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snow kiters hill gliding custom safety gear.

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plummet
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snow kiters hill gliding custom safety gear.

Postby plummet » Thu Jun 14, 2012 4:54 am

hey snow kiters.

What extra safety gear do you use over an above what you buy off the shelf. I understand alot of aftermarket personalisation goes on. please post pic's and explanation.

I don't snow kite (or haven't yet) but i do some low level glides of sand dunes landboarding.

So i could benifit from extra safety measures you guys use.
I understand some of you may use a kite harness and also a double up with a climbing harness.

maybe run some carabinas aswell as chicken loops?

Do you double up on any bridle lines or leader lines or line attachement points?

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Re: snow kiters hill gliding custom safety gear.

Postby herculon » Thu Jun 14, 2012 3:53 pm

join a taster course at your local paraglidinig school. there you will experience the joy of real flying ! hill-gliding will always be very short and on top of that extremely dangerous.
i promise you: once you got your first few real flights under a paraglider, you wont waste any thoughts anymore about short and ridiculous uncontrolled and unsafe hill-gliding with kites...

if you have mastered paragliding (thats not without a certain risk level) you can come back and try to master speed flying. my favourite video:

this is real mastery: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM1l0DQumDw

hill gliding is not. if a thermal or turbulence of any kind hits you, your previously smooth glide gets into an uncontrollable nightmare, making you into a ragdoll getting tossed around, finally crashing you into the ground and leaving you there, crying if not instantly dead.

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Re: snow kiters hill gliding custom safety gear.

Postby waynepjh » Thu Jun 14, 2012 5:52 pm

herculon wrote:join a taster course at your local paraglidinig school. there you will experience the joy of real flying ! hill-gliding will always be very short and on top of that extremely dangerous.
i promise you: once you got your first few real flights under a paraglider, you wont waste any thoughts anymore about short and ridiculous uncontrolled and unsafe hill-gliding with kites...

if you have mastered paragliding (thats not without a certain risk level) you can come back and try to master speed flying. my favourite video:

this is real mastery: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM1l0DQumDw

hill gliding is not. if a thermal or turbulence of any kind hits you, your previously smooth glide gets into an uncontrollable nightmare, making you into a ragdoll getting tossed around, finally crashing you into the ground and leaving you there, crying if not instantly dead.
Saying that kite gliding is in controlled is not really true. I could spot land about as good as I can with a paraglider. A water kite flys a lot like a speed wing but with more stability through turbulence. Sometimes i will tow a friend up the hill looping and that puts much more force than hanging underneath it. The point of gliding for me is flying like a speed wing close to the ground. Quickly getting to the bottom and kiting right back up to the top getting 50 flights in a 2 hour period as opposed to 3 or 4 with a speed wing. On bigger mt's I much prefer to kite up and speed ride down with kite in backpack. Some hills are to small for this.

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Re: snow kiters hill gliding custom safety gear.

Postby herculon » Thu Jun 14, 2012 6:39 pm

the problem with using kites is, that no one knows what happens if things go wrong.
this starts with closed cells or rigid structures (flysurfer kites ; tube kites) and ends with unknown shock response of lines and material , not to speak of re-inflation behaviour (the typical snow kite does not have mylar reinforcements nor nylon wires to keep the cells open)..

read here, the designers can explain it better:

http://www.xcmag.com/2001/04/closed-cells/
The problem with closing more cells than this is that when the glider collapses, the part of the glider with closed cells cannot collapse, and instead stays inflated. If this inflated section gets caught in the loose lines then this cause huge drag to build up, which can result in violent turning after a collapse, or spiraling, or even cravates. This is why the limit on the number of completely closed tip cells seems to have been reached.
and read here:
http://www.paraglidingforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=21142

even in the winter, on a sunny day you can get surprisingly strong thermals (over a bit of forest for example) ...

as you say it: you can - with some technique and strong enough wind - also use your speed glider to kite up the hill:

look at 1 minute 11sec:

https://vimeo.com/33477348

if i had a speed glider, i would never fly down with my kite.. even if it would require me 5 minutes to switch from kite to speedglider. if you have a fast packing stuff sack - just throw out the speedglider, stuff in the kite, and enjoy the ride down :)

http://shop.flybubble.co.uk/gin-gliders ... stuff-sack

anyway.. everyone who has "testpilot" ambitions, why not push kite flying . but for the rest: start paragliding ! its marvelous ! soaring together with birds.. what an experience.

ah another worthwhile , not to say IMPORTANT reading: "are speedwings (hence kites) uncollapsible?" :

http://www.schnellcraft.com/index.php/k ... llapsible-

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Re: snow kiters hill gliding custom safety gear.

Postby knewschool » Thu Jun 21, 2012 12:03 am

herculon wrote:the problem with using kites is, that no one knows what happens if things go wrong. -
That is a problem for kites. Not a problem with paragliding because there's so many examples of things going wrong. People know it's dangerous, there's thousands of paragliding accidents available on youtube. Funny thing, I think Waynepjh may have one of the few kitesoaring accidents on youtube.

Even if you prefer to fly a speedwing or paraglider over a kite, it's just your preference. Sometimes it's the flight at hand where I may choose one or the other. But the flight characteristics of some tube kites are awesome. The glide ratio for the size, the ability to penetrate turbulence, and the airspeed of a tube kite is very appealing to me. For example, at Bondurant where we kitesoar alot, a speedwing can only fly in a straight line to gap from the top to bottom. Our kites can pass back and fourth ridge soaring for much longer.

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Re: snow kiters hill gliding custom safety gear.

Postby frankm1960 » Thu Jun 21, 2012 6:50 pm

waynepjh wrote: Sometimes i will tow a friend up the hill looping and that puts much more force than hanging underneath it.
You have to keep in mind that the force acting down the hill is only a fraction of your total body weight.
Lets say you weigh 200lbs and are kiting up a 45deg slope (relative to horizontal). The force acting down the slope, the force you would have to over come to kite up, is only about 140lbs, roughly 70%. There's friction and stuff and steady state etc which would increase/decrease that force at times.

But in the air you have 100% of your weight pulling on your lines most times and more during maneuvers.

I'm just going by common sense here as I don't kite up hills nor fly down them with a kite.

If you are hauling another person then I dare say you are putting similar forces on your lines as you would if you kited down solo in the air but when in the air you are sometimes making sharp turns which would apply considerably more forces to the lines.

So when you're kiting alone up hill there's some good amount of force on those lines but when you're coming down (flying) and possibly doing some maneuvers then there's likely significantly more forces on those lines than when you went up.

Something to think about I guess.

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Re: snow kiters hill gliding custom safety gear.

Postby plummet » Thu Jun 21, 2012 8:23 pm

Well this has been a useless thread. I asked what customised safety gear the snow kiters use and i get the paraglider police.

Im not jumping off massive mountains and gliding hundreds of feet off the ground. i'm jumping off a very small shallow sand dune with clean wind. I'm limiting myself to several feet off the ground. So in reality i'm not jumping any higher than i would on the flat. just gliding longer.

So.. . . . . please discontinue the paraglider police and if you do have your own personalised safety devices post them up.

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Re: snow kiters hill gliding custom safety gear.

Postby knewschool » Fri Jun 22, 2012 12:41 am

Sorry, I meant to say that I always at least back up my hook with webbing fed through my harness and connected with a locking biner. The hook is the easiest thing to back up that can obviously fail, and I practice hanging on my harness with the backup so if my hook fails I'm familiar with the hanging position of my backup.

I'll sometimes plan on unhooking and jibbing so I won't wear a full climbing harness. For me the climbing harness is mostly for flight comfort and not necessarily a back up. I found that having the quick loop around my harness allows me to back up a flight quick even if I wasn't planning on flying that day.

I suggest spending time hanging and tuning your system. At first I made my climbing harness system and just went to try it. When I took off I was rotating from a different axis and it made it difficult to land and orient my body position, so I didn't like it. After spending time hanging and tuning I was used to my in flight position and now I prefer it for long glides.

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Re: snow kiters hill gliding custom safety gear.

Postby frankm1960 » Fri Jun 22, 2012 1:17 am

plummet wrote:hey snow kiters.
I understand some of you may use a kite harness and also a double up with a climbing harness.

maybe run some carabinas aswell as chicken loops?

Do you double up on any bridle lines or leader lines or line attachement points?
I guess I'm confused as usual but I don't get the extra "safety" stuff people do when it comes to gliding with a regular kitesurfing kite, if in fact they do anything at all extra. I mean you can double up on this and on that but in the end unless you reinforce the kite itself, in particular the webbing where the pigtails attach or even the lines, then all the other extra safety stuff you do will be moot will it not? .... kinda like the chain is only as strong as the weakest link? Why bother adding stuff?

I would trust my kite the way it is for gliding 5ft off the ground for a 100 ft (not that I'm about to do that) but I wouldn't jump off a cliff with it.

Post some video when you get it going. Luv to watch that stuff.

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Re: snow kiters hill gliding custom safety gear.

Postby Billy B. » Fri Jun 22, 2012 1:38 am

plummet wrote:Well this has been a useless thread. I asked what customised safety gear the snow kiters use and i get the paraglider police.

Im not jumping off massive mountains and gliding hundreds of feet off the ground. i'm jumping off a very small shallow sand dune with clean wind. I'm limiting myself to several feet off the ground. So in reality i'm not jumping any higher than i would on the flat. just gliding longer.

So.. . . . . please discontinue the paraglider police and if you do have your own personalised safety devices post them up.
I use lines that I trust and are new inspected n befor flying I do some loops while I edge hard and massively load and unload the rigging. As a preflight check. I also run a spectra sling that I web wrap around my chicken line above the chicken loop and release in case it fails or releases by accident..( so no safety release). I run a ozone harness with a hook, I back up the hook and bar by using a locking carabeaner through the leg loops and waist belt so if either fails the other will be the back up. I have had, bars hooks n harnesses break from several well known brands so this is what I trust the least. I also use new rigging and a current bar.

I fly north kites that have Parts I trust ( rebals, with out pulleys or plastic block pulleys that have a big loading) and I inspect my gear daily. I also go out and do little flights with powered loops to again load the rigging hard. before I send it hard..

I also ignore the shit that dribbles out of people's mouths on kiteforum about gliding unless they have flown with the kite...so much of it is just false, and imagined.....Ohhhh this might brake or this might...I would not trust this or that...just. Pussy ass wimps...check your gear and send it...that's what I do..so far so good!

I have flown with about 15 different types of kites and probably 35 different kites and never had any issues, ozone edges, c-4s, mantas, frenzys, instincts zephyrs, best waroos, waroo,pro, targa, bullaroo, taboo, kahuna, North dynos, rebels, evos, fuses, Vegas. Fly surfers, f1, slingshot rally, turbines, etc.....no problems to date.

Gliding is super fun and as safe as your gear and attitude is about it. Instill some one mAkes a true flying kite we can only run what is out their. I have never seen a kite fail only harness bars and lines and all of the failures I have seen where due to old and worn gear, or a manufactors defect...

Good luck n have fun....


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