Side slides by KiteForge

Transcript

1. ›

   Upright side slide

   0:06

   In this tutorial we're going to touch on side slides. Side slides, as opposed to our normal forward flight, reverse flight, rotations and that sort of thing, are where the kite actually travels toward one wing tip, regardless of the orientation it's in. The easiest one to start with is an upright position. What you'll feel and see is that there are actually two parts to making the kite slide upright. One is that I pull the hand that I want the kite to start traveling toward. However, if I only do that, you'll see the kite peels off and turns. So at the same time, I put a little bit of pressure on my trailing brake line. I draw this right hand in to start the right slide, and I keep a little bit of pressure on the other brake thumb just to keep the kite from turning. Again, the right hand comes in, with that little bit of left thumb pressure, and that allows me to keep my trim going back the other way. I draw the left arm in and apply a little bit of pressure on the right thumb to make sure the trailing wing doesn't take off on me. So I'm just going back and forth, and as that hand comes forward, you can really see me working that thumb. It's not drastic, it's just keeping enough pressure to hold that wing in position. That's the upright hover: a very simple principle.

2. ›

   Inverted side slide

   1:32

   The inverted hover is also very similar, except that it comes with the added complexity of maintaining a stable inverted hover while you're attempting it. Same idea in this position: I pull my left hand in and then apply a very small amount of brake with my right finger. But all the while my hands are a little lower than they were for the upright slide. You can see that my handles are lower than my elbows, which means I'm brake-favored. For each slide, I'm pulling on the leading wing and then applying a little bit of brake on the trailing wing. I'll go back to the upright once more, so you can see my hands are now high-favored, slightly above my elbows, and we're doing the same thing. The ratio of input is slightly different between inverted and upright, but the same principle applies.

3. ›

   Sliding up and down

   2:27

   For a side slide up and down, it's a very similar feeling, except that for me it's more focused and balanced from a sideways hover. With the sideways hover in position, sliding down, I simply let the top hand out and also try to control that bottom brake a little. There it is. And here, going up, sliding up, this hand gets heavier and, once more, I apply a little bit of pressure on that brake. There we are, just like that.

4. ›

   Closing thoughts

   3:02

   Having covered the basics of the side slide, I encourage you to go out and explore it. Try it in different positions and different places in the window. You'll feel that as you get closer to the edges of the window, it tends to push on you a bit and mess up your control a little. Nonetheless, there are ways to overcome that, and you'll have a lot of fun with it. We'll see you in the next tutorial.