knewschool wrote:
I like it. I've never seen it to that extent before. We've played with it at Bondo, but I think the angles at Mt Baldy that day were perfect. It’s even hard to see the actual climb and fall in the video.
From my perspective looking across the hill it looks plain dangerous, you're definitely showing the ability of a tube kite to not frontal collapse by letting the kite get so far upwind of you and hanging of the front lines so extremely that you practically freefall. Many kites wouldn’t do it at all, but the Edge will depower “too far” in a sense. It’s like a paraglider’s full speed bar x10 which is a guaranteed frontal collapse, the trailing edge of the kite is practically like a flag in the wind. I saw you at one point come in to nearly touch the ground and your airspeed was such that just sheeting in gave you a 40 foot lift right off the deck without signing the kite once and with minimum lift because you were at the flats.
On my C4 it’s easy to sheet all the way out and pick up some extra speed and sink, then sheet my bar in and feel some lift. The Edge however looks as though it will nearly let all the power out so that you appear to free fall with almost no tension on the rear lines. It takes some faith to hold that and then sheet in rather than sign the kite. Scary! The next thing you’ll be doing is throwing a loop during the lift maxing out the possible G-Forces one could create since you’d be near maximum airspeed.
The edge is a flying machine for sure. I had some super fast days on my 11m last year. We were ridgesoaring a little pocket on this short steep pitch then you would have to sheet all the way out to penatrate and not get blown over. It was super fun. I wish I could see Chaz,s flight from the perspective you saw it. Sounds super fun!
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
Feed
