A glance into the evolving sport

Caught up in a new flow that has no parallel in the rest of the sport-&-recreation world, dual-line kite flying is evolving away from FLYING, away from its easy & natural basic skills, and away from kites that FLY well. This away-from-FLYING flow began around 1990, is currently accelerating, is not happening to single-line kiting, and is not good for the sport & trade. We at Seattle AirGear urge a renewal of dual-line kite FLYING and its joys.

What is "FLYING"? Single-line FLYING and dual-line FLYING are fundamentally the same. The kite can be stationary in the air as when you FLY a single-line kite, or the kite can be moving as when you FLY a dual-line kite all over its flight envelope. As a kite FLIES, air flows at the kite. The speed of that airflow is the kite's airspeed. Airspeed ranges from the wind's speed (a single-line kite aloft, or a dual-line kite parked at the upper edge of its flight envelope) to about four times wind speed (a dual-line kite passing though the power zone of its flight envelope). When a kite is FLYING, air flows almost directly at the leading-edge of the kite and almost directly at the kite lines near the kite. As a kite FLIES, aerodynamic-lift is generated. You, the flyer, feel that aerodynamic-lift as pull or tension in your kite lines. For very-efficient kites, aerodynamic-lift and pull are virtually identical. As you FLY, it is the kite's aerodynamic-lift that pulls on you. What is FLYING? FLYING is when a kite's airspeed, from airflow almost directly at the kite's leading-edge and flying lines, creates aerodynamic-lift which about equals the pull or tension you feel in your kite lines. It happens both ways: FLYING and its airspeed create pull, and pull can create airspeed and FLYING! As you FLY your kite, rising pull -- from flying toward the power zone, from encountering a gust, or from you yanking on your kite lines -- generates more speed and more FLYING excitement! At the other end of the spectrum, no kite-line tension = no pull = no aerodynamic-lift = no airspeed = no FLYING.

As we at Seattle AirGear introduce WindDance parafoils, "trick & advanced flying," a new type of dual-line flying that began around 1990 when standoffs were added to delta kites to prevent their sails from luffing and to improve relaunching, gains influence. The new way teaches you to un-fly your kite and do "tricks" when it is not flying including while the kite is on the ground, using abrupt punch-&-jerk skills to slacken your kite lines. These new skills are the opposite of the smooth pull-on-your-kite-line skills needed to FLY a sport kite well.

From a 1988 stunt kite book: "A stunt kite depends on line tension to FLY. No tension -- no FLYING." Since the birth of kiting long ago, flyers have generated kite-line tension to make it fly, and have maintained kite-line tension to keep it flying.

No longer. The new way -- in trick, advanced, & competitive dual-line kiting -- is to eliminate kite-line tension to create a state of no tension, no FLYING. (Some efficient FLYING does occur when kite lines are slack. As the kite briefly free-flies during certain tricks exactly like a model glider with too much weight in its tail, there is some airspeed and aerodynamic-lift and FLYING. But it doesn't last long, and you don't feel that aerodynamic-lift as pull because the kite lines are slack.)

The new way is causing interest in high-performance FLYING, the FLYING performance of kites, interest in FLYING a kite, and ability to FLY a kite all to decline.

A few years ago in the Seattle area, interest in high-speed tight-turning dual-line FLYING was high, including among delta-kite flyers. In early 1995, we test-marketed WindDances. In response to their exciting high speed and sharp & powerful turning, one flyer assured us, "You're going to make millions!!!" It hasn't happened, to a large degree because the sport suddenly changed.

Today, among the increasing numbers now under the spell of trick flying, the rage is to make your dual-line kite stop flying and do tricky things when it isn't flying. You force your kite to stop flying and when there's no tension in your kite lines and no FLYING you float, slide, twirl, spin, flip, toss, and tumble the kite in midair. You land the kite, preferably with an aggressive stab-the-ground-with-your-wingtip move, and you stand, rock, slide, twirl, flip, cartwheel, and tumble the kite on the ground where it isn't FLYING either. Trick flyers do this repeatedly, usually FLYING their kites as little as possible and only from trick to trick, even in brisk winds ideal for pure FLYING excitement.

In those wonderfully delicious FLYING winds, as they flew the new way, we flew the old way. Our well-tuned WindDances shrieked like jets and turned incredibly sharply and sometimes flew so fast during turns & spins you could barely see them, FLYING with substantially higher performance than all other dual-line kites available and flown in the Seattle area. Although bystanders and dual-line kite FLYERS were drawn to our WindDancing, those trick flyers exhibited no interest in the ultra-high-performance FLYING or in the exhilarating fun & exercise we were having. This happened on many occasions on Seattle's Kite Hill, and at kite festivals on Pacific Northwest ocean beaches. The promoters of trick flying had succeeded: those flyers had no interest whatsoever in the pure joy of FLYING.

Can you imagine intermediates and experts in other sports -- such as skiing, bicycling, and windsurfing -- having little interest in fast performance or fast gear?

While promoting our WindDances here in the Pacific Northwest in 1997, beginners learned to fly them quickly because the necessary "pull-on-your-kite-line" skills come so naturally.

Experienced flyers good at FLYING their dual-line deltas more or less instantly figured out WindDances and simply dazzled us with the speed and turning performance they could get out of our demos! Some flew our WindDances far more skillfully than we can!

But to our astonishment, we found that many trick & advanced delta-kite flyers simply did not know what to do with WindDances. Immediately they tried to punch-turn and un-fly and do non-flying tricks with them using abrupt & jerky power-elimination moves -- exactly what the new way teaches flyers to do -- rather than smoothly apply and maintain power to FLY them with spectacular speed & turning.

And they had difficulty with WindDances, often more than beginners do, and could not bring out their full performance. They used punch-&-jerk "slacken-your-kite-line" skills to abruptly force their kite lines to go limp, plus they just let their kite lines go limp, which reduced & eliminated speed & pull and the kite's state of FLYING -- exactly what the new way teaches flyers to do. They were not familiar with the old basic FLYING skills that were used by all dual-line delta flyers before 1990: "To generate straight-line and turning speed & power -- and to keep it FLYING -- you pull on one or both flying lines as necessary."

After we coached them in the old basics -- and after we pointed out the pure fun of actually FLYING a kite and the pure fun of the high speed and tight, fast, powerful turning -- then many could make WindDances do wonders!

Some, though, simply did not "get" FLYING. They were more impressed by a WindDance's trick capabilities and collapse-and-recover properties than by the thrilling feel, sight, and sound of its dazzling speed & turning.

One delta flyer, after we explained FLYING to him, considered FLYING a sport kite a new and different concept!!!

It is not the flyer's fault for not being able to FLY a kite. Or for not being able to appreciate hot state-of-the-art FLYING performance. It is the fault of the sport & trade for teaching nearly a decade of delta-kite flyers to fly their new way.

Trick & advanced flying -- getting low-to-zero kite FLYING performance from difficult skills -- is being pushed onto the rest of dual-line flying. But the general public -- and many kite flyers -- enjoy high speed and fast turning, as well as the idea of getting hot performance out of easy skill. Although it appeals to trick & advanced flyers, does "Slow-&-Difficult!" sell well to the public? To most kite flyers?

Applying power -- pulling on your kite lines to make it go or turn faster -- is like stomping on the gas to make a car go faster. With sport kites and sports cars, power & speed are exciting. And so are the feel and sound of that power & speed. A beginner, by yanking a pull-turn in the power zone in 10 mph wind, can make a WindDance's wingtip fly at 100 mph. The powerful feel and shrieking sound are exciting! But in trick & advanced sport-kite flying, you avoid applying power. You avoid high-speed fast-turning fun. You avoid the exciting sensations of power & speed. Although attractive to trick & advanced flyers, does "AVOID power! AVOID speed! AVOID thrill!" appeal to the public? To most kite flyers?

To the public, FLYING a kite is the whole point of kite flying. The average person does not buy a dual-line kite to make it un-fly, or to do non-flying tricks, or to tumble it on the ground -- and does not want to learn the difficult & unnatural required skills either. The average person doesn't see the point of the negative payoff: buy advanced kites and learn difficult skills to get low-to-zero FLYING performance, little-to-no FLYING excitement, and little-to-no exercise benefit. The average person does buy a dual-line kite to FLY it gracefully through the air and to keep it FLYING with easy & natural pull-on-your-kite-line skills. To the public, kites are for FLYING.

But due to strong influence from trick & advanced dual-line flying, the sport & trade are veering away from promoting kite FLYING, away from teaching basic FLYING skills, away from providing kites that FLY really well, and away from the pure joy of FLYING. In other words, the sport & trade are veering away from giving the public and many kite flyers what they want. Is that a good formula for growth and success?

How far have the sport & trade veered? To our surprise, we discovered that virtually the entire fundamental-knowledge base for easy high-performance dual-line kite FLYING is strangely missing from the collective mind of the sport & trade. Among that missing knowledge is the fundamental nature of kite FLYING, the basic relationship between FLYING & speed & aerodynamic-lift & pull, the high-performance-FLYING and pure-fun capabilities of the old-but-good pull-on-your-kite-line skills, and the qualities to look for in a kite that FLIES really well.

Here's a portion of that missing knowledge: All "kite FLYING" happens to be fundamentally the same. FLYING a single-line kite aloft in a gentle breeze with a few ounces of pull, and FLYING a dual-line kite in strong wind through the power zone at 100 mph with 200 lb of pull, are both fundamentally the same. The basic FLYING physics are the same. The basic FLYING skills are the same: single-line and dual-line FLYERS from rank beginners to seasoned experts all use the same basic pull-on-your-kite-line skills to generate and maintain tension in their kite lines. From one form of "kite FLYING" to another, the only basic difference is the number of kite lines and the kite's speed & pull.

What is the public image of kite flying? A child pulling a single-line kite aloft. Dual-line FLYING is fundamentally the same as single-line FLYING. It is an easy step from single- to dual-line because dual-line skills stem from the single-line skills that come naturally to children. Pull on both lines to keep it airborne and make it go fast. Pull on one line to make it turn & spin tightly & fast. It's that simple. If you can fly a single-line kite, can quickly learn how to fly a dual-line kite -- provided the kite responds with good FLYING performance to basic pull-on-your-kite-line skills, and is forgiving. With such kites, virtually everyone can FLY a dual-line kite. This is a gold mine for the kite industry!

Rather than seizing that opportunity, the sport & trade are doing the opposite. In response to pressure from trick & advanced flying, the sport & trade -- perhaps unwittingly -- are in the process of removing much of FLYING and natural skill from dual-line kiting, and are promoting an un-flying and non-flying type of kite flying and the unnatural and difficult skills required. Also, the sport & trade are providing kites with lesser FLYING performance as well as kites that do not respond well to natural pull-on-your-kite-line skills. All this is clearly evident in kite magazines and at kite competitions & festivals. Those caught up in the away-from-FLYING flow, a flow away from growth and success, may not see any of this happening.

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In kite magazines, dual-line sport kites are evaluated far more by how well they un-fly and by how well they perform while not flying, including how well they tumble on the ground, than by how well they FLY. Testers judge kite response to different kinds of tension-eliminating skills, but hardly ever to basic tension-generating skill such as one-line-only pull-turns.

In those test reports, basic dual-line FLYING-performance qualities that create the excitement, exercise, and fun desired by the public -- and by many kite flyers also -- are hardly ever evaluated:

• Edge to power-zone acceleration & speed.
• Responsiveness to the wind: acceleration & speed response to sudden increases in wind speed.
• Speed & power during turns.
• How well the kite responds with good FLYING performance to natural pull-on-your-kite-line skills:
  • Straight-line speed & power response to two-line pull input from the flyer.
  • Turning speed, tightness, & power response to one-line pull input from the flyer, including to energetically-yanked pull-turns.
• Steering-&-turning feel: does pull rise, fall, or remain the same when you turn. Engineered into virtually everything that moves (except for most dual-line kites) is an "increasing-resistance" steering & turning feel: the steering-force that you feel rises when you turn, as when you steer a car. With a good dual-line kite, you feel the pull rise when you turn. That nice feel enables positive & accurate steering and turning because you feel every correction and turn you make, makes turning feel powerful & exciting, feels natural and familiar and solid, enables fast learning, and provides more exercise. The "decreasing-resistance" steering & turning found in many dual-line kites, pull drops when you turn, degrades controllability, degrades turning power, feels unnatural and vague and bland, makes learning difficult, and provides less exercise.
• Tracking quality during sharp corners and tight hairpins. Look for zero understeer/oversteer and skidding during turns.
• Aerobatic agility: a combination of straight-line speed and speed & tightness of turns, an indicator of how well the kite zips & darts all over the flight envelope. For exciting side-by-side FLYING, the more aerobatic agility the better!
• From a side-edge hover near the ground, ability to turn & spin in both directions -- including in very-light winds.
• Control movement required. For tight maneuvering, low movement is good. For exercise, lots of arm and body movement is good.
• Liveliness of the pull: how much the pull fluctuates as the kite changes location on the flight envelope, in response to gusts & bumps in the wind, and as you maneuver hard. Pull liveliness is an indicator of how exciting the kite feels. And is an indicator of the kite's potential as a dynamic & fun exercise machine.
• Exercise value. Energy burned = force x movement, and it happens when you steer and turn. The farther and the more often you swing your arms and move your body when you turn, and the greater the force exerted by the pull-turning arm while doing so, the better the workout.
• Width of the high-performance-FLYING wind range (not the structural wind range).
• Whether or not the bridle setting has to be readjusted for different winds in order to have good performance in each different wind.
• How well the kite retains good FLYING performance, and good handling qualities, as the wind bounces between light & strong while you fly.
• To what degree the kite changes shape as speed & pull rise and as the kite turns. The greater the shape changes, the more you have to adjust the bridle for different winds, and the more your loss of FLYING performance and fun.

We hope kite magazines will someday evaluate dual-line kites by how well they FLY, using testers very familiar with and highly fond of FLYING.

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The user's manual for our first dual-line kite, in 1989, taught us this: "To turn right, pull on your right handle. To turn left, pull on your left handle." As with a single-line kite, pulling on a kite line enhances the kite's speed and its state of FLYING.

Pull-on-your-kite-line skills are basic "kite FLYING" skills because they make a kite FLY -- and keep it FLYING.

Today, most user's manuals and kite videos teach something very different: "To turn right, push fast on your left handle. To turn left, push fast on your right handle. And punch-&-jerk in many different ways to slacken your lines to un-fly and do non-flying tricks." As with a single-line kite, slackening your kite line(s) diminishes, and can eliminate, your kite's speed and its state of FLYING.

The sport & trade accomplished this:

• Rather than building upon on a foundation of basic skills like other sports do, the sport & trade de-emphasized basic skills and made advanced delta-kite skills the opposite of basic skills.

  Beginning delta-kite flyers are taught to start with basic pull-on-your-kite-line skills to FLY their kites.

  Then they're taught to switch to punch-&-jerk slacken-your-kite-line skills to reduce and eliminate their kite's state of FLYING. And to fly that way nearly exclusively. Why? To become what the sport (not the public) now considers to be a good delta-kite flyer.

• The sport & trade made kite-flying confusing and complicated and more difficult.

  First, you're taught to pull on your lines to FLY. Then you're taught to slacken them to un-fly and non-fly. Is that strange and confusing to many new delta-kite flyers? Yes.

  Punch-&-jerk slacken-your-kite-line skills are not natural things to do for a new kite flyer. To get good at it, you must force yourself to go against your natural pull-on-your-kite-line inclination, against your natural inclination to FLY a kite.

  There must be hundreds different un-flying and non-flying tricks by now, each requiring different specialized skills.

• The sport & trade reduced FLYING performance and kite performance.

  When you slacken your kite lines, the kite slows down or stops FLYING, the whole point of the new way of flying. Today, most dual-line kites (deltas) are intended to be not-so-fast, to be easy to un-fly, and to perform well when not flying such as when they're tumbled through the air or tumbled on the ground.

• The sport & trade reduced the FLYING ability of kite flyers.

  When you focus on punch-&-jerk slacken-your-kite-line skills to reduce & eliminate your kite's state of FLYING and do it nearly exclusively, as the gurus and videos encourage, you can lose your ability to FLY a kite. That's why many good delta-kite flyers cannot turn a WindDance as fast & powerfully or keep it airborne as well as beginners can, or FLY one to its full potential. Instead of pulling to keep it airborne like children do with single-line kites, they do nothing and let it fall out of the sky. Instead of pulling to accelerate and turn with exciting speed & power, they pull weakly & briefly or abruptly push or abruptly punch & jerk which causes low performance or collapse. At festivals and demos, we've had to teach pull-on-your-kite-line basics to very-experienced delta flyers good at tricks but poor at FLYING (extreme tact on our part was often necessary).

  Beginners, however, have little trouble and fly WindDances beautifully. Basic pull-on-your-kite-line skills are more or less instinctive and come naturally, like a child learning to fly a single-line kite.

  We've witnessed this all too often, beginners flying WindDances better than good delta flyers can. And our WindDance dealers have seen it, too.

  It isn't the flyer's fault. It's the sport's fault and the trade's fault for allowing the sport to 'advance' to the point where many delta-kite flyers cannot experience the Pure Joy of FLYING unless they pause and learn the basic pull-on-your-kite-line skills the new 'advanced' way caused them to lose or never learn in the first place.

• The sport & trade diminished dual-line-flying's appeal to the general public.

  The average person prefers to FLY a kite and keep it FLYING, with easy and natural pull-on-your-kite-line skills, and prefers high performance over low performance. The public doesn't see the point of the negative payoff the sport & trade now offer: buy an advanced kite and learn difficult unnatural skills so you can attain less including zero FLYING performance.

The sooner the sport & trade return to their pre-1990 common ground of "kite FLYING" -- and to their pre-1990 common foundation of pull-on-your-kite-line skills -- the better for most dual-line flyers. And for most kite retailers, too.

There was no need to virtually eliminate the old way. The new and old ways could exist together to give people a choice, a choice between the new un-flying/non-flying way and the old FLYING way.

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Dual-line kiting's flow is driven by its competition scene. This happens in many sports. Normally, though, expert and competition skills are built on a foundation of natural basic skills that efficiently generate speed & power. And competition normally breeds the sport's highest levels of performance such as speed & turning & power, as well as the sport's highest-performing gear. But in these fundamental respects, dual-line kite competition has become the opposite of other sports -- competition skills do the opposite of basic skills, and competition flying and its gear are the sport's slowest -- and the rest of the dual-line kiting world has blindly followed.

Overall, kiting's magazines, associations, clubs, festivals, competitions, manufacturers, and retailers steer dual-line flyers toward what competition judges like to see: un-flying, non-flying, serious, relatively-slow, and difficult types of delta-kite flying including ground tricks. If your kite accelerates too much from the edge to the power zone, if your kite flies & turns too fast, if your kite is too responsive to the wind, and if you don't un-fly and do non-flying tricks -- that is, if your kite FLIES too well and you FLY too much -- you lose points in stunt-flying competition. How well a kite tumbles on the ground has become more important than how well it FLIES (see the kite magazines). Skills that reduce & eliminate FLYING performance have become far more important than kite-FLYING skills (see the kite videos). That's the reality of the featured flying you see in magazines and at festivals & competitions. Participants and others immersed in this kite culture, however, see it as state-of-the-art, highest-tech, highest-performance, and highest-level flying, the images used to promote such flying and such kites.

Most people take up dual-line flying simply to have fun rather than to compete and please judges. Most people buy dual-line kites to FLY them rather than to make them stop flying. Most flyers prefer actual high performance, and from easy natural skill. Depending on the wind and the whim of the flyer, in casual easy fun-recreational dual-line FLYING the FLYING performance ranges from leisurely slow to vastly more spectacular in speed & turning than anything ever seen in serious and competitive flying. You can hurt yourself by laughing too hard from all the fun, a WindDance owner told us.

But overall, the sport & trade seem interested in selling only their way of flying -- and only to the insular kite culture, that is, only to themselves. They don't seem much interested in providing what people outside of the kite culture want, that is, what many recreational flyers and the public want. A few examples:

Although easy fun-recreational high-performance sport-kite FLYING exists -- it's far more spectacular in speed & turning than trick & competitive flying -- it has yet to be recognized by the sport & trade.

When consumers want sport-kite FLYING, usually the trade either sells them what they don't want -- trick & competition flying -- or turns them away.

Well-engineered WindDance parafoils outFLY deltas in edge to power-zone acceleration, responsiveness to the wind, straight-line speed, turning speed & power, aerobatic agility, tracking, and in ability to fly with high performance in a very wide range of winds including fluctuating winds. How do these qualities benefit the recreational flyer? They generate Pure Fun!

Although flyers and trade members immersed the kite culture have seen these WindDance qualities with their own eyes, including in our WindDance video at the 1998 KTAI show (Kite Trade Association International) and in the WindDance video we mailed to all kite retailers in the USA and Canada, many don't seem to want to admit that what they saw is real.

Some WindDance dealers won't even promote the wonderful FLYING qualities that took us years to develop and refine. They prefer to sell WindDances only as power kites, compact travelers' kites, crashable kites, or as stereotypical parafoil kites with lesser performance than delta kites.

We've received calls from people who tried other flyers' WindDances, went to kite shops to buy them, and couldn't. In spite of our several sales mailings to kite retailers (which included a user's manual and fabric samples and info about our friendly terms, low-cost shipping, fast service, and outstanding dealer and end-user support), in spite of our full-page color ads in the kite magazines, and in spite of also having received the WindDance video, those shops said they never heard of Seattle AirGear or WindDances, didn't have WindDances, and were not planning to order any -- not even after hearing glowing testimonials from those potential customers who wanted to buy.

Those flyers wanted easy fun-recreational high-performance sport-kite FLYING. But the trade turned them away.

We explained this to one of our dealers who sells WindDances both to the kite culture and to the public. "What's wrong with those retailers?" he said. "Don't they want to make money?"

When you add it all up, here's what it looks like: the sport doesn't want to sell sport-kite FLYING with kites that respond well to pull-on-your-kite-line skills and to the wind, and doesn't want to give people what they want if it's different from what the kite culture is into.

We don't think that's the case with all kite retailers, however. We think most kite retailers unwittingly got sucked along by the sport's internal new flow that began veering away from mainstream sport & recreation around 1990.

Care to help wake up the sport & trade? Hammer on kiting's associations, clubs, festival organizers, magazines, and retailers to also promote easy fun-recreational high-performance sport-kite FLYING with dual-line kites that respond wonderfully to natural pull-on-your-kite-line skills and to the wind!

Although FLYING a kite is not the main point of dual-line kite flying for the current kite culture, it certainly is for the public. Besides bringing pleasure to many people, kite FLYING could make the sport grow -- although not in the current kite-culture way -- and the trade more successful! That would be good, wouldn't it?

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During the Kite Trade Association International (KTAI) show in San Diego January 1998, a few kite retailers from various parts of the USA told us similar tales about how the public sees the new way of flying. Here's their composite story:

A novice flyer and an expert trick flyer were flying dual-line deltas. A bystander -- unaware of who was the expert and who was the novice -- after watching both for hours walked over to the novice (thinking he was the expert), complimented him on how wonderfully he flew, and thanked him for putting on such a beautiful kite-FLYING show. "By the way," said the bystander. "That fellow over there is having lots of trouble. All this time he hasn't been able to get his kite to FLY. He must be doing something wrong. Or there must be something wrong with his kite. You should walk over and give him some help."

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When you walk into a kite shop, nearly all dual-line kites for sale are trick kites optimized for un-flying and doing tricks during which the kite is not FLYING. Most do not respond well to pull-on-your-kite-line FLYING skills (if they did respond well, they'd be poor at un-flying and doing tricks); they require push-on-your-kite-line and punch-&-jerk skills to be maneuvered. You see videos teaching that kind of flying. Hardly any of the kites for sale are optimized for FLYING. Hardly any videos teach FLYING or its pull-on-your-kite-line skills. Hardly any sales talk is about FLYING. Many people who want to FLY dual-line kites discover that dual-line FLYING isn't even offered, and are pushed into trick flying instead. Walk into shop after shop after shop and see for yourself. It's as if the sport & trade are bent on removing FLYING from dual-line kiting.

For flyers who want trick & advanced flying, a relatively small market, there seem to be hundreds of different good dual-line kites available. But for flyers who want to FLY their kites, a huge potential market, there are few good dual-line kites available. In effect, the trade is shutting out their largest potential market -- people in the general public (and many kite flyers, too) -- from what they want out of dual-line kiting: easy-to-fly dual-line kites with lots of FLYING-performance bang for the buck.

As the sport evolves away from FLYING, away from natural skills, and away from kites with good FLYING performance, dual-line flying is becoming increasingly different from the overall sport-&-recreation world. Are other sports departing from their fundamental natures? Are other sports losing interest in basic skills that efficiently generate power & speed? Are other sports evolving toward gear with lesser performance? Do competitors in other sports desire gear that is slow? Is skiing losing interest in how well and how fast skis carve and glide? Has sailboarding developed special inefficient mesh-vented sails (similar to competition dual-line delta kites) so that competitors can achieve lower speed in order to win?

All we want to do here at Seattle AirGear is to develop, market, and fully-back dual-line kites that FLY really well. But for flyers to appreciate and purchase our kites, they have to know about and understand kite FLYING, its basic skills, and a few basics about kites. Before we formed Seattle AirGear, we assumed that the sport & trade had an in-depth knowledge base and used that knowledge to accurately educate consumers and flyers, just as other sports and their industries have knowledge bases and education. A ski manufacturer doesn't have to teach the concept of skiing and basic skiing skills to new skiers, to experienced skiers, and to ski retailers in order to sell their skis, for example. So we believed we wouldn't have to teach the concept of kite FLYING and basic pull-on-your-kite-line skills in order to sell our WindDances. We were utterly wrong.

That is why, on this web site, we re-introduce dual-line kite FLYING -- what WindDancing is all about.

And why we re-introduce the simplicity & power of basic dual-line FLYING skills -- easy & natural skills that stem from the single-line skills used by children -- the only skills that WindDancers need for easy, precisely-controlled, high-speed, tight-turning, and powerful aerobatic fun.

Are we on the right track urging a renewal of easy kite FLYING as fun outdoor recreation using the old-but-good "pull-on-your-kite-line" skills? We think so. A few months after our first delivery of WindDances arrived April 1997, we were approached by a mass-marketing firm. In their search for new products they saw WindDances -- hot performance from easy skill, compact and packable, virtually indestructible -- as exciting recreational gear the general public would like.

The sport of kite flying, and the kite industry, would also benefit from undertaking education about kite FLYING and its simple & powerful basic skills, and from a widespread renewal of dual-line FLYING and its many joys.

WindDance dual-line parafoil stunt kites/sport kites are developed, sold, and backed by Seattle AirGear.
WindDance, WindDancing, Seattle AirGear, and AirGear are trademarks of Seattle AirGear.
Copyright © 1995-2017 Seattle AirGear.
This page last revised Sep-28-1998