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Provided your friend is familiar with fixed point launching or landing, you can get him(her) to help you launch, and then you can act as a fixed point holding on to his chicken loop with one hand while controlling your kite with the other hand. It is much easier than trying to hold his kite. Obviously I would not recommend it for very strong winds, it is not needed if other kiters are around to assist otherwise, downwind clearance is needed etc etc. We do this here with my mates and it works beautifully.

I like it. Can't believe we've been doing it the other way.

Yep been doing it this way for a while, easier when getting wife to launch me she just holds CL

ok....dumb question.....why wouldn't you just use a fixed point launch, tether to something solid, even if only the kite bag full of rocks?

with friend holding it, if something does go wrong in launch or with their airborne kite, and they let go, there's nothing holding the kite. Not sure I see the advantage here?

Seems to me if 2nd person wants to help, simply ensuring the tethered kite doesn't launch itself would be more useful.

Ned Divine wrote:Provided your friend is familiar with fixed point launching or landing, you can get him(her) to help you launch, and then you can act as a fixed point holding on to his chicken loop with one hand while controlling your kite with the other hand. It is much easier than trying to hold his kite. Obviously I would not recommend it for very strong winds, it is not needed if other kiters are around to assist otherwise, downwind clearance is needed etc etc. We do this here with my mates and it works beautifully.

I would disagree...if you are holding onto his CL, you'll get the pull from the gusts much harder than if he actually knows how to hold onto the kite...sure either way works, but the regular launch is faster.

A minimum of control is required, but buddy launch like that is not very hard.
Point your kite away, stand just slightly upwind..so the kite does not get super charged for the launch, and hold on the LE...and you need to not have one of the douches that walks towards you as you launch them.

juandesooka wrote:ok....dumb question.....why wouldn't you just use a fixed point launch, tether to something solid, even if only the kite bag full of rocks?

with friend holding it, if something does go wrong in launch or with their airborne kite, and they let go, there's nothing holding the kite. Not sure I see the advantage here?

Seems to me if 2nd person wants to help, simply ensuring the tethered kite doesn't launch itself would be more useful.

It not always easy to have a fixed point as secure as a kiters hand. If there is a secure fixed point, I would also prefer it.

Especially for landing, there are times that there is no fixed point because nobody thought of sorting one out before leaving the beach and their mates (someone who finished his session launches the last guy at the beach and then leaves).

As far as letting go is concerned, what we normally do is that we attach the kite leash of the person with the kite in the air from his kite to the kite on the ground, believing that the one still on the ground is more likely to run loose if things go wrong. In any case, we make sure that there is downwind clearance. So far, it has never gone wrong. We make sure that we depower the kite on the ground enough to make it very easy to be held by the CL. It only needs to be held for like 5 seconds, anyway.

tautologies wrote: I would disagree...if you are holding onto his CL, you'll get the pull from the gusts much harder than if he actually knows how to hold onto the kite...sure either way works, but the regular launch is faster.

And when something goes wrong and a bouncing kite gets into powerzone, while you hold the chickenloop, then you are...

tautologies wrote:

Ned Divine wrote:Provided your friend is familiar with fixed point launching or landing, you can get him(her) to help you launch, and then you can act as a fixed point holding on to his chicken loop with one hand while controlling your kite with the other hand. It is much easier than trying to hold his kite. Obviously I would not recommend it for very strong winds, it is not needed if other kiters are around to assist otherwise, downwind clearance is needed etc etc. We do this here with my mates and it works beautifully.

I would disagree...if you are holding onto his CL, you'll get the pull from the gusts much harder than if he actually knows how to hold onto the kite...sure either way works, but the regular launch is faster.

A minimum of control is required, but buddy launch like that is not very hard.
Point your kite away, stand just slightly upwind..so the kite does not get super charged for the launch, and hold on the LE...and you need to not have one of the douches that walks towards you as you launch them.

I see your point, but I still feel it so much easier to hold on to a CL than trying to lift a kite from the ground to the right position. With the standard way, both people might put each other in trouble. With this method, the only thing at risk is the kite, there is no interaction / proximity between the kiters and their kites / lines esp if you choose not to attach a leash to the kite on the ground (we do, even though we never had a rogue kite). Gusts are no problem if the kite is depowered enough.

jedi1 wrote:And when something goes wrong and a bouncing kite gets into powerzone, while you hold the chickenloop, then you are...

Fixed point launch extremely rarely results in a kite in the power zone. If that happens, you are... just going to loose the CL from your hand, the kite will travel downwind, if there is clearance downwind, no problem.
But if you bother for extremely rare circumstances, then any launching or landing method can lead to trouble. I guess you probably are not familiar with fixed point launch or landing.

you could attach his chicken loop to your donkey dick and then fly his and your kites at the same time!. imagine that. dual kite flying. bound to end up in the darwin awards. but hell it would look cool!.