Article 23458 of rec.kites: Newsgroups: rec.kites Path: tug!andrew From: andrew@tug.com (Andrew Beattie) Subject: Re: Yeeeeha! Chevron progress Organization: /usr/lib/news/organisation Date: Tue, 2 Apr 1996 06:01:26 GMT Message-ID: References: At the weekend, I went to Berck-sur-mer, in France, with the specific objective of letting Peter Lynn fly the 5m^2 Chevron. It was clear tht he was impressed, but he stubornly refused to give me a decent quote to illustrate this. I'm sure that his first words when he came off the buggy were "shit! that's good", but he denies it. I heard that he told the festival organiser that it was the best kite in the field, but I didn't corroberate this and there were no Peels or Paua's flying. In the steady and generaly fresh sea breeze at Berck, I learned more about the kite. It simply *refused* to fall out of the sky. It did a lot of flying in many people's hands, but despite some pretty silly stuff (I crashed into other people's lines several times), no-one ever stuffed it up. aside: Well, I suppose I did stuff it up twice - first time, I was messing with Peter Lynn and his 10m, and we wrapped both kites round a flagpole... the second time was when I tried to knock Gomberg's Rok out of the sky with my Spectra line, but misjudged the distance and wrapped my entire bridle round his kite. When I went back to do it properly, to knock his spar with my line, the American contingent displayed a distinct lack of humour (fighting between single liners is safe and fun, but single line and dual line cannot play together because it is dangerous) We tried to make the kite over-fly. You could pump it violently to force it right up to 90 degrees, but it wasn't interested in collapsing - it would just float back to where can fly again. force it right up to 90 degrees I spent a lot of time chasing other buggiers round the beach. I had good fun on Saturday with a pair of Quad-comps. Imagine there were 5 marks on the beach: a b c d e In a straight line, at (say) 60 degrees to the wind. I would run up and down from A to E and back. They would run from B to D. I would pass them at C, on every single leg ;-) On Sunday, I had similar results against the same kites, but also 2 5.8m Spiders (one of which was a light-weight zip-less one), a fairly large Force 10 and a bunch of quads. We had good fun, but I was out-classing all of them I went off in search of a better challenge and found someone with a Quad-comp 3, at 5.6m^2 (I think). We started with ground tests, comparing angles of flight. The Qcomp is a *heavy* kite, so it was inclined to use it's momentum to show a higher angle occasionally, but it fell back a long way before it recoved. I think that I was showing better *overall* L/D. In the buggy, however, it was my turn to get waltzed over. He simply had more coefficient of lift from a bigger wing, so while I was working the kite, he just sat back and edged away from me. As far as I can tell, I would match him while in the power, but every time I turned the kite, I lost a little to him that I would never regain. I'll be back with a larger kite to beat him next time ;-) Today, the kite will be in the post to John Gabby, so I'd better get sewing the next one... Andrew -- How to look like an idiot on rec.kites: 15) Post subscription/unsubscription requests to the newsgroup