Article 27494 of rec.kites: Newsgroups: rec.kites Path: tug!andrew From: andrew@tug.com (Andrew Beattie) Subject: Chevron progress (was Soft kite tuning) Organization: /usr/lib/news/organisation Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1996 21:54:29 GMT Message-ID: References: <9607100941.aa03230@tug.com> <4s10os$6h4@news.euro.net> >What happens if the kite overflies ? I now, it overflies, but what's >the effect whilst buggying? Do you *not* want it to overfly, or is a >little better for L/D? What's the L/D in this situation (better or >worse). It's not a big problem keeping it from overflying, it's just >a bit of work. *sigh* I wish you could fly my^H^H Matthew Hurrel's 10m. I've tried 3 different bridle tunings again today. I did make some solid progress (I had been disregarding the wingtip adjustments to my cost), but it's still not right. In discussing the kite with others who have flown it, the best description is that the kite simply isn't as much *fun* as it should be. It would look outstanding on paper - it's fast and manoeverable (at least is was in the configuration I had at 7pm...), but it's completely unforgiving - you give it the slightest lee-way and it stops flying and falls out of the sky. One thing that I'm looking at is how close I'm getting to the edge of the window. A kite with a 7m span on 50m lines takes up 8 degrees of the sky. If it'll fly 80 degrees to the side of the window, then even if you can get it to turn on it's tip, the outer tip will go to 88 degrees, which is well past a sustainable position. I think that this is one of the problems that I'm up against at the moment. As I turn up, the kite just stops flying. It seems that pulling the nose down makes the kite faster and loads more powerful (for the part of the sky where you can get away with it), but the stall speed seems to be too high. It powers up, yanks you out of your seat, this releases the pressure on the kite for a moment, it slows and stalls, and you're in trouble, because it takes a moment or to to recover it's composure and start flying again. Still adjusting bridle lines... Andrew -- THERE IS NO NEED TO SHOUT! We can hear you just fine in lower case letters