Falling leaf by Aerialis Kites

Transcript

1. ›

   Introduction

   0:00

   Just take a look at this: the wind's coming in from the sea, it's perfect. Hi! Get ready, sit back and check out this brand new quad kite trick tutorial: the falling leaf. Pretty cool, eh? Just popping that kite out of the air and letting it fall down like a leaf, and then recover with a big bang just before it hits the ground. And the best thing is that I'm just about to tell you how to do it. So just follow along with this tutorial and soon you will have the falling leaf trick down.

2. ›

   Five elements

   2:13

   For your information, in this tutorial I'm using a 10 meter line set, that's 30 feet, but this trick will work on the longest of lines too. The only reason why I'm using such a short set of lines is to get the kite up close for filming. With that out of the way, let's start by breaking this trick down into smaller elements, so that you more or less can practice them one by one, at least the first ones, before putting it all together. In my opinion this trick can be broken down into five separate elements: one, fly into the hover; two, hold the hover; three, start the falling leaf; four, tend the falling leaf; and finally, five, recover from the falling leaf.

3. ›

   Fly into the hover and hold it

   2:56

   Okay, the first two steps should be pretty basic now, and covered in a couple of my previous tutorials. You can check out the links for those tutorials down below, or in the text, or wherever. The fly into and hold the hover should pretty much look like this. Make sure to do the hover high up in the wind window, because the higher the hover, the longer your kite will fall, and the longer the fall, the more impressive the trick.

4. ›

   Start the fall

   3:37

   Three: start the falling leaf. Now you have the kite in the right position for initiating the falling leaf trick, and you do it by giving both brake lines a significant pop and keeping your handles in that pop position, thumbs forward and the brakes on. This pop should abruptly take out all the pressure in your sail, and holding the handles in the pop position will force your kite into such an angle of attack that you won't fly but rather start to fall down towards the ground.

5. ›

   Tend the fall

   4:33

   Four: tend the falling leaf. And now comes what I think is the most critical, the most difficult element: tending the kite while it's falling, because you must make sure the kite always has the correct angle of attack, or maybe I should rather call it the right angle of defense. Thumbs too far forward, too much brake, and the kite is prone to fall over onto its back, especially in light winds, looking like this. And thumbs too far back, too much power, and the kite will unintentionally recover from falling, especially in higher winds, looking like this. You will probably have to experiment to find your kite and handles combination's sweet spot: what hand position is required to keep your kite falling while tending the fall. When you get it, you can make your kite fall from the very top of your wind window and all the way down.

6. ›

   Body language

   6:00

   And once again, as always, a little body language can improve things. In higher winds it's not a bad idea to walk downwind a few steps to reduce the chance of an unintentional recovery. Likewise, walking backwards in light wind conditions makes your kite less prone to fall over onto its back. So go out, give it a try, and experiment until you get it right.

7. ›

   Recover

   6:20

   Five: recover from the falling leaf. Because we're not quite ready yet: we don't want that kite to fall all the way to the ground, do we? Nope. At some point we do want to recover intentionally, and here's how. You pull hard on your front lines again, by quickly moving both your thumbs backwards towards your body. This will also make the brake lines go a little slacker. Just think of it as a powerful launch off of the ground. Sometimes you will even have to move backwards on the ground, because this input will promptly establish pressure in the sail again and stop the kite from falling. If you maintain that hand position, thumbs back, your kite will fly off forwards again. Or, if you return your hands to a more neutral position, your kite will, tending it, sit in a pretty stable upright hover, but this time close to the ground.

8. ›

   Putting it together

   7:27

   Now when you have everything down, it should all look something like this: flying into position, hover, pop the brake lines to initiate the trick, pull your front lines to recover, fly off or hover in place. Now that's way cool. All right, now all you have to do is grab your kites and lines, go to the field and have fun while practicing. And oh yeah, please have in mind that there are always several ways to approach any trick or move. You must make sure you have the basics down, but the rest is more of an individual thing. In this tutorial I've gone about it in a way that has worked for me, and hopefully you will find things in here working for you too. Thanks for watching, and see you in my next tutorial. Bye bye.