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Well after a short time kiting, I’ve bitten the bullet and bought a second-hand Depower from Ebay. Its something that has intrigued me for a while: when I’m on the beach wrestling with the wind, kite surfers and landboarders are using Depower and happily harnessing the power of the wind to great effect.

The odd thing is that the Depower kites are much larger than normal foils, for example my first foil was four meters, an average size traction kite. Yet my first Depower is 14m!

I’ve needed to buy a few extra’s including a pump to inflate the kite (Oh yes I can use this on Water too!) and a harness to ensure all the power is on my body and not my arms. I know I’ve got a little stronger holding onto the 4m, but I think this is a little to much to be holding by hand.

I’ve managed to find a picture of the Cabrinha Nitro 14m, and I’m hoping that everything will come for me to take it out this weekend. (Wish me luck!)

I’ve not posted much this month, due to being the owner of a Peter Lynn XR kite buggy, bought off e-bay for a little over £100. Its a great new toy and lots of fun tearing down the beach, I’m not so sure of the speed I’m doing, but at a few centimeters from the ground it feels pretty fast.

The first day I was out on the buggy, I spent four hours on Aberavon beach learning kite control in the buggy, and getting my break-lines tweaked by some of the hardened pro’s. (Thanks to Fester @ Kitecrowd)

I’ve been out quite a few times since then, and have began to learn that the basic Peter Lynn buggy design is very taxing on my lower back over long periods of time, and its not just me, its a common complaint with these buggies. So I made a few drawings and luckily got a backrest made up from mild steel, which is attached to the main frame using Key Clamp. You’ve probably seen lots of railings made from this.

Anyhow I’ve taken a couple of shots of the new backrest before its covered in pipe insulation (for extra padding).

Thursday evening I replaced the lines on my kite, the new addition should cope with over 360kg of weight, over 4 times my actuall weight. So this weekend, after the wait for the weather to clear up on Saturday, a few friends and I headed to the beach.

The tide was just on its way out at about 6.30pm Saturday evening, so there was little room or hard enough sand to get the buggy or boards up and running, so while the other guys were just getting some practice in controlling their kites I decided to test out the new lines and try some jumping.

The wind picked up a little and was gusting at 12 mhp, with a little working the Ozone Flow I have pulls quite a bit and I’ve been told that running in the opposite direction to the kite when moving it through the centre of the gust will create lift, so that’s what I did.

The first few attempts just saw me being dragged on my feet about 4 meters across the sand, untill I got a feel for it and then attempted some jumping. I eventually managed a few jumps with the highest being 4ft, and thats when my infinite wisdom kicked in asking Bekka to take some photographs of my jumps to post on the blog.

Right at that moment I really set myself up, positioning the kite ready, swooping it round, feeling the power as it hit the centre of the wind, only to loose my footing and faceplant the sand. Thankfully having asked her to take photos, bekka was there to photograph my face hitting the sand.

I’ve just got in the studio this morning and before I start work, I thought I would post the final plans for the kite buggy. Here’s a picture of the steering column / headstock.

Or you can download my full kite buggy plan and once again thanks to Popeye the Welder for a great Kite Buggy Resource

As a geeky kind of guy and web designer / developer I’m often asked by Julian and Carwyn to help out once in a while with their blogs and website bits and bobs. So on Thursday Julian asked if I could set-up a simple WordPress blog for the Arkade event that has taken place over the weekend. Not that I can take much credit for setting up some space and a MySQL database on our servers.

Some vox pop’s were published on the blog Friday, really nice insight into the Cardiff Shopping Arcades. Visit the Arcade WordPress blog to check them out.

Along with drawing plans for a kite buggy, I’ve been producing the base for a kite control bar. As a gesture of good will and to keep my kiting friends sweet, I offered to cut and drill the bar required for producing a kite control bar.  For those that don’t know there are a few ways to control a Powerkite. Including straps, handles, bar or a de-power bar, so because we only have four-line powerkites and not a de-power model, we’re going to try and make a standard control bar as shown below.

The main power lines connect to both left and right sides and then the break lines connect to the centre and strap onto your arm, body or harness.

So, just before lunch I cut a perfectly good aluminum Mop handle into two lengths, one at 600mm and the other at 500, just as a trial to see what’s going to be best. I drilled 3 x 5mm holes at each end and one in the centre for leader braid to pass through, but we’re probably going to need some plastic sleeve to stop the leader lines from wearing.

Here’s the shot of the bar so far:

I’ve been kiting for nearly a month now, and I’ve managed to avoid hurting myself even after shooting off down the beach on a mountain board and having a go on a kite buggy last week. So I’ve been doing a little research into building a buggy of my own, coming across a website called Popeye the Welder. The guy seems to a kite buggy building genius and has lots of useful tips and diagrams on his website.

So having spent a little time thinking about the best way to build one I’ve opted for a simple Peter Lynn copy, but with a few modifications intended to make buggying a little more comfortable. I began drawing some plans this morning and here’s my progress so far:

I’ll post the completed plans on here as soon as their complete, I guess next on the list is teaching myself how to weld.

I came across this video through Ruth Mortimers Brand & Business Blog, lovely idea and even better free ice-cream.

So I managed to make it to Aberavon again today, but this time it was with my brand new Ozone Flow 4m and Kristiaan’s new purchase of a Peter Lynn kite buggy (Great Fun).

So we got used to things after a while, I got control of the kite pretty well and got chatting to some guys already buggying on the beach. Bekka shot down the beach a few times and nearly hit some passers by and even Carwyn joined us to answer the intrigue surrounding kiting.

Everything was going so well even Carwyn had a go on the buggy after he got used to the kite, but shortly after the lines went and no more kite for me not Carwyns fault, more a problem with the Ozone Kite. Anyhow Bekka managed to get a shot of him before that happened.

And a shot of my worn through lines :O(

Yesterday evening I ducked out of the Cardiff Design Festival planning meeting to take my brand spanking new kite on its first flight. So on the way home from work a few friends and I stopped of on the nice open hill tops above Gelligaer.

The 4m Flow seemed a little too perfect, as a beginners kite it was so smooth in its flight in low winds, but with still enough pull to drag me around a little. I’m looking forward to see what she does in stronger gusts, having been told it should cope with most windspeeds between 5 and 20mph. I could be wrong?

And finally here’s a photo of me looking quite casual