How To Fly A Kite

Hello, I'm Thomas from the Kitesurf Center. Today, I'm going to show you a couple of tips how to fly a kite and how to get into these brilliant sports of kite flying. Now, I am going to show you how to fly a kite, so what we're going to start with, I am just going to unravel the kite.

I'm going to show you how to set it up and go through the controls and actually how to get it into the air. So, I'm just going to go through the set up now. First thing to do is we are just going to lay the kite out, let the wind blow it out so it can unravel, and we're going to put a little bit of weight on the out wind wing tips.

Our wind is going this way so we're going to put a bit of wind on this end and now we are not going to allow the kite to just to blow out so it's not catching the wind. This string on the end, that's called bridle that supports the kite. Make sure it's not tying it up so you can see how the kite works.

It's got these air pockets along the front of the kite, then I pull this into the wind, you can see the air pockets fill up that allows it to fly and this part right here holds it into position to control the kite left and right. So, the kite is laid out now, all we need to do is lay out our bar of lines and then attach it to the kite, so we are just going to put the ends of the lines just around the kite here and walk it out. I'm just untangling the lines here, just run them through my fingers and that allows you to feel the line and remove the tangles, if you got any damage to your line or knots in your line, you take the knot out if the line is really damaged, you might want to replace it and not use it.

So now, we are going to reattach our lines and what you can see we got color coating and it is the same done on the bar end, one side is left and that is always red, all kites from all manufacturers, there is always going to be a red side, so make sure when you put the kite down, the red is on the left. And it all matches up in the front here, red up on this left bridle and you can see on the end of the line we got flex and we got red on the line so you know you are attaching it to the correct place so we attach our lines. Let's see what we got.

We got a loop and we got a knot, so what we need to do is loop it in, make sure it looks like this hold those two down, so now I have the slip knots that goes over the knot, pull it tight against the knots and it is nice and secure and ready to go. Now, do exactly the same to the other line and as you can see, we got blue to blue. You know you got it in the right place, okay.

So, on all kites. On all kites, we have safety systems. You are going to have a wrist leash, be sure you put it on before you fly your kite and how this works is if you let go of your kite, then this line can run free on the end of the bar.

Now, it's going to be sent out on one line and on the beach, the kite flies out and starts flapping its wings side to side. So, that's your safety system so you can let go of the string and let it run out and when you are holding the bar, make sure your red is on the left. Now, we are going to get our kite back in the air.

So, walk back gently and the kite is going to start to lift and on that wing tip, we just need to put a little bit of tension on the upper line that's going to lift the kite up, then you give it a little yank and that's going to make the kite pop into the wind. Now, if it is really really windy, you might not want to fly your kite. It is not too windy today and we are working on a little kite so this is going to be perfect.

Now, I am going to tell you how to control the kite. If you want the kite to go left, you pull to the left and if you want it to go right, you pull it right, so pull left for left and right for right, just steer the bar as if you were driving a car, and that's how you fly and control a kite. .