[BCC'd to a couple of Octopus fliers]
It's not a good afternoon to go kite flying.
I just tried...
I took Veronica (
http://www.veronica.tug.com ) to the nearest park. I noticed that it was cold (I was a little concerned that I was parking my anchor/car on snow...), but whilst is was clearly windy, the only risk I was considering was that I might rip her due to poor manhandling.
My first thought was that I was going to have severe difficulty in bringing her down again but at some point during the launch, she burst. She put rips several feet long down the seams near the top of several of her middle tentacles.
I guess I've found her upper wind limit
Still, my best guestimate is that she's been flown around 85 times since I got her in the summer, so on Dave Gomberg's Rule of thumb that you tear up a hundred dollar bill every time you get the kite out of the bag, I think we're doing pretty well.
With 20/20 hindsite, I figure: - Flying in such strong wind wasn't such a good idea. You live and learn... - Doing a long-line launch wasn't such a hot idea either. If I'd have been flying a parafoil, I would probably have walked it up, but the reality is that she would probably have become unstable anyway and reached max speed in a power dive instead of at launch. - I have a suspicion that the real problem was an *inflation* problem, that she took a huge gulp of air whilst half-inflated and blew out as the constricting point, but I have nothing to back this conjecture.
