How To Fly Parafoil Kites

Hello, I'm Thomas from the Kitesurf Centre. Today, I'm just going to show you a couple of tips on how to fly a kite and how to get into these brilliant sports of kite flying. This is how to fly a parafoil kite.

So, the first thing, I'm just going to explain why a parafoil is called a parafoil and a few of the terms. So, a parafoil, that name is due to the kite lifting as if like a parachute, that's where the ‘para' comes from and the ‘foil', you can see with this kite when you pull it like that, these big air pockets fill up and we get an aerofoil shape. So, the same with an airplane, that's where the ‘foil' part of the name comes from.

So with these kites as well as being called parafoils, they can also be called para kites or simply foil kites, or another name for them is round air, so the air's going inside in its pockets and round in by the wind filling up. So, there's loads of names for this type of kite. I'm now going to go down to the handles and get this kite in the air and talk you through how to actually fly the kite.

Let's go. So we set our kite up, gone through everything, now we get this up into the air. So, I've put a little bit of weight on one wing tip.

I'm just going to give this left hand handle a bit of a tug and the kite's going to come up into the air. So now, I'm going to go through the steering of the parafoil and how we use the handles to move the kite around this height. So see, one handle is red, one is blue, make sure when you pick up your handles, it all matches up with the kite in as well.

So, the red is always on the left. Sometimes, it's blue on the right, it depends on which manufacturer your kite is made by, but always red on the left. To steer our kite, what we need to do is pull one handle over the other.

So if I want the kite to go right, I'm going to pull right. If the kite is to go left, I'm going to pull left. So the more aggressive I am with these movements, the quicker the kite's going to move and the more power it's going to start to produce.

So if I'm really gentle like I'm doing now, nice with the movements, the kite's only going to move slowly side to side. If I do big movements, the kite's going to start to move around the sky really fast and really start to pull. So as you see, I'm getting a little bit of power.

But when you're first starting out, be really gentle with your kite and go with little movements. You're not actually really putting any movement on to the handle, you're just kind of putting a bit of tension on one side of the other. So, flying a kite's all about being gentle, nice and slow, and then you can start to do these big movements and have a bit more fun.

So, other thing that's really important with these kites is safety. You've got a bit of power. You want to make sure you're not going to get hurt.

So, I've got these kite killers around my wrists. They're attaching to the brake lines on this kite, so if it does go wrong, I can just let go and it's going to kill the kite's power instantly. So, make sure that your kite has got some kite killers so that you're not going to get hurt.

That's how to fly a parafoil kite. .