I was owned by a guerilla yesterday

So I took the 18 m guerilla I recently purchased out for the first liftoff.
And I learned several things in about the 5 minutes I had it in the air.
1. It will fly beyond straight up without collapsing. I was impressed / leary of this ability. This is the kind of thing my bullet may try to do without brakes. Which is followed by it stalling into the power zone followed by a healthy scudd when it fully inflates again.
2. Test saftey systems before they are needed.
I am using a new, but old stock naish uds bar. When I pulled the reride release , the bar slid right to the connection between leader & power line & hung up. This resulted in a speedy turn for such a large kite, adding a little more power to a situation which was rapidly getting out of hand.
3. Running when overpowered is never a good idea. Okay this one I already knew, but I wasn't used to the power pulling through the seat harness.

So back to the scenario. I was running over powered across the soccerfield when I declared no joy & pulled the re-ride release. It hung up a few inches up the line resulting in an aggressive turn towards the ground. I quickly pulled the safety leash as I made 10 yars leaps across the field. Well the kite hit the ground right before I punched out of the harness. By the time I stopped running I had overrun the controll bar by a good 30 foot. Enter gust of wind. Kite(wich did hold air as advertised) sprung to life. While it wasn't truley flying it was being blown across the field at a good clip. This is when I noticed the lineset flying by me. So I turn my head just in time to see the control bar about three feet behind me. ::o In my younger days I may have had the reflexes to avoid it, but yesterday I was footswept by mother nature. It really wasn't that bad, except the bar/ brake line hooked my left leg just above my shoe on my achilles .Luckily it did not cut me, but I was dragged another 15 yards sort of wild west behind a horse style,before I freed myself. I think I covered 2 soccer fields width wise between the runing, dragging, and chasing of my kite. Wow. what a lunch break.

Apparently you lucked out on more then one occassion during the entire thing. Very similar to my thread of getting burnt by the lines. Hope you don't get frowned upon for your reacting like I did though Of course I'm being sarcastic when I say that. :P Glad you're okay and that you learned something from your experience...now just apply what you learned the next time you go out and hopefully you'll have not only a more enjoyable experience, but a safer one for yourself and any innocent bystanders that may be around.
~joe

Too bad no video :o

Scary when its happening, but damned funny to read!

:o

Gotta be careful for sure, especially with a new kite. On the Peter Lynn's you have to be able to release the bar to one line a minimum of 1/2+ the span of the kite to allow the kite to flag out properly and dump all the power. The nice thing about this is that when released you will have nearly zero power in the kite although it stays inflated. A re-ride system will not work.

I am glad you were not hurt. Let me know if you need any other information on bar setup and I will help you out.

Quote:

Originally posted by DaVinch How's it going with the new kite gene??

Well it's been freezing for the most part since that flight. I got it up once more since then in about 10mph and smother winds. Much more manageable. I still don't know why it hung on the first time. Safety was fine. Still feels odd having the power hooked to my waist like this. It's only my second flight with a depower kite, so I guess I will get used to it. I'm sure I won't mind so much when it's water I'm getting dragged through instead of frozen earth