I am oversized (235 lbs) and old, so a lot of tricks are out of the question. One that looks possible that I would like to learn is the one where a rider turns his board over and drags the top of the front tip of the board on the water. What do you do with the kite in order to be lit enough to make that happen?

i think you loop the kite and are going downwind

Think it's called a Darkslide-The kite is held by the back hand and looped.
The kite is brought up with the back hand at the start.
The loop is what pulls the rider up and out of the slide at the end.
Fun looking safe trick.

So it's a loop initiated with the back hand from somethere around 12 oclock? Then as the kite finishes the loop and ends up back in the 10 or 2 position, you switch back to the bottom of the board?

Go to youtube and put in Darkslide and I think you will get a full instructional.
There are a couple of companies doing video tutorials for all kinds of tricks.

the low kiteloop is required for this trick

good tricks to work on for progression to the darkslide is a kiteloop jump transition, low hooked in kiteloop backroll, and a kiteloop handplant

you will also want to work on your boardoffs, because after you have the darkslide mastered the next step is doing the jesus walk, which has the identical low kiteloop but with a boardoff instead of a slide.

Once you have the low kiteloop mastered it will be obvious to you how the darkslide works.

Even tho the darkslide looks simple and elegant it is actually a relatively advanced trick.

Thanks so much for the help. Your explanations were great and the utube video brought it home. Now all I need is some damn wind and I will give it a try...this is the best forum called kiteforum on the whole www!

I believe that the "butter slide" is the trick where you drag the front tip in the water - the "dark slide" drags the rear tip with a rear hand kiteloop - yes???

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk30hoD0 ... re=related

the tip - when you have built up as much power in your kite as you can swing kite very very slowly backwards only from 10:30 to 11:30, save the last bit of angle before the zenith to pick you back up (can use a loop if underpowered to get back up), you pretty much try and keep kite in front of you when more powered to go further

what most people do - swing kite back behind them too soon so dont have any kite pull left the second it goes past 12:00

do 20 very small tries onto stomach to start with, then a few weeks later you will be ripping them if you keep trying with small improvements each time

So you do it with no loop most of the time?