Over the Top: passing the kite over your head

This lesson is part of the Cramayailes indoor 4-line school, restored by QuadKites.org. The text is Thierry Bressure’s, in the first person, translated from French. The video commentary is in French.

Prerequisite: 360, turn.

Passing the kite over your head, describing an arc.

Although this figure actually requires no prerequisite, since no technique from the previous lessons is absolutely necessary, I put it in the intermediate category because performing it well is far from obvious:

• the kite goes through a stage where the pilot’s movement cannot generate relative wind;
• the pilot’s movement is complex in order to keep pressure;
• an arm movement is needed to keep pressure.

The figure consists of making the revo climb to the zenith, then come down on the other side.

During the climb phase, the pilot moves straight back. When the kite is close to the zenith, the relative wind being horizontal, its effect on the revo is almost nil.

Two techniques are possible:

• either the momentum given to the revo during the climb is enough to carry it over to the other side;
• or you generate wind perpendicular to the kite, that is, vertical, by lowering your arms.

The momentum technique does not allow a slow bell shape, and the lack of pressure at the zenith prevents performing a complex figure. Prefer the technique of vertical wind produced by the arms.

At the moment the revo passes over your head, the pilot must turn around and move back to accompany the kite under pressure on its descent.

Starting from a 360, begin a turn over the top. When the kite is LE up, release the brake on the braked wing and move straight back. The revo begins its ascent.

Keep moving straight back, releasing the brakes so that the kite climbs. Take advantage of this moment, when you have more power than needed, to raise your arms a little.

When the kite is almost at the zenith, pull your arms down to generate vertical wind. The kite keeps moving forward and passes over the pilot’s head. The pilot turns around to face the kite and moves back. Moving back is essential here to keep pressure at a constant speed.

When the kite is low enough, just before entering the first flight level, turn by braking one wing. Add compensation and go into a 360.

When the pilot turns around, the hands are still straight but the lines cross.

A mistake is to believe the handles must follow the kite in the descending phase. Doing so leaves you with the handles upside down, and you can only restart in one direction in a 360, because the anatomy of the body only allows that one.

A golden rule with the revo: the hands must stay in front of you, left hand on the left and right hand on the right. The lines, however, cross!

By turning around and keeping the hands in front, the pilot ends up with a half turn in the lines. On leaving the OTT, one side undoes this half turn and the other adds yet another half turn, ending with a full turn in the lines. The second case is less favorable. How to avoid it?

During the climb, ask yourself which way you want the kite to go after its descent, relative to the pilot. If you want it to go right, that is, the kite passes over your head, you turn around and the kite goes left: in that case, you must turn your back to the right, that is, turn around through the left.

In the next lesson of this intermediate category, we will learn the guillotine.