself in the chest a lot.

This is usually followed by a conscious effort to lower your hands and avoid the chest hitting...which leads to hitting yourself in the balls



Push turns can get sloppy if you are trying to do them fast, with a real SNAP to them. When starting out, practice in lighter winds or away from the centre of the wind window, and concentrate more on the smoothness of the process rather than how snappy you can make them. Then when you've got that, build up the hand speed

Here's my top-list of important things to know when learning the basics.

1. Bond with your kite, forget the tricks, simply enjoy being the kite.
2. Watch how other people move around when they are flying, that's what you need to do but in your own style
3. Spend 5% of the time analyzing a trick logically, and 95% of the time figuring out how to do it without thinking about how to do it.
4. Practice, practice, practice....
5. When frustrated, frowning or unhappy, go back to #1 and start again

I started a thread somewhere asking everyone how long it takes to learn this stuff, the responses in there are well worth reading. I felt a lot of weight was taken off my shoulders after that, because what seems like an easy thing to learn isn't always the case.

Jest_of_EVE wrote:

That however does not save you from smacking your knuckles into the mobile phone in your pocket and causing it to crash!

Mark

Glad I'm not the only one to do that, or it's the keys, that hurts a lot. And recently when I've been doing pancakes in slightly higher breezes, stepping forward, arms well back and then throw them forward, as the kite takes up the slack the line is wrapped around one of my fingers threatening to cap the end off.

I also noticed that my push turns are absolutly pants, I always come out with a wobble and generally oversteer - again any help/ideas would be great.

I'm flying a Prism E2

also, remember that the push turn is 2 parts, one pushing to give the kite free space to 'fall' into the correct angle

the second part is catching and stopping the turn... that has to be snappy to

Sub wrote:

Glad I'm not the only one to do that, or it's the keys, that hurts a lot. And recently when I've been doing pancakes in slightly higher breezes, stepping forward, arms well back and then throw them forward, as the kite takes up the slack the line is wrapped around one of my fingers threatening to cap the end off.

Caught round the line winder in my pocket.........in competition

Fortunately I'm only in competition with John Williams, we're both aiming for last!