Kiteforum.com

No more gloating..

im off work tomorrow. Winds are perfect fat lady weather 11-16knots. Only problem is I don't have one as we keep selling out.. Its actually quite frustrating watching them come and go.. I believe one of our team riders is in the same situation....

A support group or helpline would be useful......

The new fat lady boosts so hard when its lit,
I really got to put out to keep up with her!
A very sweet kite when its fully powered lit up in 12 to 18.

We tested Fat Lady 2 in 4-5 knots yesterday. It wasn't fun, but at least it worked! I'm thinking of selling my version 1 and getting V2 as well (the one in video is my friend's).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGQeILk9le0

Oh no. Here we go again. I can see a LOCKDOWN coming!!!

Ha ha, no fear, I won't say that fat lady is the only one to ride in those conditions

I tested/owned a lot of different light wind kite brands (Cabrinha, SS, WindX, Flysurfer) and they all work in similar conditions. I ended up with fat lady because of it's relaunch (we actually reverse relaunched it in those 4-5knots), fast turning (by far the fastest out of all kites I tried), and that it practically does not backstall - unlike someones recommendation in posts above, I tie it to knots closest to the kite and it still never backstalls. If id does for you - check your lines, you middle lines must be stretched.

14ToeSide wrote:Oh no. Here we go again. I can see a LOCKDOWN coming!!!

Not necessarily...he does say that similar size LW kites would have done just as well in that wind
So we cannot bust on him for exaggerating that particular kite
We can see by full suit that spring just arrived and he is enjoying a very nice steady light wind flow

The hand held windmeter does its best to capture the speed of the wind where rider is
The Fat Lady had the long lines while flying which is nice to use in such low wind
If no windmeter was in that video my guess would be 7-8kn max in kite just by the riding & water

to Blade for posting on their website a low end of 8 knots for a 17m2 on 27m lines

We like some instrumentation when reporting...it is OK to use them to get a general idea
But what makes a huge difference here was to say that similar kites would have performed as well
A small 3kn wind increase at kite level from what we call vertical gradient is often all it takes

Once again i like how his post was written...it was well presented
No foul play...no lockdown..positive comments are possible on KF

Thank you

Thank you father for your blessing, ..can we eat lunch now?

Aleks - the Fatty V2 sounds like a great kite!
And I agree that the faster turning, better relaunching, medium aspect, lightwind kites are more fun for a lot of people.

how about a wind meter on the kite, send wind speed wirelessly to display on ground.

my experience here in Sweden is we get these magical spring days when water is like 8-10 c, air is 16 c. wind at ground seems like 3-4ms. but it's clear once kite is up that wind is solid 5-6ms up at 20 -25 m. no white caps, super smooth water.

once water is up to 16-18 c this never happens again. any scientific wizards that can explain this ?

Yeah, that was sh##ty day . Wind never picked up, so we did this purely out of boredom. No sane person would actually call it "riding". Still, it's nice that kite stayed in the air and was easy to control.

I used my fat lady v1 on that day as well, but I wanted to test if extensions make much difference, so I kept my kite lines at regular 25m. Turned out that extensions made a mark, but not because there was more wind at higher level - that wasn't the case that day. I felt exactly the same pull on shorter lines and was able to ride (a little), but longer lines generated longer pull when you throw the kite down (just because kite could travel longer).

V1 is still a great kite, but in V2 they fixed a few things that almost made it perfect. They reduced a bar pressure and improved up-wind. I don't know how it was even possible - we put V1 and V2 on top of each other and the shape is almost the same (added one bend in V2), but bridle attachments are completely different. The center of "gravity" still seams to be in the same place, but man, what a difference.