Basic Questions

[NewbFlyer]

So! What is a fighter kite? How do you "fight" with these? Do you get do dive bomb other flyers? Are these single or dual line? Basic knowledge needed!

-Shane

[Draftnik]

Most fighter kites are small single line kites that fight by manuvering to cross lines with another fighter and friction cut through the flying line. Once the tether is cut, the loosing kite floats free to the ground (hopefully). http://www.csun.edu/~ghsiung/fighters.html will show the fighters of various countries.

Japanese rokkakus also have fighting tradions. It's more common around here to see a rokkaku battle. More about them here. http://www.gombergkites.com/FAQ-R.PDF

The battles are fun, good natured demos mostly. And there's more technics then just flying across someone's line. It's possilbe to crash a kite by tipping it over. Running, pushing and shoving isn't unheard of between friendly battlers. Cutting bridles and ripping sails are also effective technics, but a little more difficult to maintain friendships with.

HTH

[NewbFlyer]

...you can manuever with a single line kite?
-Shane

[JJ]

Hey Shane,

Yes, single line kites are manuverable. On Rokkakus kite the most of the bow is taken out of the kite and makes it very unstable. When the kite leans in the direction you want the kite to go you start to pull on the line. if you give it some slack it will be unstable again and you pull when the nose is pointing in the direction you want it to go.

There are other kinds of kite fights. One is Indian fighter kites. This one is a little more civil here in the US. There is a referer the uses two differnt sounds. The sound instructs the competitors if they need to manuver the over top of the others line or underneth the others line. Once the kite line goes over or under his competitor's kite and touches his line the round is over.

click here to get some better instructions.
http://www.windpowersports.com/guides/fighter-kite.html

click here to see some kites.
http://www.windpowersports.com/kites/si ... ghter.html

JJ

[Draftnik]

JJ's right, in the states the small fighters have staged competitions with a set of manuevers the competitors complete at the referees signal. Good flyers can have amazing control over a single line kite.

We've watched a small fighter get hopelessly twisted in a train of kites, or so one would think. The fighter flyer was a great flyer and flew around the train until the twists were all out and he was free again! Also saw a national champ fighter flyer fly a small kite bringing it down to tap people on the shoulder and darting back up into the sky when they turned around.

[Frodos Majik]

Now thats control!

[NewbFlyer]

That's control as well as...FREAKING AWESOME!!!
-Shane