Fractured Axel

Hey, I had to think of something to draw a lot of people in this topic.

In actuality, here's a few recent videos from the Edge of the Civilised Kite World (i.e. Finland). Filmed with a basic digital still camera and edited by yours truly with crap freeware on a slowish computer. DivX required.

http://kites.laiho.net/movies/Leijaseura/poroviikki.avi

Simo Sivonen's latest very nice prototype, codenamed Poro (= "reindeer" - don't ask) flown in Helsinki three weeks ago by me & the man himself. Winds were too light to show off the precision, but at least I got to run a few 360's on 30m lines (the kite is framed in P300 and 6mm carbon and has a tail weight of 20 grams or so).


http://kites.laiho.net/movies/Leijaseura/proto1.avi

Last weekend in Helsinki. Simo had framed an old nylon-sailed prototype of his from a few years ago with some SkySharks he had laying around and we gave it a little spin in the typically fickle chilly winds.

Juha

Those are better than some stuff I've seen shot with proper video cameras... very good work. Both kites look great too. There's not a lot of footage of the Reindeer on it's back though, does it Turtle and wrap-up very well? I understand the wind is less than perfect in the video.

Juha wrote:

Filmed with a basic digital still camera and edited by yours truly with crap freeware on a slowish computer.

Still better quality than 95% of other kite vids on the net (that also includes the flying )

I've got to say it takes real dedication to go out flying in the conditions of the Proto video, I'm affraid I'd be indoors with my cocoa

h_i_r_0 wrote:

There's not a lot of footage of the Reindeer on it's back though

There's usually not that much to choose from when editing those things - I can only get to Helsinki every other weekend or so, and out of an average 2-3 hour flight session there, we spend only 15 minutes or so actually filming (everyone would rather be flying than trying desperately not to lose the kite in the sky while peering through a small viewfinder).
It's amazing how much of the 10-15 minutes of filmed flying ends up on the "cutting room floor" in the end - I now have real respect for guys with enough routine in their flying to make those 3-minute vids where there's hardly any edits and all they do is difficult, hard-to-repeat combos.

I'm hoping we'll get some decent winds and a non-cluttered background for filming next weekend, though - we'll try to get more of the turtle stuff on "tape".

does it Turtle and wrap-up very well?

It sits nicely in a Turtle and Multilazys are automatic - by far the easiest I've done on any kite. You can basically just yank them around like backspins. For some reason I didn't try wrap-up stuff the last time at all, but when the kite had a little less weight in the tail previously, it was a bit slow going in. Might be a different story now, I'll see next weekend.

Here's an older video of the same kite (IIRC, I posted it on GWTW at some point) where you can see Multilazys and some other things:

http://kites.laiho.net/movies/Leijaseura/uutukainen.avi

I think it was my first effort in video editing.

Juha

I'm even more impressed that those two vids came from only 15 minutes of shooting!

Juha wrote:

Here's an older video of the same kite (IIRC, I posted it on GWTW at some point) where you can see Multilazys

Yes... it clearly does! Lol...