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beach

Member Since 27 Apr 2006
Offline Last Active May 21 2013 10:53 AM

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Group Forum Host
Active Posts 1,765
Profile Views 22,946
Member Title Rev Staff
Age 54 years old
Birthday February 23, 1959
Gender
Male
Location
El Cajon Ca.
Interests
kites and all things kiting
Favorite Kites
need you ask

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Website URL http://
Yahoo beachbeach13@yahoo.com

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Posts I've Made

In Topic: Eliot Shook mesh weave info

16 May 2013 - 11:09 AM

Is it just me, or is this not what Wayne was asking? I don't think he was asking for a diagram or for any kind of dimensions. Merely a photo of each of the three kites labeled to have a visual representation of the difference. Hell, there was already a photo posted earlier of a 75%. Refusal of this request is like refusing to show pictures of a mid-vent and a full-vent for fear of copyright infringement. Might as well just not make the damn things if you can't take pictures of them. I'm sure there are plenty of photos out there of the Shook mesh kites; would it really be so bad to grab three and label them as 40%, 75%, and 100%? Sorry, this just seems really ridiculous.

Calm down Watty it's okay, breath....... Ben

In Topic: "The Diamond Shaft"

15 May 2013 - 08:02 AM

I just had to add this cause when you see this kind of stuff all the hard work pays off, thanks Doug...... Ben

Hi Cath, Elliot, and Ben,

Played with my 75% mesh with Ben's new diamond rods yesterday in 2-5 mph breeze. The wind was mostly 2-2.5 per the meter but sometimes died completely, sometimes gusted to 5. Wind was off a the small Lake Crabtree near RDU airport so was fairly smooth once I was above 15 ft high.

Could easily launch the kite with 2 mph breeze at 5 ft. 75 ft/90# lines. Was a lot of fun. The mesh kite with those rods was just amazing! I still have a smile on my face.

The diamond rods are amazing. Not much flex like the race rods. More like regular 3-wrap rods. And my set weighs 51g vs. 75 for the race rods. The kite is 155g so its 206g total instead of 230 with race rods. That 25 g difference seems to make it easier to both launch and float in the light winds. For me, at least it was easy to fly in my normal style only with a few mph less wind.

I have no idea what the wind range is on the diamond rods although I will probably find out soon.

Also played with the rods in my all white 1.5 (weighs 125 g) for a total weight of 176 g. It was a piece of cake in those winds. I'm sure you could fly it indoors.

So these rods open up, at least for me, a whole new wind window. I was the only one flying, of course, because there was obviously not enough wind for kite flying!

Perhaps next would be one of the printed sails as they could be even lighter?

Perhaps it's time to pull the SLE's from my 6-sail stack and replace them all with something much lighter. My chief complaint with my stack is that it really needs 8 mph ground wind to launch and then by the time it gets up, it's too much wind. So replacing the SLEs with something lighter is my next experiment. Should allow me to launch in much lower winds. Perhaps diamond rods in the back 3 sails, depending on their strength.

So keep having fun,

And Ben, I'm probably game for more of the rods....

(nice video by the way )