The jump by Aerialis Kites

Transcript

1. ›

   Introduction

   0:00

   Hi there, Sven Arnesen from Aerialis Kites, and here's another brand new quad line kite tutorial for you.

2. ›

   What the jump is

   1:15

   You know: fly your quad across the wind window, close to the ground, and then, bang, it stops, and within the next split second the kite shoots upwards for quite some distance, stops, and continues its horizontal trajectory. It's called the jump. Now that's pretty cool, eh? From the horizontal line, just bang, the kite stops there and immediately ascends vertically, straight upwards, and then another bang, and the kite returns to that horizontal trajectory again, but now much higher in the wind window. And what's even cooler is that I'm going to teach you how to do this move, so just follow along with this tutorial.

3. ›

   Before you start

   2:02

   In this tutorial I'm alternating between 10 meter and 30 meter line sets. The shorter set brings the kite up close for filming the details, and the longer set enlarges the wind window, thus allowing for longer horizontal trajectories and ascents. Now, there are some basic skills you need to have down before you try the jump, and they are covered in a handful of my other tutorials, links down below in the text, or wherever.

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   Five elements

   2:44

   All right. By now you know what's coming next, right? Don't you? Yeah, it's how to break this move down into smaller elements that can be practiced separately before they're all put together. So here we go. One: horizontal trajectory. Two: dead stop. Three: the vertical ascent. Four: dead stop the ascent. And finally, five: continue the horizontal trajectory. Now, this jump move is a perfect example of how you really can practice all the elements more or less separately. So let's go through them and check them out one by one.

5. ›

   1. The horizontal trajectory

   3:24

   Okay, number one: the horizontal trajectory. All right: fly your kite across the wind window, stop before the kite hits the edge, turn the kite 180 degrees and repeat the trajectory in the opposite direction. You can keep on doing this forever. Remember to position one foot a little in front of the other: if flying to the right, put your right foot a little forward, and vice versa. This will automatically turn your upper body and arms into the correct position for the horizontal trajectory, the stops, the ascent and the continued trajectory higher in the window. Left foot and hand forward when flying to the left, and when you return to the right, make sure to put your right foot and hand a little forward again.

6. ›

   2. The dead stop

   4:06

   Two: the dead stop. Continue flying the horizontal trajectories, but do a dead stop and sideways hover for a second before you continue the trajectory. Turn the kite around again and repeat the trajectory, and then stop again, now in the other direction. Say you fly to the left: make sure your left foot and hand are a little in front of the other while flying the trajectory. You stop by quickly applying your brakes, pushing your thumbs forward. Then pin the hover with subtle input with your hands and wrists. Start the trajectory again by pushing both thumbs back, and make sure your left foot and hand are still a little in front of the other.

7. ›

   3. The vertical ascent

   5:10

   Three: the vertical ascent. Now things become a bit more difficult, but a good way to start practicing the ascent is to start from a sideways hover straight downwind. Hold this hover for a couple of seconds until you're in control, and then fly your kite in a perfectly vertical line upwards, making sure the kite's leading edge is vertical too. You do this ascent by pulling on the upper wing, slash upper hand, while extending the lower hand slightly away from your body. In lower winds you probably have to walk backwards too, to make sure you have enough pressure in the sail to ascend the kite kind of fast. You can go as high as you like and make a controlled stop. Let the kite hover for another couple of seconds before you slowly take it down towards the ground again, still keeping its leading edge vertical. Now you should practice flying up and down in the middle of the wind window like this, always making sure the kite's leading edge is vertical. Then you turn the kite around 180 degrees so that the leading edge is pointing to the other side, but still vertical. Repeat the ascent and descent until it becomes kind of second nature.

8. ›

   4. Stop the ascent

   6:32

   Four: stop, the dead stop. As we've seen in a few other tutorials, the kite will lose its pressure when approaching the edge of the wind window, not being able to fly anymore. That's why we have to stop the ascent before the kite reaches the top of the wind window: because you will need that pressure in the sail to continue the horizontal trajectory up there. Okay, let's assume you're ascending the kite with its leading edge pointing to the left. Then you will have your left hand and foot a little in front of the other. To stop the ascent, you should pull your left hand a little closer to your body and maybe extend your right arm a little too. This will change the kite's sideways angle of attack and bring it to a stop. If you pull your left hand too close to your body, the kite will start to descend, so make sure to avoid this. When you have held a hover high up in the wind window for a few seconds, you can start the descent: pull your left hand a little closer to your body so that the kite starts to descend ever so slowly, and let it descend down to about one, maybe one and a half kite widths above the ground before you stop and hover again. Now repeat it all over again several times, but now try to stop your kite at least three times during the ascent. When descending, you can go all the way down without stopping. This will focus on stopping the kite while ascending, and soon you will start to get things right and you can stop the kite dead wherever it sits on that vertical axis.

9. ›

   5. Continue the horizontal trajectory

   8:16

   Five: continue the horizontal trajectory. Finally you're ready to continue that horizontal trajectory again, but now with your kite much higher up in the wind window. Initiating a horizontal trajectory this high in the wind window is somewhat different from starting it down low, because your kite is high in the air and you're down on the ground: the flying lines are at another angle to the kite than when your kite is low. So when you initiate that trajectory again by pulling the thumbs back, the kite reacts somewhat differently, sitting high up there. I suggest you first practice straight trajectories high in the wind window, going from one side to the other and back and forth, just to get the feel for how to fly those straight lines close to the top of the wind window, and feel the difference compared to flying the kite down low, because there is a difference. All right, the next practice is to stop the kite dead in the center of the wind window, high up there. Let it hover for a second or two before you start the horizontal trajectory again towards the edge. Now turn your kite 180 degrees and do exactly the same, but in the opposite direction. Keep on doing this until it becomes second nature. By the way, in low winds you probably have to move backwards slightly to maintain enough pressure in the sail for the kite to fly.

10. ›

    Putting it all together

    9:43

    Finally, putting it all together. Having practiced the five elements one by one, we're finally ready to put them all together, and when you get it right, the whole thing should look something like this. In my opinion there are two critical success factors for the jump. The first is the transition between the first horizontal trajectory and the ascent. The second is the transition from the ascent to the higher trajectory. Both these transitions should be as seamless as possible. The stop should be kind of invisible, and the kite should just seamlessly switch from that straight horizontal to a straight vertical line, and again seamlessly from the ascent back into the horizontal trajectory high up there.

11. ›

    A closer look at the transitions

    11:06

    Okay, let's take a closer look at the first transition: horizontal, stop, ascent. You initiate the stop by applying the brakes, and start the ascent by pulling on the upper hand while pushing on the lower. However, this should happen almost in one motion, to make that transition as seamless as possible. Now let's bring in the pilot for a closer look. As you can clearly see from this video, the hand motions are really, really quick, to make the stop as invisible as possible. Let's take another look at it, and we'll bring in the kite as well. Once again, your input must be really, really fast, almost like one fluent move. But as always, when flying a quad kite, you can start out really slow to get the hang of it, and when you're in control, gradually speed up until it's there.

12. ›

    Practice

    12:14

    Now all you have to do is grab your kite and lines, go to the field and have some fun. Start out by practicing the different elements one by one until you have them all down, then try to put them all together, starting out slow and speeding it up as you get along. Remember, practice makes perfect. Thanks for watching, and see you in my next tutorial. Bye bye. Just fly.