|
Hotter speed and turning than competition kites. Higher-quality exercise and livelier pull than power kites. WindDances are "airgear," a new concept. They fly better and feel more exciting than typical stunt kites. Our other advancements: Ergo T-handles that boost feel, control, exercise. Natural active FLY-a-kite skill. |
| Homepage |
Contents
Here's a list of pages and files -- and some webpage sections, too -- roughly grouped by topic.
Use your browser's FIND or SEARCH function to locate a topic.
- What's new - And what was new in past years, too.
- WindDance2000 manufacturing plans - We gave them to the world on June-11-2007.
- CivicPowerUSA.org - A democracy weapon/tool for homeland/national defense of self-governance and public good, a public service we began on March-20-2003.
- How to use this website - Tips on how to navigate/read/search this site, view streaming video, download files, etc.
- Complete product information - Specs. Performance curves. Prices. Colors. Illustrations. Video clips. Photos. User's manual. Comparisons of WindDance parafoil airgear and WindDancing to other types of kites and other types of kiting. Testimonials. And much more.
- The basics - What is FLYING a dual-line stunt kite? How much speed-and-turning fun, lively power, and high-quality exercise can you have? What are the three essential FLYING qualities, natural control handles, and natural active FLYING skill all needed for genuine "kite-FLYING" fun? (Sadly, organized kiting and their "kite culture" don't and won't teach these bare basics of the sport, not even to foster fun for flyers or growth-and-profit for their kite industry.)
- Wind links - Seattle-area flyers, check out the "wind-vector map."
- Homepage
- Mega-info page - A vintage homepage.
- Privacy policies
- E-commerce security
- Seattle AirGear - Design & engineering innovation. Dedication to quality, value, & service.
- What we do
- WindDance product development
- Our credentials
- Design & engineering: what's the difference?
- Is engineering 100% technical?
- Our history
- Our contributions to the sport , more
- Our goals
- Why we had to switch from wholesaling-only to retailing-only , Why we had to start selling direct
- How to contact us
- Customer support - Extensive long-term support for WindDance owners worldwide.
- Feedback - What OTHERS say about WindDances, other kites, control handles, and about organized kiting and its "kite culture."
- The raves - We thank you all!
- The "kite-culture's" response to WTMF (way too much fun) - How they responded to parafoils with the three essential FLYING qualities engineered and built into them, to sensible ergo T-handles, to natural active FLYING skill.
- Our guarantee - Hands down the best in the entire sport! Have a look!
- Do we have a "satisfaction" guarantee? - We'd like to. But we can't because so many flyers in organized kiting dislike the good things in the yellow banner at the top of this page.
- CATALOG & STORE - WindDance dual-line parafoil stunt kites and accessories.
- FAQs - Educational answers to many questions about how to achieve WTMF (way too much fun).
- TIPS - How to apply the primary fundamental: "pull=speed=FLYING." How to get the most out of your gear.
- Free instruction / Demo events - Although we discontinued these sessions, the information about natural FLYING skill, and the warnings about kite festivals and kiting education (how they stifle FLYING fun and kiting safety), are helpful.
- Bridle-assembly upgrade (177k PDF) - For all WindDances shipped prior to Aug-21-2000. This is an easy do-it-yourself upgrade. Benefits? Less bridle tangling, snappier turning! Do it!
- Latest user's manual -- booklet format (v.2002a, 40 pp., 500k PDF)
- Latest user's manual -- loose-leaf format (v.2002a, 40 pp., 510k PDF)
- WindDance review by Kite Lines Magazine
- WindDance review by Wings Over Washington (DC) Club
- Video clips - WindowsMedia and QuickTime.
- Reaction to our 1998 WindDance-in-action VHS video - Flyers from the general public got out their credit cards and ordered. But flyers in the kite culture averted their eyes from the dazzling speed and turning, and most kite shops stopped selling WindDances, because the video shows parafoils performing much better than parafoils are supposed to perform.
- Photos, WindDance 3 - By Tom White, Winnipeg.
- Photos, WindDance 2 - By Van-garde Imagery, Clearwater, FL. See how the "WindDance Wingtips" look like those on Europe's high-performance sailplanes. Swept tips appear more and more on other aircraft, and on model aircraft, too. We came up with our "WindDance Wingtips" years before! Same photos, but smaller & faster.
- More photos
- WindDance2000 flier (1 p. color 570k PDF)
- Mini flier (2 pp. color, 570k PDF)
- PHOTO flier (2 pp. color, 557k PDF)
- TECH flier (2 pp. B&W, 315k PDF)
- WindDance 1 in a sharp turn! - One wingtip flies at 100 mph! In 10 mph wind! How? Pull hard on one kite line!
- How WindDances compare to all other stunt kites - WindDances vs deltas, sparred parafoils, and other parafoils.
- How WindDances are special in many different ways!
- The many great things a WindDance offers
- Your money's worth!
- The sport's best-kept secret - The pure fun of "REAL kite flying!"
- The new fun way - It's WindDancing: easy, healthful-exercise, high-performance recreational fun-flying with versatile parafoil kites that FLY superbly in the Three Essential Ways using natural basic skill and ergonomically-correct T-handles. It's very different from the usual 'performance' and 'power' flying. WindDancing is stunt kiting as normal outdoor recreation.
- The fun starts here - With understanding "kite FLYING."
- The old and the new - "Kite-culture" flying and "WindDancing."
- What is "WindDancing" , More about "WindDancing"
- The BEST way to get hooked!
- "Pump air" and feel the burn
- About skill - "Just PULL it!", the three-word skill course. About the ease & power of the simple basics.
- About sport kites - If you're into FLYING sport kites, here are the three most important qualities to look for.
- The engineering of stunt kites begins with the basic stunt-kite equations - Simple high-school math.
- Basic skill vs advanced skill - Basic skill provides the most spectacular sport-kite FLYING performance!
- WindDances vs other dual-line kites
- WHY WindDances fly so well
- Web version of TECH flier
- Want pure fun? Experience the "WindDance Flight Envelope!"
- Performance curves: speed, pull, & exercise
- Top selling points
- How WindDances out-FLY deltas in several exciting ways!
- In exercise and speed-&-turning thrill, WindDancing puts normal power flying to shame! - Typical power flying is "playing tug-of-war with the wind." The pull is rather steady, especially with a stack. You strain your body and stretch your arms, strenuous but static and a poor workout. Good kite-flying exercise requires force with lots of arm & body motion. Want good exercise that's exciting? With a WindDance, do lots of fast & tight turning in medium to strong wind -- solo or side-by-side with a WindDancing friend! There's plenty of arm & body motion, the pull rises whenever you turn, the speed & pull variations are huge, speeds are higher, and the turning is faster & tighter! The smaller WindDance models are best for this!
- All that fun from simple & easy skills!
- Precision-tune it! - A WindDance is a little like a '50s hotrod: it LOVES to be precision-tuned for top acceleration & speed! Two simple bridle adjusters. The top-speed setting gives fastest turning, too, and it's optimum for light, medium, strong, and wildly-fluctuating winds! Precision tuning = maximum FLYING performance = maximum fun! What a rush!
- Too fast & agile? Too powerful? - You can quickly tame your WindDance when necessary.
- Why these "100%-soft" kites FLY so well
- Why they're so EASY to fly
- Illustrations
- Specs & prices
- Colors
- Which WindDance?
- Additional gear needed
- Prices
- Where to purchase
- What we do here at Seattle AirGear
- The many great things a WindDance offers - Including brand-new ways of having Pure Fun! One of those ways: if you're in the mood for incredible excitement and the wind's right and you've got it peak-tuned, you get FLYING performance that's vastly more spectacular in speed & turning than anything ever seen in serious and competitive flying! Our video shows this!
- Want extreme fun? WindDance side-by-side with a friend! - No other kites on Planet Earth come close to providing so much fun!
- How WindDancing compares to the other types of dual-line flying
- WindDancing is the OPPOSITE of trick flying in skill, performance, fun, and exercise!
- WindDancing is HOTTER and more EXCITING than competition & trick flying!
- WindDancing is MORE THRILLING & BETTER EXERCISE than power flying!
- How & why WindDances FLY better than other kites in the three fundamental ways
- WindDances: are they "kites" or "airgear?"
- How WindDancing is like driving - How to use this analogy to troubleshoot and improve your FLYING skill.
- The essence of WindDancing! - Humor and fun go hand in hand. Excerpts from the User's Manual.
- The WindDance story
- Your money's worth
- Performance hallmarks when peak-tuned
- Too fast? Too powerful?
- Easy to fly
- Forgiving
- Superior exercise
- MUST you fly it energetically?
- What about crashes?
- What about AFTER crashes?
- Simple & trouble-free bridle
- Is precision-tuning a pain?
- Hotter, easier, and stronger than deltas
- More speed & turning thrill, and better exercise, than power kites
- Want extreme fun?
- Do some people have trouble with WindDances?
- One-year guarantee
- Long-term product support
- WindDances age gracefully
- Intro - Are you a beginner? A jaded expert? If you're into FLYING dual-line kites, WindDances will definitely impress you!
- Field reports - Read about our way of strength & durability testing.
- Sport overview - Stunt kites. Sport kites. Power kites. Stacking. Trick kites. Competition. Recreation. And more.
- What is a stunt kite?
- What is a sport kite?
- What is a power kite?
- What is stacking? - And how strong-wind flying with a WindDance is very different from typical power-flying.
- The basic types of dual-line stunt kites
- What is trick flying?
- Competitive vs fun-recreational flying
- A summary
- How improperly designed/engineered kites limit your fun
- Old stereotypes
- A new choice
- How simple & easy it is! - Dual-line theory & skills are a small step up from single-line theory & skills. Anyone can quickly become a hot sport-kite FLYER -- if you have a kite that FLIES well in the three fundamental ways!
- A primer on "FLYING a dual-line stunt kite"
- Generic flight envelope
- What is "FLYING" a kite?
- What is "dual-line" kiting?
- Want fun? - Then you want ALL these basic FLYING qualities.
- Your kite's straight-flight speed & pull
- Its turning speed & pull
- Dual-line FLYING technique
- Dual-line FLYING exercise
- The FLYING & skill basics
- What is "trick" & "advanced" flying? - It isn't about FLYING a kite.
- Recent birth
- The of nature trick & advanced flying
- The effect of trick & advanced flying on the sport
- The sport's fundamental-knowledge void - "High-performance FLYING using basic skill" is not in the knowledge base.
- How does "kite-culture flying" compare with other sports? - Huge dissimilarities. One of them: Speed, and high-performance response to power input from the flyer and to the power of the wind, got bred out of upper-level flying and upper-level kites. And it has spread down into the rest of dual-line kiting. Is this good for the sport? Has this sort of thing happened to other sports such as windsurfing, bicycling, and skiing?
- Want a dual-line kite that "FLIES" really well? - Qualities to look for. "High-tech" isn't one of them.
- Look for a kite that doesn't flex or deform out of shape as it FLIES
- Look for the performance benefits of a kite that doesn't flex or deform
- Look for these other great FLYING qualities
- Is THIS boring & unchallenging? The WindDance 1 at play in brisk wind! - Many take up trick flying for its difficulty & challenge because their delta kites have boring FLYING performance. Many avoid strong winds because their delta kites have poor & unpredictable performance in strong winds, and because they tend to lose parts in midair, break when they crash, and suffer midair spar failure during gusts. Why not choose a kite with exciting FLYING performance in winds that bounce between light and strong as you fly, and one that holds up in those winds? Why not choose a kite with raw FLYING performance that excites you, and supremely challenges your FLYING ability?
- Kite Physics 101 - How a dual-line kite turns. The flight envelope. Wind. Speed. Pull. Illusions of speed. And more.
- How does a dual-line kite turn?
- The flight envelope
- Safety
- Speed & pull basics
- How to reduce pull
- Strong-wind flying
- Wind quality
- How to measure and judge the wind
- How speed & pull affect FLYING performance
- Apparent vs actual speed
- Airspeed vs groundspeed
- Kite Physics 102 - A closer look at speed & pull. Airspeed vs groundspeed. Kite sailing, buggying, kite-surfing.
- Safety - How to be safe to others. And to yourself. We learned some of this the hard way.
- The two fundamental hazards
- Safety is the FLYER'S responsibility
- For OTHERS' safety
- For YOUR safety
- For OTHERS' & YOUR safety
- Kite-Flying Safety flier (PDF) - It was inspired by a scary kite-nazi incident on Seattle's Kite Hill in 2003.
- How & why typical stunt kites don't have the "airgear" features the public likes - All kites could have wonderful airgear qualities. Full basic skill and good handles -- which are needed to bring the amazing performance & handling of "airgear" to life -- could be in popular use today. If the controlling "kite culture" had allowed them into organized kiting.
- "REAL kite flying" - One of the two dual-line kiting choices. We sell it. Organized kiting won't.
- Airgear - Excellent FLYING , pull , and exercising. High speed. Lively pull. Powerful fast-&-sharp turning.
- Versatile kites
- Hot, active skill
- Ergo T-handles
- "Kite-culture flying" - The other dual-line kiting choice. Organized kiting sells it.
- Performance kites - Excellent for power-killing turns & tricks. Poor at real FLYING.
- Power/traction kites - Excellent for getting towed & lifted. Poor at full-body exercising. Poor at real FLYING.
- Specialized kites
- Low-performance, low-exercise skill
- Handles & bars that prevent active skill
- All the fun that's EXCLUDED
- Compare the two choices:
- The old "kite-culture" way vs the new "WindDancing" way!
- "Kite-culture flying" vs "WindDancing"
- The usual "kites" vs "airgear" and WindDances
- Consumer alert:
- Beware of the "kite culture" and it's fun-restricting beliefs
- Even non-flyers and experts are victims
- Here's the cure
- In addition to "kite-culture flying," shouldn't organized kiting promote "REAL kite flying" too?
- Are WindDances for real?
- Who's right? - About kites, skill, exercise, control handles, and the lack of stewardship of the sport? Organized kiting or Seattle AirGear?
- Casualties of the kite-culture's war on FLYING - Organized kiting is destroying itself.
- Why organized kiting resists WindDancing . . . along with everything that makes it possible.
- News & commentary, 1998-1999 - From flying fields, festivals, and trade shows.
- News & commentary, 1997
- How to run the sport's obstacle course between you and WindDancing fun - The "kite culture" has erected six major barriers between the general public and easy high-performance fun-FLYING.
- A glance into the evolving sport - As we introduced WindDances into the marketplace beginning in early 1997, within the kite culture we discovered that interest in FLYING dual-line kites had declined, interest in hot speed-&-turning FLYING performance had declined, and so had the basic pull-on-your-kite-line skills of dual-line flyers. It was a startling discovery for us. Many experienced flyers shunned the thrilling performance of WindDances, couldn't figure out what WindDances are for, and many couldn't FLY them as well as beginners could. In the past decade, this sort of thing has not happened to other sports. We had to figure out why it happened to sport kiting.
- Yes, the sport has changed since 1989 - FLYING performance is down. Difficulty is up.
- What the sport promotes vs what people want - Flying to please judges vs flying for the pure fun of it. Less FLYING performance from more skill vs more FLYING performance from less skill.
- How the sport evaluates dual-line kites - How well it does stab-the-ground and ground-tumbling tricks has become more important than how well it FLIES. It's all right there in the kite magazines. Merely a blip in the sport's evolution, we hope.
- How the public sees the new advanced way of flying - A cute story from kite retailers around the USA.
- Why not also promote the easiest & most-exciting way to fly sport kites: pull = speed = FLYING? - By focusing on cut-power skills and developing kites that respond poorly to apply-power skills, sport-kiting has sharply diverged from mainstream sport & recreation where people use apply-power skills and want gear that responds with high-performance to those skills. To give many flyers -- and many in the public -- what they want, we ask the sport & trade to promote pull-on-your-kite-line skills and the easy FLYING of sport kites again!
- A look inside the sport & trade - And at how things could be improved for everyone.
- The jungle of hype - Wouldn't comprehensive and accurate education be better?
- We seek good dealers - We tried, found virtually none, and switched from wholesaling to retailing. All we asked of dealers was to: 1) Represent WindDances as what they actually are; they're made for "REAL kite flying," an exciting state-of-the-art alternative to the usual "kite-culture flying." 2) Recommend the accessories needed for best performance and for the most fun. To our utter surprise, we found out the hard way how kite retailers wouldn't do it. Which is why we don't have dealers anymore.
- Selling tips for dealers - Sadly, dealers ignored them all.
| Top |
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.