Hi all,
In the very late 90's it must have been, as a young teenager I went out and bought the biggest kite I could afford because i was stupid and thought bigger is better and i had notions I was going to be jumping all over the place with it. When i actually used the thing all of 2-3 times it scared the life out of me and since then life got away from me. Anyway i happened to rediscover it up in the attic gathering dust in its rucksack the other day and i thought hey i'm older, wiser? Slightly heavier.
Maybe i can do something useful with this thing other than use it as a tarp or such like. So I see that kites have moved on some what in the last 20 or so years but nothing too crazy, "depower ooh" "ILE". I have a few questions if some kind souls would have any advice to someone who has flown small two line stunt kites and a small 1m ish foil kite with no brakes who wants to transition to this traction kite (Flexifoil Blade II 6.4m).
-Given its age but on the plus side lack of use is there any reason to think it wouldn't be flight worthy?
-Is it possible to use a kite of this size for kite flying alone i.e. no traction other than it pulling me along on two feet a bit? If yes good because i hadn't thought as far as how else i would employ it
-Thinking of safety, its a 4 line kite with brakes but it doesn't have the kite killers velcro straps that were brought in just after this model. Presumably i could add those on and i guess they're advisable to have? Any other safety features i could add on?
-When i did use it and yes i did take it out in too windy conditions-kites need lots of wind right? or so i thought I found the handles would tilt so the lead lines were pulling away from me from the top, i.e. it was quite hard to keep the handles at roughly 90 to the ground. So even if i wanted to tilt my wrists to pull the lower part of the handles back to apply the brakes i didn't have the strength in my wrists to overcome the force of the kite pulling on the lead lines and the top of the handles to be able to pull the brakes. Is this pilot error, setup of kite error or due to too strong wind conditions?
-Would it be sensible if i can find someone experienced locally to maybe help me out with learning to fly this thing?
-If anyone is still with me, as much as it saddens me i wonder if i should actually start again and buy a smaller more modern kite as i should have done 20 years ago. But i still think of all that pocket money i used on this to then barely use it-shocking.
Thanks for the help!