Sunday Kiting

Well, I had a chance to get out today and use the new harness for the first time. It worked great. For less than $30 invested I have a much more comfortable harness and couldn't be happier.
Some folks use their flying harness but I'd prefer not to, to me, that harness (with higher hook-ins) is meant for flying, not dragging around on the ground kiting. Oh, did I forget to mention I had a nice short drag around today? Well more on that in a second. Buying a spare flying harness to kite could have run upwards of $200 perhaps $100 used. I guess that's why some fliers look for alternate harnesses. Heck some learn to kite with no harness at all. I guess that has it's place, like setting up to fly, but I really appreciate the harness to let me get the full treatment the wing offers and not just arm yanking when the wind's stronger.

So I got a little quality drag time today, just enought to have been fun. Was kiting the wing and it was a little gusty, perhaps 2-3 mph winds gusting to 6 from time to time. So in a little gust I just dropped onto my back and kept the wing overhead intil the wind dropped again and the wing came down in a nice smooth "wall" pattern horseshoe. A few seconds later a nice gust again and from the sitting position I pulled it up again. Sliding 15 feet forward as it did I thought, "Good thing I'm wearing black shorts", and flew the wing for say fifteen seconds and dropped it back down. Two or three cycles like this and I'd had enough. The last cycle I used the pull to rise back to a standing position and when the wing came down again, I bunched it up and walked back to the THING for a break (Volkswagen THING, my dream car, see previous posts). This time I remembered to bring ice water and a nice rest ensued.
Ten or fifteen minutes later I was at it again. Just one try though, laid out the wing hooked in and pulled her up with a nice gust. No, not a nice gust, this was a 10 mph gust and it caught me by suprise. I went 30 feet with the wing and got perhaps a foot or two of air under my feet. Brought the wing vertical (rather than horizontal which would be normal) and lost more ground until a nice telephone pole in my path stopped my advance by letting the wing fold 1/3 of the way across it. I flew the wing off and dropped it down doing so, nice folded pile, so I decided that was one nice "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride" for the day and that was plenty. Mushroomed the wing as I coiled lines and walked with everything billowing back to the car. That was fun too. Piled the wing into the Stuff sack and called it a day. (Note to self: Inspect wing tommorrow weather permitting for pole flying damage) But the harness worked great. I'm worn out, but happy. Expect no adverse effect from pole flying...
-Robert