Stop and Hover: A Key Skill for Rev Mastery by Revolution Kites

The stop and hover, a core skill that prevents crashes and leads to more advanced tricks: stopping, finding the balance point, then tilting towards the side hover.

From the series Spins, hover and reverse. Transcript by QuadKites.org.

Key takeaways from this video

Stopping is easy, just push your thumbs forward; even without a controlled hover, stopping is almost always better than crashing.
The hover means controlling the Rev in three directions: forward and reverse, turns, and slide.
To practise, launch, stop, find the balance point with very small handle rotations, then tilt little by little towards the side hover.
In a side hover, pull the top wing without rotating and step back; turning your body naturally brings the top handle into place.

Transcript

Why stop and hover
0:00
Hi, I'm Joe Hadzicki, inventor of the Revolution, and there are several core skills that lead to Rev mastery. Let's take a look at the core skill of stop and hover. Why is this skill important? Really, there are two reasons. First of all, your Rev is going to last a lot longer because you're going to be crashing a lot less. Secondly, this is a foundational skill that will lead to intermediate and more advanced skills, for example snap spins.
Stopping
1:15
Being able to stop and hover is essential to avoid crashes. Stopping is really easy to do with a Rev. All you have to do is rotate your thumbs forward. Stopping is the easy part. Holding the hover afterwards is a little more challenging. But stopping, even without a controlled hover, is almost always better than crashing. The hover consists of controlling your Rev in all three directions: forward and reverse flight, left and right turns, and sliding.
Practicing the hover
2:41
The perfect way to practice your hover is to launch your Rev, stop it, and then find that balance point. Notice how very small rotations of the handle affect the hover. As you begin to feel that balance point, start to take your hover slightly off angle and practice hovering at slight angles, gradually leading to a side hover.
The side hover
3:39
Okay, for the side hover, we need to pull back on the top wing to cause a sliding motion that maintains your height. During a slide, you pull back on the top wing. To make this comfortable, what I want you to do is step back as you pull back. Make sure that when you pull back, you don't rotate in the pull. Do the side hover, pull back, step back. We go to the other side: pull back, step back.
Rotating your body
4:20
As you can see in that video, I couldn't stand still while I was doing the hover. There's basically zero wind right now, so I had to keep moving, but I hope you can still see my body rotating to the different sides to give that tilt to the wing and maintain the height for that hover. As you rotate your body, that tends to rotate your shoulder, and that naturally brings the top handle back into the hover position. What I want you to do is practice this on your side hover, switching back and forth, and make sure you work on that foot move. We'll see you on the field.