www.snow.co.nz/snowtv/player.asp?bcpid=1...amp;bctid=1659879837

so i want to be the first to try this on a mountainboard. don't think my poxy 4.9 will do with the strings just wraped round my hands. soo, goal is this summer, speedkite mt herbert on mountainboards. who's up for it, and who can lend me a paraglyder and laugth as i anialate myself?

i think the propper wording would be

"and laugth as ikill myself"

i think you need to be a very experienced paraglider before you even think about speed flying!

pish!!

i'm to old to learn anything new, so i just do stuff without the traiing now. it's an excelent life stratagy i wish i had adopted earlier on. i spent all that time learning how to drive and i hardley ever use any of the skills they taught me

anyway, i have flown a paraglyder before, or should i say i became the first accident statistic for this poor otherwise flawless teaching record instructor...but i've flown one...all i need to do is figure out how to land the bugger.

seriosly tho, a bottle of rum, a couple of mountainboards, some mcguivered cheap big trade-me kites, a camera and a big mountain behind my house. who's up for it?

rather than going the speedgliding option why don't you go chasta style and launch off some hill with a kite. apparently when you get to the bottom to stop landing backwards with too much speed you kite loop and charge back up the hill!!

i say apparently because i'm to chicken to try that theory out myself.

i have however started the learning process riding some small hills and i like.

ps i think your'l need a bigger canopy than a 4.9 to glide down hills.

wicked video, i think the big difference is you wont land on snow and if the mtb lands side on it wont slide, but you will. Chasta is in town currently and butch is down here end of 2008, so maybe some hot tips from them before hand would increase the chance of living to tell the story. it sounds like it s going to be a good one, almost as good as getting zapped by 1000's of volts and 240 volts with in 2 weeks while flying kites. 2 different kites too. in butches red bull video they used copters for the final scene , and para gliders but then dumped it for C.G. which looks crap. but its for the punters not for people who know the sport, and also in the movies when they use the wrong motorbike sound.

Your mad caleb. Mountain boards would need some major mods to be used like speedflyers use skis.

Will has a pair of scorpian skates tho....remember those from the old school park ride day? THose might be possible. But i wouldnt recommend it.

what about mounting the bindings parallel, running fore an' aft, ala old school monoski styleee




:shock: :shock:

hell no. theres a reason you stand sideways on a board. stability.

try rocking down a hill on your mountain board standin in the middle. you wont get far.

maybe you're standing too far back... this looks pretty stable:

doesn't look like hes going at speed flying speeds......

but by all means try it,...

i'll watch the video and laugh.

so all you do is mount the harness your in at a 90 degree 'regular' angle. thats doable.

i'm quite liking the kiting down first theory tho, could be intresting, i'll go and walk it next weekend and see how the wind works in line with the tracks. think its a wide enouth mountain and taller than all the others, so should have some clean wind areas. also with the dump we're due mid week it may be snow kiteable next weekend. its about 45 minutes walk from the airstrip, who's for it (if conditions look good)?

Me ole mucca Shaner is right, Its the stance that will make it work.
Out in Hawaii the speed flyer pilots were dropping from 9000ft with our mountainboards stapped to their feet and that was the first modification they asked for. You wanna be landing face on on a glider, not have ya body twisted trying to point ya board the right way. Easy way to break yer ankles pretty quickly...

As for an old paraglider bro, it aint gonna speed fly you down the Mt, its jus gonna lift you higher nd higher in the thermals. Get yerself a 12m foil and ride down the hill into the wind, youll get what youre looking for!!

Be careful

Butch

what happened to that speedflying footage butch? seems a shame to have gone with that animation at the end of that red-bull clip.

okay so i got a bit carried away with that last nose-riding pic, but you have to admit an aerial speedfly nose-ride would look pretty cool.

belac - i think you could be onto something with mt herbert, there's sections of the walkway that'd go good on an atb, not sure exactly how they'd line up with the wind, definitely worth the hike to check out.

i still think somewhere off the summit road from top of taylors round to godley head has serious potential - plenty of 4wd/foot/bike tracks, faces dead into the nor'easter fresh off the sea, the the paragliding take-offs would make good boarding sites, but flying a kite there might not go down too well if there are guys in the air :shock:

Im dead keen to do this in summer. Or whenever we start getting some nice NEers again. sooo much fun to be had if we find the right location.

me and mikey are off to reckie mt herbert this saturday, if anyones hard enough to join us then more the merrier, but its gonna be the second of the horrible storms that will start tonight. got th topo maps ready, and gonna mark where has potential and then 3d map a kiteable course down the mountain to my house and the pub.

i love the 12m foil idea, very doable, yet original. who'll lend me the kite? need a few more bar lessons on the beach before launchday. will see if we can't get some of this filmed for a new roadtrip movie we're plannig on doing. if any of yous have any wild and original ideas that haven't been tried before but you might consider trying, get in contact and we'll come and film you.

Shane,
Dunno bro, we still trying to get our hands on ALL the footage. Theres so much hardcore stuff they didnt use, we filmed hard out for 3 days, dawn till dusk.

Belac, be real careful bro, its all in the kite handling riding on hills, and remember when youre riding down the slope, the zenith will be behind you, not above you. It does a few funny things to your kite that you dont get on flatland and you should get comfortable with downlooping your landings or else ya tend to get dropped like a sack of sh1t.
We love it, its so different to flat and you have to learn a whole new set of skills to really ride it hard.

Cant wait to come hill flying with ya when i get home. its the future of KGB.

Butch

questions for Butch the hill riding guru.

Can you down loop to late/early and be slammed into the hill?

What about sheeting the bar in while flying? will this stall you and start sending you back up the slope? or will I gett dropped like a sack of sh&t action?

when would you get dropped if your flying down a hill? near the base of the hill? do you need to downloop before the bottom?

what about cross-on wind? rather than straight up the hill do the rules change again.

any hints on practicing hill riding relatively safely?

Plummet,

1) youll need about 4 or 5m clearance when you loop, that way youll get a nice smooth landing. If ya leave it too late and the kite is too low in the loop , youll get hurt.
Its never too early to loop, haha.

2) Pulling the bar in in flight will slow your decent, but will not fly you back up. Best to pull bar in when boosting, then let out to half to a third while in flight, pull back in on landing to slow you up a bit.
As long as you keep the kite above and slightly in front of you, youll get a safe smooth float.

3)The wind will be stronger towards the top of the hill as the air moving across the ground will have to accelerate up the slope to catch up to the air above. Called the Venturi effect i think.
You will have less lift and float further down the hill.
You MUST remember to redirect and keep it above and in front of you with small figure 8's to keep momentum going, otherwise its a straight up, straight down deal.

4)The best winds are , Straight up the hill for huge hangtime but less travel, Cross up the hill is best as you can load up and boost massive across the hill and have more forward travel , ala Chasta stylee!

5) Never go out in anything stronger than about 15-18 mph on the hills.
The wind will be sketchy the higher you go and in higher windspeeds the higher the gusts making them too much unless you a really confident at height with a powered kite. Not recommended until you are a kite god.

dont use anything smaller than a 10m foil or you woill be moving way too fast thru the air .

Start halfway up first to get the feel of it, sometimes its better without a board too.

You WILL go higher than you normally would on flat. Be ready for it.

Finally..... have fun.

Butch

good advise as always.

if your lower than 4-5 meters and want to land its pull in the bar and hope? or maybe a strong re-direct but not down loop?

thanks

so how did it go belac?

well, mike who i was going up with bottled at the last moment as he was offered some underwater diving work, so i decided to head up to my mountainboard track and do some work on it instead. the course is on the mt herbert saddle tho and i could see some prime spots from where i was. just need the time to do the reckie. might do it this weekend, but gagging to get over to brighton and just ride the beach.

if you click the link below, go down to the freeride track recon photos (the ones traversing across, press refresh if theres nothing there) you can see the tops of herbert in some of the shots. bloody tussocky for the most part, but i'm sure there'll be somewhere up there for a play, and the farmed side above my house has loads of potential.

Belac,
Thats a sweeeeet lookin mtb course you got there!
Do you kite it? Whats the wind like up there.?
That would be a class landboard spot bro if the wind was right.
The hill looks sweet for kiting too. Thats a mean drop away though, youll definately be airbourne for a long while...

Go hard dude.

Butch

:shock: man you guys have been busy! how long have you been building all that stuff?!

sorry i never replied, no excuse, just poo.

the track has been in construction for just over a year now, hopefully have her running smoothly by the summer for teaching, fundays and film seshs.

deffinatly not worth kiting, just atb, too much around and too small. but the mountians it sits between (its the saddel) look pretty sick for kites. as always its having the right wind on the right day. when i went up there reacently with my kite and snowboard i'd have been dead if i'd have launched, but then theres days when i'm up there with just my mountainboard and i'd kill for a kite. gonna recky it out a lot more, need to figure out my bearings to see just where the wind is coming from and how to navigate the land (lots of tussocks, drops, fences and cattle) but seeing as i've got permission from the land owners to go mental up there, i fully intend to.

so, dragging this thred back outta storage.

wanted to have got a big kite and got up skills abit this summer, but the old ressesion and so on threw me a curveball and i've just had no money for such plesures. but i'm still so up for trying some sort of mountain kiteing out, and have even moved into the highest house up in the foothill of herbert with the mountain track ending on our land. so all adventures end on my doorstep for bacon sandwiches and a beerB)

anyway, the problem with speedkiting and mountainboards seemed to be sidewards stance, and even a regular kite is gonna ave an element of directional problems i imagine. so after abit of prowling the internet i found this, looks so much fun.

www.squidoo.com/Woopy-Jumping

i acctully think with a mountainboard, and a regular mountain you'd wanna be going alot slower, much more glide and mybe not so high, more hopping. so maybe the wing wouldn't need to be so big. i've read that these are like hens to get hold of anywhere outside of europe, so whos up for building one here? or tell me how.

I reckon a speedflying wing is the way to go.. Those things in that video didnt look very controllable.. They looked like they had heaps of float yes but if it came to avoiding something i wouldnt be soo sure..

Caleb is there enough room to launch a kite on any of the hills around your house?? Cause if so i am fully coming over at some point and giving it a go on the mountain board.

yeah...yeah theres a bit:laugh: .

maps.google.co.nz/maps?f=d&source=s_...466&t=k&z=15

heres a google map, the A is our house, we're on a 1 achre block, but with 9 more achres of land to graze for our horses. the B is an old airstrip, thats the third i've found:laugh: , it's a nice mellow hill, perfect for learning hill kiting. wind works from both east, west and north i think, bit blustery for my blade cos of the hills, but your newfangled kites would suck it up. the land infront of the house (toward the sea) is a 100m long council padock and damn perfect for kiting, alltho at the moment a farmer has replanted the field so no riding for a wee while. if your up for it at some point then i'm keen, need to talk to the main land owner tho to make sure its call with him. a few beers will sweeten him. i did a freeride hoon down half the mountain on the breakboard today and theres soo much potential up there. not that we get a hell of alot of snow on the mountain, but when we do i'm certain theres perfect plataues up there for snowkite.
the padock in front of our house. and my buddy mark flying his 3m there a couple weeks back.

yes i think you need to bust out some kite hill flying first before you punch straight into speed flying. looks like a nice spot. be aware the lift off even a small hill is huge. 10-15 knots will be plenty to scare the hell out of you.

Unless you can fly a paraglider already, you are going to die using thay Whoopy thing.
Get a 12m Manta2 or similar, and a mountainboard and start small. Otherwise leard to paraglide, then practice for ages, then buy a speed flyer.
I admire your enthusiasm bro, but backs are for lying down on, not breaking.
Awesome looking spot though.
Fly safe.

Butch

did abit of paragliding back in blighty, managed to mash myself up tho (thinking i was 2ft above the floor i folded the canopy, bad eyesight over cut stuble field, i was 20ft, weeeeeee, BANG! sprained ankle. my dad said it was the funniest thing he'd ever seen). i get what your on about with the whole safety thing, elieve me as a builder i'm buggered if i injure myself. but won't let it stop me trying to scare myself now and then, always safely tho.
in reality money means i'm way off being able to do to much up there at the moment. but gonna pratice my snowkiting up there this winter and just see where that leads. i've seen a few suitable areas, it's just getting the wind right on the day. a bigger depower kite is deffinetly on the cards now, i've always seen people using ozones mainly for this type of sport, are they more floaty?
i still think a whoopy wing should be made here tho, if youv'e got breaks you can always bail.