How To Understand A Wind Window

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. So whenever I'm flying a kite, the area that it can fly in is called the wind window.

So, you can see the kite's right above my head up there and what we call that is either called the zenith or it can also be called 12 o'clock. If I move the kite gently across to there, that is 11 o'clock, 10 o'clock a little bit lower, and 9 o'clock over there. So, I steer this all the way back again, back on to 12 o'clock and we've got exactly the same on the other side.

So, we have 1 o'clock there, 2 o'clock there, and 3 o'clock down near the floor on that side. So, that is the edge of our wind window. All the way along the edge of the wind window, along that cut phase, the kite's out of power, it's going to be nice and easy to control, and that's also where we'd launch and land, at 9 o'clock and 3 o'clock if it was a really strong wind.

As you bring your kite further in front of you, so not to the edge or above your head, in this right in the middle, it's going to be faster and it's going to pull more because it's catching a lot more of the wind. So if I do that now, so you're going to do that by steering your kite by pulling the bar left and right. I'm going to start to bring the kite low now, and its air is moving much much faster and I'm starting to feel some more pull on the bar.

So I'm staying the same as I would up in the 12 o'clock as I just shared to you but we've got a lot more power, a lot more speed on the kite, so you have to react a little bit quicker. The bigger bar movements are saying get the kite to turn faster. And then if you need a rest or there's maybe a little bit too much wind, you can put the kite back at 12 o'clock to tilt the power and it's really easy to control again.

Now, we can just go through the landing of our kite. So, this is a simple two-line kite, so it's not particularly easy to land. The easiest way is if you have someone, you can bring it all the way down either to 9 o'clock or all the way down to 3 o'clock and someone can catch your kite for you.

If you don't have anyone with you, the easiest way is to put your kite on to its safety system. So, we've got this one line and that's going to completely kill the power of the kite. So, work out which line your safety system is on.

Mine's on my right line, so when I let go of the bar, the kite's going to fly out and it can be held by the left line. So what I can do is I'm bringing the kite down to the left, all the way down to, over towards 9 o'clock, drop it down all the way down to 9 o'clock, let go of the bar, and the kite's flagged out and it's not producing the power, the kite's landed. If I want to get to my kite now, the easiest way to do is just walk along this line all the way up to the kite and then we could put some stones in there as if we just set it up. .