View Full Version : Crash test dummies: and they walked away!
Can't believe how much trouble one can find ones self in, with these kites so quickly. Thought that a thread capturing some of the more interesting moments of our sport was warranted based in an incident today.
The Crash Test Dummies part of the title comes from a few incidents that happened last year and is fast becoming a name that is going to stick with us for a while in Canberra.
Whilst most of the incidents are funny, because we walked away, let?s also learn from the experiences and try to make the sport a little safer, especially as it turns out when Mark and I are flying!
More recounts of incidents are welcomed, but try to stay to the same format please. Yes I intend this to be funny, but also thought that maybe folk can actually learn from others mistakes!
Lets see how many replies we can capture!
Cheers
Dated: 18/03/05
Headline: Buggy to Buggy crash
Size of Kite: 4.8 and 5.2
General conditions summary: Gusty winds in an oval.
Whilst parked in the oval today, watching Mark try to buggy backwards, he lost control speed towards me (the stationary party) and smacked his buggy axle into my elbow.
So in one of the largest ovals in Canberra we manage to collide, causing an extremely sore and deskinned elbow.
Learning: Stay the hell away from Mark! or actually run away when he comes close!
Dated: /02/2005
Headline: Leap over one car, crashed into another
Size of Kite: 4.8
General conditions summary: Solid wind at Lake George
Having stopped buggying and about to park my kite. Got talking with Matt to look up and see his kite lying across my lines, with my kite directly above me. Resolution was to get Matt to walk away, placing tension onto his lines and back into flight, so we thought!
Result: His kite slide down my lines, blocking my view of my kite, which promptly powered up and took me for a wee journey.
Having leaped across the front of a parked car, without going through the wind screen. Slammed backwards and head first into my own car, causing dents in the side door where my knees impacted. Kite continued to power along nicely, with two guys having to jump on me to give me the time to pull the rip cord and disengage.
No broken bones, but real sore for a few days.
Learning:
Don't get distracted when your kite is in the air.
Don't fly up wind of anything that may come and bite you, should you lose control.
Make sure your quick release has a large "something" to make the rip cord real easy to find.
Dated: /11/2004
Headline: Lights Out!
Kite Size: 3.4 Waterfoil.
General conditions summary: Gusty winds in an oval
Buggying in an oval with three buggies on a gusty, but seeming controllable day.
Result: Mark took his eye of the Water foil briefly during which time the kite must have momentarily collapsed and reopened directly in the power.
The little 3.4, in an instant dragged him out of the buggy smacking his head onto the ground, without really taking him up at all, but across at the rate of knots. This resulted in him being knocked out cold. His neck is today still stiff.
Learning:
Don't under estimate the power that even little kites can develop in an instant.
Don?t take you eye off your kite when buggying.
Dated: /09/2004
Headline: Just a little jumping on land!
Kite Size: 4.2 Razor.
General conditions summary: Nice constant wind in an oval
Mark, who thought that jumping on land, was ok, until this happened was ?playing? around with my Razor, executing little controlled pendulum jumps. Nothing large maybe six feet off the ground.
Powered the Razor up one time and took off in the opposite direction running and jumped. The Razor found either a thermal or a little extra wind, powered up three times resulting in Mark being maybe 10 to 15 meters up, at which height letting go would have resulted in at least a broken leg or two or worse.
Without panicking he flew the Razor around in two big loops, resulting in a perfectly safe, ?step softly out of the air landing?. Bloody lucky!
Learning:
Don't land jump ever! The kite might just come and bite you big time!
If it does happen don?t panic at least initially. Consider your options and try to find a way of minimizing the damage as you return to earth.
schultzie
18-03-2005, 03:41 PM
Date: 11/04
Headline: mountainboard and garbage bin
Size of kite: 15 phantom
General conditions: onshore bout 5-8knots rock solid
Justin at Mambo Classic and well there was not enough wind to be on the water so was mountainboarding and jumping park benches and a certain garbage bin...however when approaching the jump and you begin to slide you need to ABORT the jump because when garbage bins have ouchies (and no room for error) they can send you straight to hospital with broken bones.. just like justin found out. the work around the competition is that justin is a quadraplegic.. i know that is not the case even though justin may look disabled at times...
Learning: dont jump things that will cost you money (ambo fee) and stop you from having fun.
Date: 19/03/05
Headline: Bitten by the Razor again
Size of kite: 6.2 razor
General conditions: Just fantastic
Whilst flying along at around 45kms per hour, managed to let the kite drift behind me too far to further then try to recover the situation by keeping it the power. This worked well, but brought about the problem of me going north at speed and now the kite buggering off the other direction at a great rate of knots also.
Oh the turn. Almost got it done, almost. Just before impact, the thought "this is going to hurt" and it did. Spent the next few minutes gathering the pieces of life back into some order and picking the dirt out of the steering head of the buggy. Deepest groove I have ever seen a buggy cut! (wonder if the gravel rash takes as long to heal now compared to when I was much younger)
Learning: Give the Razor a solid thrashing before flying, to let it know who is boss.
Dated: 25/04/05
Headline: Bugger that Storm
Size of Kite: 3.4
General conditions summary: Shouldn't have been out there
The day was gusty, but manageable, so we thought. Kept on changing down in the size of kite as the wind kept on picking up, until somewhere on that convergence line where you can?t keep going down on the size of kite and the wind kept picking up, something was bound to happen.
My 3.4m put up a brave fight of trying to wrench me from the buggy, but I won, with a feeling on being a little warm on my left side.
Turn?s out that the warmth was from the two broken ribs suffered, when returning back into the buggy and taking a wheel into the floating ribs on the left hand side.
Bugger!
Learning: Learn to walk away, before it gets that bad again.
Dated: 05/07/05
Headline: In Just a breeze, nothing more!
Size of Kite: 6.8
General conditions summary: If a bird had farted there would have been more wind.
Thought I would try out a new setting on the Razer. Had to fly off hook to get enough scope on the handles to execute turns, due to the lack of wind. This caused the body to sometimes be at full extension on occasions to get enough leverage to execute a turn.
At one of those times (but of course, when else would it happen) the breeze increased by maybe ? of a knot, but just enough to cause my back to rip a tendon or two in the lower back, just above the pelvic bone.
Result: Spent the entire next week, off work, unable to walk properly. Nothing two or three weeks of physio won?t fix. But really painful!
Bugger and double bugger!
Learning: With the bad run of luck this year, maybe I should find an indoor board sport, or take up reading.
I guess it is inevitable that sooner or later you are going to hurt yourself in this sport but I have learned that if you take certain precautions ie. Right size kite to wind conditions, ( a lot easy to do when you have a limited range of equipment), and allow plenty of space that is obstacle free including people you can reduce stuff ups considerably.
My most common injuries have been a bit of skin off and, whilst I was learning, a many times badly bruised tail bone. I am not game to jump yet so that has probably reduced my incidents.
I have had one balls up though, which was potentially very nasty.
Got a lift down Lavis Lane onto Stockton a while back. When I got to the beach the wind had changed. I landed the kite across the beach, and proceeded to phone my long suffering other half and asking her to pick me up at Stockton. I was facing out to sea so I could hear her on the phone when a speeding Pajero crossed my lines whipping me off my feet and dragged me down the beach.
Needless to say it was a frightening experience. Fortunately I wasn?t hurt, though the kite was out of action, which had, in the long term, the biggest impact as I could not get it repaired for a while.
I am now a lot more aware of happening around me!
I was facing out to sea so I could hear her on the phone when a speeding Pajero crossed my lines whipping me off my feet and dragged me down the beach.
Needless to say it was a frightening experience. Fortunately I wasn?t hurt, though the kite was out of action, which had, in the long term, the biggest impact as I could not get it repaired for a while.
I am now a lot more aware of happening around me!
Far out, that would have been real scary!
Like you I have not had that much go wrong with the kites, in spite of what I record above. I have been flying for around 12 years now and in that time and before the start of this year, only had one spot of bother in Germany about eight years ago, when I was flying on a grass strip airport near Berlin.
Between that and this year, I have approached the sport with great caution, and until this year without any real incident. This year, well that is another story.
Maybe pushing the limits a little too much, or for the most part just been really unlucky in what has happened. The ?launch over a car? incident was a freak, as was last one where my back suffered, in no wind.
Certainly, the reason I created this message thread, was for a bit of a laugh but also so that others didn?t have to repeat mistakes already learnt the hard way by others. Hope it does a bit of both.
Cheers
I live out Walcha way and my activities are viewed with a general bemusement. I was having a ball one day having just mastered the landboard. Right at that degree of confidence when you just have to screw up.
I was flying up and down toward a row of trees behind which were a crew of workment who had been just waiting for it to happen.
The gust took the kite into a tree about 12 metres tall and I had to climb up and break many branches in the tree in full view of 15 appreciative spectators.
It took about half an hour to get the kite out of the tree. Needless to say it was completely fouled up by numerous twigs etc. The wind still howling I gathered the kite together moved upwind and anchored it . I had dragged the lines across a field with fairly high grass. Why is it that kite lines act like detritus magnets?
It took full on an hour to untangle the lines. It has never happened since. I can only thank Karma that one of the workmen did not have a video camera because the fit of temper would have ensured a spot on pratt of the week!
Don, I confess up, with the same vain, before one of my "mates" drops me in it.
On top of everything else that has happened this year, I recently had a similar experience as follows.
Flying my 4.8 meter, just for a little fun, complete with the mending back, Steve (AKA Crash) rocked up and after a couple of minutes chat gladly took hold of the kite and proceeded to get over powered, and doing the right thing let go of the handles.
Having sold Steve my old 7.5 LEI and knowing that he also owns a 4 meter, I thought he had more experience, than it turns out he did.
The kite, didn't "fall to the ground" of course, but drifted towards and wrapped itself around a GSM tower, doubling as the local flood light pole, for the oval. So picture my kite wrapped just above the flood lights but just below the GSM cells, slowly slipping down and wrapping itself over the lights. Which of course if turned on, would cook the kite and maybe people come looking for who ever it was flying on the day.
The resolution was to hire the second largest cherry picker in Canberra to go fetch the kite, before training on the Monday evening and lights frying the kite. The cost, you do not want to know, but I didn?t have a choice really. The kite was 26 meters up a tree that didn't have branches and had around 6000 watts of heating, about to fire up.
Only two goods things resulted. Crash paid half the bill, which I was extremely grateful for. And now that I have publicly confessed, my ?mates? in Canberra, have had their thunder stolen.
Someone once told me that kiting was a fun hobby to do. This year I am still waiting for some.
Cheers
meteor27
30-07-2005, 09:24 PM
How'd the new 5.5 Razor go Gary? Remember to keep it away from tall objects! :wink:
Wato
And so what did you think of it Wato?
Cheers
That must have been so emabarrassing!
I sympathise with you regarding the cost. I learned through having backed a truck into a power pole. It kept half of Bathurst from having a hot Sunday lunch and cost me over $2000.
Thats an awful lot of kiting equipment. :(
Dated: /11/2005
Headline: Up Up and Away
Kite Size: 5.5 Razor.
General conditions summary: Great conditions at Lake George. Five buggies slipping around in a solid wind.
Ben (I can only presume) got bored with his 3.5 Rebble and decided to try out my 5.5 Razor in winds that were really just a tad over where it should have been. Being reasonably new to the sport, and after being dragged all over the lake, he allowed it to rise above without the brakes.
Result: He was abducted from the buggy at rather a good rate of knots, upwards (he tells us) to about 4 meters. No problems normally but the 40 or so Kms per hour speed made his final approach to land somewhat troublesome. Taking it all in his stride a rolling and tumbling touch down was made, leaving him to scrap off the dirt and try to locate his buggy that was about 60 meters or so downwind.
Learning:
Don?t take out an over sized kite in the wrong conditions, when you aren?t use to ?things?
Maybe attach a tether to the buggy, so you do not have to walk such distances when this happens again. Or maybe a remote control to bring the buggy back under its own steam, might be worth considering.
You're so cruel Gary. Ben was just envious of the Paragliders flying off the ridge nearby, so he thought he would see how a mini razor would go....keeping in mind there are plenty of thermals on the lake....he just needs to work on his thermal management technique, and then he will be up, up and away!!!......by the way Ben, how is your back?
Paul
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