Groz's Kite Buggying Stuff

We bought our first power kites in April 2006. The first I bought was from a friend, a FlexiFoil Bullet 5.5m. This proved to be waaaaaay to big and powerful for me, so we invested in some smaller kites to learn with. Following a year or so of power kiting fun, we switched to flying team with quad line stunt kites. In Januray 2009, I felt it was time to pick up the power kites again, and have a go with a buggy. Santa paid for the buggy and membership fees for the local power kiting club. I signed up to the BPKA insurance and off I went.

The first year started off frustratingly, but eventually I was able to make the buggy go in the direction I needed. By the Autumn, I was really able to control where the bug and the kite went, and fly for a little longer without getting too tired. It was a good end to the kiting year around October time, and then the winter came in with a vengence.

2010 started with some truely awful weather - cold-cold-cold, and then snow-snow-snow and then we-wet-wet. I didn't manage to get in the bug until about May. However, we had a few weekends of good winds, and not bad temperature, as well as the club field not being to muddy. I set myself the challenge of good controlled buggying, without any OBE's, not too much speed and plenty of fun!

I certainly achieved that. And with the addition of strapping a GPS to the front bar, was able to see how far and how fast I was going. Top speed achieved in July 2010 was 25mph and a single day track log length of 20 miles!

Some pics and video below:

Early days - but still lots of fun!

Sting 1.7 - it was easier to learn with high winds and smaller kites

Rage 2.5 - Still my favorite all round kite - plenty of pull in moderate winds, with good speed and control

Some of my early runs flying across the wind - I still can't get my head around some of the physics involved!

The wind doesn't always blow as hard as I'd like, so I had to get used to flying the 5.5m bullet - it's strange, that kite doesn't seem as big as it used to. I also found turning the kite down before a turn (rather than up) keeps better speed in the kite and tighter lines