The next home made kite:

Plan view (Leading Edge is facing up)- concave leading edge to counter bananaing...

Ram air sled. 12 meters flat. 77 indevidual panels each to be traced, cut and sewn. 4 valved air intakes. Reflexed profile. Twisted tips for stability. Designed by Henry Hulk, and tweeked by me.

BATWING!!

Got some photo's of the batwing in action!

Last night was interesting. Out at Long Rock, Marazion, Cornwall, UK, wind was dropping, felt around 12 mph, low cloud and the odd rumble of thunder.

I threw up my 18 meter X2 and was happily crusing for 15 minutes until CLICK my whole arm just, erm, clicked. I looked at my hand to check it out, then CLICK my other arm did it, but I guessed what it was. My kite was picking up static from the low clouds.

Holy shit batman. Lets get the fuck outa here.

..... no, no, no. Hang on. Would my idiot brother get out? No. *sigh*

The wind picked up quite a bit over the next 15 minutes. I was nicely powered, then on a long run out to sea BZZZZZZZT. Aaaarrrgh! With the whole of my left side twitching and hurting I dipped the kite onto the water and limped back to shore. Scared shitless, crapping my pants. Also cursing myself for being supid enough to stay in.

No doubt, that was the worst electric shock I've ever had.

At the weekend I had the imense pleasure of kitesurfing with Aaron Hadlow, world campion kitesurfer.

We-e-ell 'with' is a bit of an exageration, makes us sound like best mates. But we were in the same bit of sea getting in each others way and stuff.

The boy goes off. Handle passes galore, kiteloops, anything and every trick in the book.

But I think it was the shere number of different tricks he *wasn't* landing. Hell, that boy was eating it so many times in so many painful ways. That's why he's world champ. Balls the size of mellons. It was gusty and I was going from powered to well over powered on my 7.5 meter Slingshot Fuel. Now I'm 11 stone, Hadlow can not be as heavy as me - he's a little whipper-snapper. But even so he was on a bigger kite (shorter lines though) just going massive. Massive wipeouts, 30 foot failed handle pass to double kiteloop spanking.

Argh. Man...

Over and over until he nails it.