Big Air

Wow,
You'd need to know what you're doing, wouldn't want to get slammed into the cliff!

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jn1 said..
Hey CT. What if you needed to get down in a hurry ? (for whatever reason). Would pulling the safety line be a bad idea ?

Very bad idea! With a paraglider to get down quickly you have two options, speed bar to increase angle of attack, or pulling the outer lines to collapse the wing tips.

With a kite your only option is to extend the bar which acts a bit like a speed bar control, or turn the kite to drop height.

I have done some high and long gliding with snowkites and I would use a carabiner into a climbing harness rather than chicken loop (that was not an LEI kite though so behaves more like a paraglider).

It looks like he has a suicide setup so if he did pop the safety he would be still be powered.

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jn1 said..
Ok. I suppose a kite is in spinnaker mode in an up draft ?, and not it's most efficient angle ?

It's come up a few times here, but that female paraglider that got caught in an updraft in regional NSW in the 2000's springs to mind. She got taken up 11km or so by a storm cloud. That SBS doco put the fear in me.

Its just stupidly inefficient with a leading-edge inflatable by nature.You are adjusting the front and rear lines to get the most efficient flow over the wing in the same manner as a paraglider, its just not an efficient shape to generate lift (he is also using 150ft lines in the video).

Yeah the extreme thermals are fairly terrifying concept, although from what I understand in the case of Ewa Wisnierska that is a little bit to do with pushing the conditions in competition flying - also a good example of how stable a paraglider is that you can pass out for the best part of an hour and still be flying!