=== good point Hung Vu. When I was in Cabo Verde (Cape Verde) I tried
the ADVANCE kite which was similar to the SEASMIK which was similar to
some other French company as well.. It was a LEI kite with a half bridle
that could be sheeted out like a sail.. Basically you could sheet it out
100%... Those kites never seemed to make it in the market because they
didn't scale well when you made them big. The biggest was a 6 m kite -
equivalent to a naish 9.0. Problem was you couldn't make them stiff
enough if you made them bigger...

I tried the advance kite - it was the 5.0 and it was pretty windy and
gusty - ideal conditions for that kite... And it flew ok and could be
depowered almost fully (I don't think you want total depower or the kite
will fall).. But ... I didn't really like the style with which it
flew... If you werent real good at dealing with the depower (fine tuning
all the time) you tended to loose power very easily... Of course I only
flew it twice and any kite you need some time to get adjusted to but the
market didn't respond to these kites either... Maybe we will get back to
them in the future ?

====


I had this talk with a number of expert kite designers in the past (kite
designers with more than 15 years experiences, not 1 to 5 years
experience kite designers) and ask them why don't they give kite flyers
full control of the kite (i.e., be able to sheet out the kite 100% like
in sailing - for those who DON'T KNOW, this is when we can depower the
kite %100 - and those who want to depower the kite 300%, please talk to
Stefano ;-).

The answers I got back that they don't trust kite flyers and afraid that
kite flyers would stall the kite and blame the designer for a bad
design.

So this trend seems to be persistence until today (the young designers
probably don't even know why it is designed this way),
kiteflyers/kitesurfers can only control the kite to a certain point
because kite designers don't trust our ability to keep the kite in the
air.

The kitesurfing/kitesnowboarding/kiteskiing company that can give 100%
control of the kite (or at least a larger percentage of it) may likely
create a new trend that may change our sport drastically.

Hung.





This group is sponsored by KiteHIGH.com Kitesurfing

http://www.KiteHIGH.com
ph: 1 866 646 7835 Toll Free USA or
ph: 1 808 637 KITE (5483)
Em: support@...

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/