New to forum, help please

[pixelpedro]

Ok, then I'm listening. Tell me why I should take a lesson versus trying something like this n my own.

Dude, I've only been doing this for about a year and a half now, and I took a couple of lessons, but I've seen people that haven't and for starters, you'll just progress faster when you have an instructor there not only telling you WHAT YOU ARE DOING WRONG, cause you will do it wrong the first few times. But should something go really wrong, these guys have you by the harness, and can reduce (not eliminate), but seriously reduce a kitemare.

And if you care about your life and safety of those around you, and really want to keep doing this awesome sport for a while, and not get the rest of us banned from beaches, or worst yet, make the legal dicks make mandatory some sort of ridiculous license, or tougher regulation to enjoy this sport, don't be an idiot (no offense, really) and just get at least a few lessons, that's all it takes.

And just in case you're one of them cheap asses that think is ridiculous to pay someone to teach you to kitesurf, you should wait till you have some cash and take the lesson, I don't think you're life is work a few hundred $$$. Besides what's next, you're gona fly your own plane on your next trip? maybe since you've probably played a lot of Xbox and feel is the same, or better yet, get microsoft's flight simulator I hear it comes with a private pilots license.

Take a lesson(s) don't ruin it for everyone else.

[Laughingman]

I've just figured it out. This is too preposterous to be a real person with a real brain. This is some troll looking for a daily dose of confrontation and internet giggles. He says he's learned a lot of other sports by himself. Skateboarding and hacky sack were probably attainable for him. He says he has a buddy that's never done it before that's going to hang on to him and help him when he crashes. This sounds like the boys from the show Jackass.

If by chance you are a REAL person please rethink it and come back on with a more realistic plan. We promise to forgive you for your moment of insanity. We all wanted to "try" kiting in the beginning but most of us ended up with a mentor or teacher in those first sessions. I will say your previous 2 posts gave me laughs that I haven't had in quite a while

Ok, then I'm listening. Tell me why I should take a lesson versus trying something like this n my own. There are a ton of people that have learned the sport completely on their own and are still here today. Most of them have refined the sport as we know it. I am listening. Tell me something that I would need lessons for that you cannot just tell me. An instructor is not going to be doing everything of me, he is going to be telling me what to do. So why can you not tell me what I should be doing just like an instructor would do. I'm being serious here. If you really care like you seem to then help me wrap my mind around why I need lessons. I have already said I am more than willing to take lessons if I cannot find a suitable place to learn, meaning open from any obstacles. And at the outer banks it's waste deep water for quite a ways with few obstacles.

I'll start with one thing that is glaring at me.... So you want to learn in the sound. So let's go through the steps... First you need to find a place which has no hazards or people on shore where you can rig... Let say you pick kite point... Likely the most open space available aside from the power lines 150' away from you... No big deal right. As long as you keep control of the kite you have no experience flying ,those power lines are no problem... Now if it's a good day you are going to have about 50 or more other Kiters coming in and out of the same spot... No problem as long as you can control that kite which you have no experience flying... Before you get to a place where there are no people and no hazards you will have to launch that kite... What happens when you realize as it flys through the power zone that you have no idea what you are doing. There is no turning back at this point... Either you know what to do, based on experience or you hurt yourself or someone else, or you get lucky, it's only a 10g fine if you put your kite into the power lines... Which is cheaper...? Lessons or the hospital bills or the fine...
You are a dumbass. You need to forget about kiting and stick to hacky sack. If it takes this many responses to convince you that we may have a point ... Better yet. Why not take up paragliding... You don't need lessons for that either especially with your hard head.
I'm thinking the gene pool could use a bit of chlorine...

[Brent4336]

Oh you can definitely teach yourself. I did, so did tons of the people on here that have been at it for more than 7 years. There were no instructors then. Its still hard to find instruction around here.

Where your being a retard is in your assumption that you can do it in such short order. Renting a full set up at your stage is stupid. You run the risk of injury and wrecking the stuff and then just having to pay for broken stuff.

Yes many of us taught ourselves, but its a drawn out process. You get a trainer and learn how to fly it until you have that completely dialed. You gotta be able to control, stall, recover, produce consistent power and generally whip that sucker around without really giving it much more than half your attention. Not really that hard, but it takes more than one outing to get good at it. If I had to guess, its probably a good ten hours of trainer time before your ready to move on by yourself.

Then you pick up a used beater and learn to rig, launch, fly, crash, relaunch, tune and fix all the various aspects of it. Going through the beginner learning curve by yourself on brand new stuff is probably the stupidest thing I can think off. Who learns to ride a motorbike on a brand new full size crotch rocket? Your kidding yourself if you think your not going to crash and roll that kite around on the ground a whole bunch at the beginning. Your gonna get a few bumps, scrapes, rats nests, leaks, and tears, in that first season. Why do that on expensive stuff? Blow your wad once you have a clue.

I consider myself a pretty quick study and it took me a month with a trainer, a few months of heading out to an open hillside with a used 11m kite and then a winter of learning to ride on snow before I took it to the water. That may sound like a long time, but it sounds to me like you have no clue as to how inconsistent conditions for this sport are. You cant count on wind. It can be weeks between rideable days. In the beginning your so keen you try to fly that kite in anything and if your smart you stick to the light wind end of the spectrum. You'll figure it out, but its not like you can just take a week off and get it all down. When I say a few months on a hillside, thats probably 12-15 sessions of learning to get the basics down before snow arrived. Say a few session in real light wind, a few sessions in med wind and then once I was pretty comfy a few session in the 14-18 knot range that is required to actually ride on water. Took a few months just to get that in.

Your talking like your can just show up on july 4th, rent and go. Think again. It could be 40 knots, or it could be zero. You gotta get yourself a decent trainer and get out there and experience the broad range of conditions that your eventually going to ride in. Then you get a full size kite and get to know it inside and out, light wind and med wind, and then once you have some idea how to make it work, get yourself a board.

Good luck, but seriously, you currently have no clue. A lesson would go a long way to changing that, and would at least get you to the water stage right away so you can get a taste. One lesson does not make a kiteboarder. Trust me your still on your own after a lesson. They dont make you into a rider, they just orient you to what you have to go teach yourself and make you aware of some of the big mistakes you seem to be fairly keen to discover on your own.

Peace.

[tautologies]

I promise you if you take a lesson from a good instructor you will end up saving the following in no particular order
Other people
Money
Time
Body Parts
Stress Level
Being a jackass
Your gear
(I cannot count how many people I've seen teach themselves into a tree)

By taking lessons you might actually gain:
Friends for life
Knowledge
Skills


Now, yes it is possible to learn on your own, but you will spend soooo much more time trying figure out basic stuff that a person will learn in the first lesson or two. It is worth it.

Note: We're not saying this because kiting is particularly extreme or super hard, but it is one of those things where a split second decision is the difference between you have the best time of your life and being in the emergency room. Kiting is easy if you do it the right way. We're kind of just trying to nudge you in the right direction.

[Brent4336]

a couple other guys who underestimated a little:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI1VEdm12nc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9Duf55y1Qc

[L0KI]

So if you insist on being stubborn and you and your buddy want to have a blast on July 4th.
Get a small foil, maybe a meter or two bigger than the tiny trainers.
Take it out to the remote location your buddy knows and take turns body dragging all over the place.
If anything gets scary drop the bar, the kite will fall in the water, you can go get it, ball it up and walk back in and let it dry a bit and start all over.
That would be a relatively safe way for both of you to get some experience, have some fun, and not hurt yourselves or anyone else. I did that several times and it was worth the experience.
It will be cheaper than your rental and you keep the kite forever!
And a foil will drop out of the sky and not hurt you when it goes in the water since it will not relaunch or roll or tumble.
But make sure you are remote like you said, no other people, no power lines, boats, etc, etc.

[Thor SFBay]

I taught myself how to surf, snowboard, and ride a unicycle. But I took a lesson for kiteboarding and I am glad I did. No matter how much you think you know, you need someone experienced to keep you from making a fatal mistake. I did NOT teach myself how to ride a motorcycle or rock climb. For those activities I had experienced people teach me how to do it. Kiteboarding is just one of those activities where you need a little help to get started. If you lived somewhere where there were no instructors and you couldn't travel, then I would suggest either not kiting or starting very, very, slowly. By slowly, I mean getting a trainer kite first, then getting a harness and a very small kite (3m) and learn to fly it in light wind and in the safest possible place where you could do some body dragging. A 3m kite will cost as much or more than one lesson and will be useless later. So just take a lesson and quit being so stubborn.

[redman333]

So if you insist on being stubborn and you and your buddy want to have a blast on July 4th.
Get a small foil, maybe a meter or two bigger than the tiny trainers.
Take it out to the remote location your buddy knows and take turns body dragging all over the place.
If anything gets scary drop the bar, the kite will fall in the water, you can go get it, ball it up and walk back in and let it dry a bit and start all over.
That would be a relatively safe way for both of you to get some experience, have some fun, and not hurt yourselves or anyone else. I did that several times and it was worth the experience.
It will be cheaper than your rental and you keep the kite forever!
And a foil will drop out of the sky and not hurt you when it goes in the water since it will not relaunch or roll or tumble.
But make sure you are remote like you said, no other people, no power lines, boats, etc, etc.

Brent4336,tautologies, and oldnbroken thank you for your responses. This is what I'm looking for.

Just so your guys know also, I'm not really assuming anything. I have an idea of the best case scenario but once I get out there I'll just have to play it by ear, I would like to ride in one day but realistically I highly doubt that. With your info here ive decided to take lessons, but I'm also going to order a trainer because I want to know what it feels like to fly a kite before I go for lessons. Give me a jump on training I suppose.

Also this was never an issue with money more so an issue of I wanted to be able to say I did it myself. I'll be honest even though I've decided to do lessons, inside of me going to be burning to say the heck with it and buy a kite and try on my own but I'm trusting you guys here and hopefully I'm happy in the end.

[redman333]

I taught myself how to surf, snowboard, and ride a unicycle. But I took a lesson for kiteboarding and I am glad I did. No matter how much you think you know, you need someone experienced to keep you from making a fatal mistake. I did NOT teach myself how to ride a motorcycle or rock climb. For those activities I had experienced people teach me how to do it. Kiteboarding is just one of those activities where you need a little help to get started. If you lived somewhere where there were no instructors and you couldn't travel, then I would suggest either not kiting or starting very, very, slowly. By slowly, I mean getting a trainer kite first, then getting a harness and a very small kite (3m) and learn to fly it in light wind and in the safest possible place where you could do some body dragging. A 3m kite will cost as much or more than one lesson and will be useless later. So just take a lesson and quit being so stubborn.

FYI, I tight myself how to ride a crotch rocket and to rock climb, including tying all the different knots. Library is a wonderful for info like this. Or the interwebs. I also learned how to pack a parachute from the library, build a race engine, and tune electronic fuel injected engines all from the library. I have done all these things, all from information you can find if you really want to find it. I have a thirst for knowledge so I guess that's why I did pretty good at these things. Theres some info on kiteboarding but it's still very new so not as much as I'd like to have.

[redman333]

a couple other guys who underestimated a little:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI1VEdm12nc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9Duf55y1Qc

Although these were funny they were not really good examples. These were someone that went somewhere and saw someone kiting and thought hey I can do that, an hour later they are getting whipped across the land and water.

All they would have to do is let go. The second guy, I would think it'd be common sense that the wind was way too strong but hey he tried. I still think I would be just fine on my own but I'm doing the lessons mostly to save some frustration.