Why organized kiting resists WindDancing

Kite flyers seeking performance & fun embrace WindDancing.

But organized kiting resists WindDancing . . . along with everything that makes it possible.  As you visit the entire kiting scene -- including web sites, kite shops, and festivals & competitions -- we invite you to examine that for yourself.

You will discover the same startling pattern we did.  Organized kiting is resisting all key ingredients of dual-line kite FLYING:

1. Dual-line kites that FLY well in the three essential ways -- especially parafoils that fly really well.
2. Hot FLYING performance, and great exercise, from easy basic skill.
3. Hand-friendly control handles that enhance feel & control, FLYING performance, and exercise.

That's right.  Instead of promoting these three wonderful things, organized kiting is resisting them.

You might say to yourself, "It doesn't make sense for a sport and its trade to oppose things that would sell well to the public.  It doesn't make sense for kiting to act against its own growth and prosperity."  You are correct, it doesn't make sense . . . until you understand their insular "kite culture" and core beliefs that make them think and act the way they do.

Organized kiting prefers and promotes forms of dual-line kiting that have less performance, lower-quality exercise, and greater difficulty (this is explained in several places on this web site, and is clearly seen at kite festivals and competitions).  They prefer and promote heavy spending on many specialized kites and replacement parts, rather than spending a lot less on a few versatile kites that hold up and last.  They prefer and promote unnatural advanced skills that reduce and eliminate FLYING performance.  They prefer and promote control handles that are downright unfriendly to most people's hands.  They pretty much don't tolerate anything different.

That's why most specialty kite retailers won't tell their customers about the three essential FLYING qualities to look for in a dual-line kite (the qualities that WindDances have in abundance).  That's why they won't tell their customers about how natural basic skill generates sport-kiting's hottest performance and highest-quality exercise (the simple & easy skill that WindDances need).  That's why they won't sell sensible hand-friendly control handles (the handles needed for the best feel and control of your kite and the best exercise, too).  Their core beliefs won't let them tell you about these good things.

To see the intensity and resolve of their opposition against the key elements of sport-kite FLYING listed above, read what others say.

Other people, too, have found the kite trade resistant to anything that doesn't originate from within the kite culture.  During our last kite trade show in 1999 a seasoned exhibitor of non-sport-kite products, who had encountered such resistance for years, saw what was happening to us:  "The kite culture is resisting WindDances like the horse culture resisted the automobile."

Other flyers and trade members have pleaded with organized kiting to shape up for its own good and for the good of the sport.  It would be so easy for organized kiting to do so:  In addition to offering what the kite culture likes, all organized kiting has to do is also offer a few things the general public would like:  1) Sell kites that FLY well in the three essential ways.  2) Teach the performance-&-exercise wonders of simple basic skill.  3) Recommend common-sense performance-enhancing control handles that function in harmony with the human hand.  Then organized kiting could have it all:  they could sell to the small kite culture and to the huge general public.  "No way," says the collective action of organized kiting.  Their religious-like beliefs won't let them achieve growth and success.

Does organized kiting have objective product reviews?  Or objective peer review?  Not in the least.  Have we at Seattle AirGear received ANY recognition for our contributions to the sport, or for our state-of-the-art advances in dual-line kite and parafoil technology?  No.  Why?  Organized kiting recognizes and rewards only what conforms to its religious-like beliefs, and it suppresses and spins or attacks whatever conflicts with its beliefs -- as in our first WindDance review by a kite-culture celebrity.

In the early 1600s, Galileo invented the telescope and verified Copernicus' theory of how the Earth and other Planets orbit the Sun.  Which conflicted head-on with Church dogma: the Sun and the Heavens circle the Earth; the Earth is the center of the Universe.  In 1616 the Church denounced Copernicus' theory and as dangerous to the Faith, and warned Galileo to stop believing it.  He didn't.  So the Church persecuted him.  And banned the teaching of the basic concept of our Solar System for two more centuries, until around the time Darwin published "The Origin of Species" in 1859. Single-handedly in a climate of intellectual repression so intense that some were burned alive at the stake for thinking the wrong things, Galileo laid the foundation of modern mathematics and physics.  From which aeronautical engineering, and WindDance parafoils, arose.  If we have a hero, is it Galileo. In October 1992 -- almost four centuries after Galileo proved Copernicus to be correct -- the Vatican officially acknowledged that the Planets, including Earth, orbit our Sun.  One of our relatives, a physicist, was one of the many scientists from around the world invited by the Vatican to the apology ceremony in Rome.

We aeronautical-engineered parafoil sport kites that FLY better than delta sport kites.  That new reality clashes head-on with kite-culture dogma: no way can a parafoil have better performance than a delta 'performance' kite.  So like any group bent on clinging to and perpetuating its rigid beliefs, organized kiting suppresses the facts about WindDances, alters the facts including beating WindDances down with hype into what they're supposed to be like, and tries to prevent WindDances from being sold.  Good flyers have flown WindDances poorly on purpose to make them look bad, and we know of no top flyer willing to FLY a WindDance to its fullest (they could fly 'em far better than we can!).  Most dealers present WindDances as less than what they are, convince customers not to expect hot performance, do not tell customers about the easy tuning or simple basic skill needed to bring out peak performance, and sell accessories that prevent top performance from happening.  One dealer even removed the users manuals and altered the product so that WindDances could not fly as advertised.  All this prevents our product from selling as well as it could and from flying at full capacity -- their motive.  Although a few retailers do embrace WindDances for all the wonderful things they are -- see color flier and the banner at the top of this page -- most specialty kite retailers will not sell them because all these wonderful things are excessively at odds with their kite-culture beliefs.

Do you begin to see what lies beneath the smiling surface of organized kiting?

The kite-culture way is causing the kite industry to decline.  Our approach is making Seattle AirGear grow.

Organized kiting offers its choices.  We at Seattle AirGear offer completely different choices.  The consumer can choose.

If you want easy, fun-recreation, healthful-exercise, high-performance sport-kiting -- WindDancing -- come to us here at Seattle AirGear.  We will serve you well.

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 Jun-26-2000