New Revolution Fly and Glide Skill: The Revolution Reflex 360 by Revolution Kites

Transcript

1. ›

   Trying the Reflex 360

   0:00

   I'm Joe Hadzicki, inventor of the Revolution, and wow, that 360 with the Reflex was super easy. If you've ever tried a 360 without the Reflex, you know how challenging it can be. Let's give one a try. Wow, I didn't quite make that. Let me see if I can come up with a couple of excuses why.

2. ›

   Why a standard 360 is hard

   0:47

   Number one, for a 360 you really need light, smooth conditions, zero to two miles an hour, and this park is anything but that. The typical conditions, and the conditions today, are zero to six miles an hour, and it's very turbulent.

3. ›

   The upwind problem

   1:03

   Imagine flying your Revolution upwind. You have a six-mile-an-hour wind blowing it towards you, which means you've got to run that way six miles an hour just to hit zero, and then you have to add a couple of miles an hour just to keep it flying. So basically you need to run backwards at eight or ten miles an hour in a circle to make a 360 work. I'm getting too old for that. Once I flew the 360 using the Reflex, I realized how easy it was, and I asked myself why anyone would ever do a 360 without the Reflex. Here are a few tips and tricks on how to do a 360 with your Revolution Reflex.

4. ›

   The old school 360

   1:45

   Okay, for the old school 360, basically what you're doing is taking your Rev, flying it out to the edge of the wind, and then trying to fly it upwind. The only way to get it to go upwind is to generate enough pressure on the sail to keep it flying, so as you come up here you have to run downwind. At this point you're exactly dead upwind, so if the wind is blowing this way, you've got to have that wind speed running this way, plus enough to keep it flying. That's where the eight or ten mile an hour run comes in, to get it to come around. Then, once you get to this point, the oncoming wind picks it up again and you finish your 360.

5. ›

   The Reflex 360 method

   2:20

   For the Reflex model, what you basically do is fly it up into a float. From the float, you pull it into a glide and you get it to glide across. It floats on its own and it flies on its own. In fact, the lines can go slack while you're doing this. It flies downwind and then you recapture it. To practice this, we're going to take it up pretty much overhead and practice that tug and bring it across. Then we're gradually going to bring it up and out to the side, farther out, and get a bigger and bigger glide to get it to come around. This is what it looks like on the field.

6. ›

   Practicing the tug and glide

   3:11

   All right. Once you have that basic float up overhead, tug, and fly downwind, you push it out a little bit further, fly it slightly out to the side, pull, and get a little bit of side flight to it as it glides downwind. That tug is very important. If you tug too hard, you'll just yank it around and cause it to rise up. Basically, you're setting your wing into a gliding mode, and you need to softly release it and let it fly.

7. ›

   Walking the circle

   3:35

   After you finish that, the next thing we're going to do is the same thing, but fly it further out to the side in a float. As it's going out in a float, you start to walk in a circular path. Your Rev is flying in a circular path on the outer edge, and you're walking in the opposite circle on the inside, so you're switching positions. Now your Revolution is moving upwind, but it's gliding. At this point you give it a little tug on that top line and it pulls across. As it flies across and heads downwind, you can continue walking across and walking upward, and that's how you get this 360 motion. This is what it looks like.

8. ›

   A 360 in six to eight mph

   4:33

   Okay, that was amazing. That was a 360 style. We took it out to the edge, as the Rev flew up and around I started jogging down around, we started doing our little circle, I gave it a tug, it flew across and went downward, and I just continued jogging up. I had to dodge the lines because the lines were floating down in front of me, so that was really what I was running around with, the lines. Then I caught it right on. What's amazing about it is that this is the Reflex XX Tarantula, and the winds are blowing about six to eight miles an hour, so it would have been impossible to do a standard 360.

9. ›

   Controlling the glide path

   5:00

   Let's take it to the next level. What I want to do here is more about controlling that glide path: how far up it goes, how hard you pull it, how fast it is moving. One of the great things about the float is that it can float very slowly, which gives you a lot of time to position yourself. Secondly, most of the time I'm not even watching the Rev. I already know it's floating, and I saw from its launch which way it was going, so now I'm focused on avoiding the lines, moving around in a circle, and getting ready to catch it at the end. Let's see if we can get a couple more in here. Catch or not to catch.

10. ›

    The fly and glide challenge

    6:46

    The fly and glide Reflex tricks are a lot of fun, so I challenge you: pick up a Revolution and let's see what the new Reflex fly and glide trick is going to be.