The Slide-Turn: An Advanced Rev Skill from Its Inventor, Joe Hadzicki by Revolution Kites

Transcript

1. ›

   Three types of motion

   0:00

   Hi, I'm Joe Hadzicki, inventor of the Revolution, and today I'm going to show you some tips and tricks on one of our advanced skills here at Revolution Club 38. There are three types of motion: forward and reverse flight, left and right turns and spins, and sliding left and right. The weakest of all three of those is the slide. So when you're trying to do a slide move, all your other controls are trying to take over; the kite is trying to spin or take off forward or something, so it's hard to stay in control of those.

2. ›

   Slide and turn together

   0:35

   As you're flying forward, you need to pull back on the handle to cause a slide. At the same time as you pull back, you also rotate the handle to cause a turn. So we end up with forward flight with a slide and a turn, and what this turns into is big swooping turns. These kinds of turns are very easy to do with a two-line kite, like a two-line delta, because they are already set in forward flight. You can't slow them down and stop them; they want to go forward. So all you have to do is pull and it automatically turns. With the Rev, it's not quite that simple. What a Rev would love to do is spin, stop and hover, and fly in reverse, so it's trying to do everything other than what you're trying to do.

3. ›

   Flying and sliding

   1:19

   To start out, we're going to start with forward flight and then add a little pull and see if we can get a little slide. It looks like this. We're flying to the side, and our handles are already staggered because we're trying to control the height. As we go to the side, if we pull back on the top, we slide up; if we pull back on the bottom, we slide down. Same thing in reverse: you can pull the top and slide up, you can pull the bottom and slide down. That's a fly and slide.

4. ›

   Adding the turn

   1:50

   All right, we've got the flying and we've got the sliding. Now let's add the third part, which is the turn. We're going to be flying to the side, and we'll pull back to generate a slide, let's say upward, and at the same time rotate slightly to cause a turn. You should end up with a fly-slide-turn. It looks like this: flying, sliding, turning. There we go. Again: flying, sliding, turning. See how we got a nice round curved circle out of that? That's all three components together.

5. ›

   Gravity and speed control

   2:28

   Gravity plays a huge part in this. When you're going up, gravity is trying to pull you down, and after you turn over the top, gravity is going to want to pull you down too. So remember, you've got speed control and you can stop at any time. When you come over the top and start to head down, the kite starts to speed up. Stop your Rev, slow down your Rev. There are a lot of things going on, so stay focused and take it nice and slow.

6. ›

   Practice patterns

   2:52

   Let's go through a couple of little patterns. I'm going to do a nice slow, big turn, and then a smaller turn. It looks like this. Speed control is a huge factor in all this, so practice that speed control while you're practicing your spins, your circles, and your slow-motion flying. We'll see you on the field.