Kite Flying

Wile driving to Lake Hart (subject of next post), Duncan wanted to stop in a windy, open area to try flying his kites. That sounded mildly interesting. I hadn't flown a kite in a long time and I had my camera to keep me busy if it was too boring.

Hmmm. His kite is pretty large... I've done some windsurfing and the surface area of this kite was similar to a beginning windsurfer sail. That can catch a lot of wind.

So, Duncan (6'4" and weighing a fair number of stones) has to really lean back to maintain control of the kite and it still drags him around a bit.

By pulling on each of the handles, you can make the kite turn, either flying it in figure eights or loops.

An obvious next experiment is to take somebody smaller and less experienced and let them try flying the kite...

The results were not completely unexpected nor devoid of entertainment value:

We all tried the large kite, with somewhat limited success. Mostly we got dragged around and crashed the kite into the ground.

After switching to a smaller kite, we all had a lot more success.