Kiteforum.com

I saw a photo on the Facebook over the weekend of kite stacking. I think it was from Kitty Hawk.

My question: How does kite stacking work and what are the benefits?


I don't plan on trying it but I'm curious of the principle.

benefits: "i fly more kites than you"
risk: no relaunch, bad steering and power control, death...

I hear this works great with a strapless foilboard seriously though I saw Dirk Hanel fly stacked foils during a competition in Caberete I think in 1999 or 2000 can't remember.

I tried it once perhaps ten years ago or so. The outbound tack was great, but when I turned around the bottom kite inverted and dragged the lot down to the water. Next ...

you have to be very careful about matching your kites, they have to fly the same, otherwise, one kite will just tug another kite around like a monkey riding a chicken.

But once you have them matched get the line lengths right, and hot launch you soon discover that yes, you can add the kite power together but there is absolutely zero upwind performance, all the great things about your kite, the turning, the upwind performance, the speed, it's all gone replaced by a dreadful downhill tug.

Flexifoil or peter lynn kites stack the best, they are designed for it, but I don't recommend it even in super light wind.

It's good to try one time just to understand why the whole idea of multiple kites for more power got put on the shelf in 1984 and hasn't been back since.

I have flown a 5 stack of flexi stackers on the landboard in 35-50 knots. that was a tad silly. but straingly controllable.

NO benefits. Done just for novelty. If done right, it is kind of cool how in sync the kites can be though.

I remember stacking a couple of 6 meter Naish Cults. It worked fine and we could kiteloop them in light wind. Fun, that's all.

CG