Blogs

May 30, 2018

Sexiest Kite so far at Kingston....

Please vote on what you feel has been the most elegant to watch fly so far at Kingston 2018

January 17, 2018

The gents dominated the beach today - which was pretty impressive as it was roughly 5 knots all afternoon but a perfect onshore wind (which turned directly south towards the end) But that just went to show that the beach is do-able with the southernly. @bull31 and “Roger” rocked up to supply the wanted shade on this 30c day and the entertainment began. I’m still learning the kites from visuals, so I’m sorry to not be able to give you all the specs (so hopefully our pilots can fill in the gaps) @igeighty flew his 6.5 Vapor and in true tradition went up and over the granites and added more to his bash plate scratches @Chook flew his new red 18m Ozone Chrono 1 (which I’m going to label this one Schumacher because it’s fast, enjoyable to watch and red!) 200.6km non-stop (no peedle stop either) and we were in awe at his effort. Excellent job! Get this though, the slowest speed he was travelling was 0.5kph and his fastest was 52.6kph @roblukin had Chook’s 12.5m HQ Montana depower foil to loan as it wasn’t strong enough to launch the Icon inflatables. He did an awesome job sporting his crocks and socks. @jhn.holgate added to the rainbow in the sky with his yellow 9.5m Longstar and @Tiger37 flew his 9m Flysurfer Peak 1 and was having a blast. @Grants bit the bullet and had a go at Doug’s 2.7 practice Vapor on handles and rather fancies himself a set of kenda landseglers (or similar @.Joel 😜) And as for me, we’ve come to the conclusion that the blow-fly needs at least 10knots with the “traffic cone” 5.5m sail to get moving so I set it up with wishful thinking but ended up having a splash around in the water instead) Photos provided by myself and Kirsty (Mrs. @Grants) Dougie and his 6.5m Vapor Mez being a traffic cone Set up (Doug, Mez and Ella) John and the Longstar Chook racing the ‘Schumacher’ Chook and John

January 17, 2018

Dead Calm....

Yesterday saw a rest day from Buggying however the Blokart came out on the foreshore and @igeighty, @Tiger37, @Grants and myself all went out and had an attempted sail and a few static flies. Have picked out a present I shall be buying myself, a vented Freilein. @Chook was flying one last night and it was a pleasant flight. Tell you what, if he had a few, he would of had some buyers with both John and Trevor also keen. Today we’re off again to see Robyn at Sandy Grove for Muntrie Cheesecake and coffees before heading off to the beach for a fly.

January 16, 2018

When the wind blows....,.

Monday 15th January Back to Beachport today. Checked out the beach Blowhole Road (with 4x4 access) Excellent, however the wind was square on at the Millicent Road Car Park, (where we were based yesterday) so we split up and met in the middle. It’s a southernly 21 knot this afternoon and again another buggy day in the sun. Bit rough for the Blokart, so watched the others. John and Trevor are both on the Born Stars, Dougie on the 2.7 Vapor, Chook out with the 9.0 Ozone R1 and not sure what Rob or Andy are flying as they haven’t made it down this far. Much more wind than yesterday but less foot traffic.

January 15, 2018

Beachport Fly

So the buggy wheels became sandy from our trip out to BeachPort, which is 89km south east from Kingston SE. Just before you head into town and before the caravan park is a small pull in which puts you straight on the beach. After a few groups of horses trotted through, Doug was out, keen to get a fly before another hacking group came through. With the wind SSW at 15 knots, the GT was offloaded and a 2.7m Vapor hoisted into the air, a few runs up and down the beach and Doug comes back in to grab a 4.5m Vapor. After a trip into town, John and Trevor pull in and both put up their Longstar (Green) 3.5 for John and (Blue) 7.0 for Trevor. The colours in these two kites are crisp and clean. Andy arrives with the family and the second GT buggy graces the beach. He puts up a 9.5 Kahoona and gets a few runs in with the others. In the mean time, Chook went to investigate the beach 20km along at Southend. A little wider and with 4x4 beach access, however the wind turns to favour BeachPort so he heads back and puts his green R1 in the air. I think sometimes Chook forgets that this buggy has three wheels, as we watched him a few times balance on just the two. Rob (after much contemplation) decides that the beach needs another GT and shows off his new winching system on the back of his Chamonix. Pretty nifty! Around 5pm we start to gather back in and in head back to Kingston. Everyone quite happy to of had a session and an alternative beach.

January 14, 2018

First Morning

@igeighty and myself rocked up around 6:30 (SA time) last night and set up camp. After a windy (relatively dry night) we wake to a windy and rather wet morning. Before the heavy falls started, I took my coffee up to the foreshore and watched the sand being pushed up onto the road. It was quite blustery up there. So far @jhn.holgate @Rob and @Chook managed to get out on the beach yesterday. @Grants and his family are camped up too (sorry we didn’t come over to say g’day yet. Had to put up the fortress before the weather came through. It is a waiting game at the moment for the rain to pass through and head over to Victoria as it’s a double low tide day today!

January 12, 2018

So it begins....

With the event of the year just a few days away, I shall try and keep up with the 2018 Kingston Blog. Watch this space! (have to speak with @.Joel on how to make this a group blog) Mez

January 10, 2018

Website Upgrades

The new season down under is upon us, so it's time to upgrade the website and launch a new section
Today I've done the basic upgrade, there's a few areas to fix and polish then I'll be launching a new section which will keep you hooked for hours There will be some errors and issues, they can be submitted here: http://www.extremekites.com.au/bugs/

October 25, 2017

Extreme Kites Winter Chill Hoodies

Store update, new Winter Hoodies available in Lightweight, Premium Weight, Mens, Womens and Unisex have been added.
Link: http://shop.spreadshirt.com.au/xknews/

July 27, 2017

Blofarting around...

I have an audience....thank you

Wow - I have the most viewed blog! Thank you to everyone who taken the time to view my pointless blogs. I've been quiet lately with the writing however I hope to post something soon after the next play on the beach.

March 9, 2017

Born-Kite Longstar2 Winner

The winner of the Born-Kite Longstar2 2016/17 Competition is........ @Darren Tibbey! Congratulations and welldone, throughout the competition you created some really good and engaging contributions and discussions that landed this result. In second place to Darren was @andy666 who also generated some engaging contributions. An Extreme Kites Buggy T-Shirt will be on its way to you Once again thanks to Born-Kite for supplying the prize, you can visit their website at http://www.born-kite.de

March 6, 2017

Land yacht ??

wind

Just checked the forecast to see if i can get out for a maiden voyage tomorrow 60mph wind ,rain and 0 degrees chocolates,beer and christmas carol movie me thinks Bahh Humbug !!!!!

lasrocas

December 23, 2016

Competition Time!!

In the run up to Xmas and the peak kiting season for us, We thought it was about time for another competition. Steffen Born from Born-Kites is sending us a 5.5m LongStar 2 hot off of the presses for review. We are going to review the kite during our Blow @ Kingston 2017 Meet in January and after that some lucky member will be announced the winner of the kite! Yep, nearly $1000 of Born-Kite goodness can be all yours! A big THANK YOU to Born-Kite for supplying us with the LongStar 2. Entry Details
To enter, simply start any of the following: Discussion Topic Blog Post Gallery Upload Kite Review The winner will be judged by the most total replies across all entries. Example: You create four Discussion Topics and each one receives five replies, your total score is 20.
Note: Replies to your own topics are not counted towards your total score.
Competition Information
Competition runs from Monday 12th December until Tuesday January 31st 2017.
Replies are only counted from new Discussion Topics, Blog Posts, Gallery Uploads and Reviews created during this time.
Discussion Topics in The Lounge, Buy & Sell, Meets & Events are not counted towards your score total.

jhn.holgate

December 12, 2016

Advertising on Extreme Kites

Over the past year Extreme Kites has grown considerably, for the first time in a long time Land Kiting especially in Australia has started to see a small resurgence and growth. The aim of Extreme Kites is to give kiters a place online to share their knowledge, experience and socialise online which we hope in turn leads to people building friendships. We've found the more people we reach via the website and welcome in to our community the more these individuals become our friends and meet us on a beach. Last year I completely changed platforms for the website to set ourselves up to be able to grow the community, this resulted in John Holgate taking over as Community Administrator which has given me free time to focus on site development in my spare time, the results have been incredibly positive. With the new website and amazing contributions from our community members we've arrested the overall decline in kiting numbers in many of our groups simply through a growth of interest. We now have some more plans in the pipeline, some new features that I have been working on over the past six months which we hope will create a larger knowledge pool, a more valuable resource and a continued growth of interest leading to more friends with kites flying with us. Up until this point the costs of hosting Extreme Kites, Software Licensing, Prizes and Giveaways (with exception to the first competition) have all been funded from my pocket. This area of our costs over the next few years I can't really see changing, however to implement the new features planned now requires Extreme Kites to commit to spending money on a monthly basis. It's not a huge amount of money, however it is a considerable monthly amount and my plan has always been to see Extreme Kites sustain itself so that if ever in the future I completely move on the current group of Administrators at that time can continue to operate a self-sustainable website. The finance needed to bring these new features to life and sustain the viability of funding those features is a step in this direction. These changes aren't about to deface the website and turn the whole place in to a flashing disco of distractions I'll be placing advertising in the right sidebar, and three sections in the main body of the website. Unlike some websites charging upwards of $550 to $750 a banner, we'll be pricing them at $49/month. The banners will be small in filesize so we don't slow down general page loads. For those vehemently against seeing banners we'll offer a membership level for a couple of dollars a month that strips the advertisements, or alternatively just use a free adblocker (which many do already). If you're a Store Owner, Manufacturer or someone looking to advertise you can purchase a banner location, upload your artwork and publish it all through our Webstore located here.

November 26, 2016

Fabricated Insanity

Videography 2016/17 Season

Last season two of my passions intersected, flying drones and flying kites. I love power kites and i've been flying them for over 10 years now, however drones are a recent passion in the last 3 years that i've picked up and started to enjoy. I used to call them multi-rotors, but the mainstream public's declaration of calling them drones has now washed off on me. During our Kingston trip I finally had the opportunity to really intersect the two passions, and this year i'm hoping to take things a little further with my video production. To start with i've purchased some Joby Gorillapods, and these things are really versatile. I was planning to review them, however I dislike unboxing reviews as they really don't prove much going down the path in terms of use for a product like a gorillapod. So i'll come back to reviewing them after i've had the opportunity to really use them. Initial thoughts however is that the large Gorillapod SLR-Zoom is a tank, it's solid. The Gorilapod magnetic, feels a bit like a fragile toy. The Joby ballhead feels solid, I would of liked a secondary type of safety on it in case it releases, however I'll just wrap the neckstrap around the legs for now. Something else I picked up was the Pico Dolly, now this thing for product video etc is amazing. It's also incredibly amazing as a slider cam when you can't be bothered hauling a full 1.5M slider and setting it up on two tripods. All you need is a smooth surface, a walking path, a car bonnet, hard packed sand, anything that you can smoothly roll the wheels over and produce a cinematic sliding effect. So the collection from last season has grown a bit, and here it is below.
I'm considering a DJI Osmo Mobile to use with the iPhone7 Plus, and a couple of additional SJCam's to mount on to people at the Extreme Kites meets. PS: If you didn't see my video from last year here it is, I've refined a lot of techniques and learnt some new angles and ideas since then I hope to be able to reproduce in the next event video. Thanks for reading, hit that like button if you enjoyed this blog entry so I know to add more!
Comment below if you think you would like me to create a couple of tutorials the gear, settings and how i use it for different results.

September 30, 2016

Extreme Kites T-Shirts

Well it has been a while since Extreme Kites had T-Shirts available!
So without further adieu feel free to pickup a great looking T-Shirt for yourself here ( http://shop.spreadshirt.com.au/xknews/ )
Shipping is Global! Ordering from Spreadshirt
Link: http://shop.spreadshirt.com.au/xknews/
When ordering from Spreadshirt you can choose the colours we've selected for you, or alternatively you can look at all the different garment colours and choose one that you prefer. Spreadshirt handles all payments, prints and dispatches the T-Shirts generally within 48 to 72 hours of placing your order. Here's a few of our Community Members wearing the last set of samples, starting with @jhn.holgate, my wife @Melissa and then @The Duke

September 20, 2016

Fabricated Insanity

MK1 Nearly Complete

So I've had a small win overnight, bidding on a Flexifoil Blade MK1 3.3M in the colours I like for this series. Here's some shots below of the kite from the auction, it'll be on its way to @koma's place shortly and added to the stash If anyone knows what colour options the 2.6M came in let me know, it's the last one missing in the series and so far I can only find that there was an aqua/black colour scheme

September 19, 2016

Fabricated Insanity

My Latest Mystery Box!

There's been some amazing prices on second hand gear in Australia, and indeed globally the past year. Last August I managed to pickup a pristine condition Peter Lynn nGen here in Australia that had been flown less than 6 times since its original purchase. So this has continued to me nearly finishing my complete set of Flexifoil Blade MK1's, and the Flexifoil Blade 4.9 in every edition from MK1 to MK5 So continuing this nostalgic trend, a few weeks back a Blade MK1 7.2M appeared on a local classifieds site, as part of a collection of old kites. Sensing that the individual selling the gear didn't want to separate as they were cheap already I sent a message saying I would take the lot, despite only really wanting the Flexfoil Blade MK1. I paid for the kites, he dropped them off to @Jason at BrisKites for me who bundled them up and shipped them to me here in Melbourne, Australia. What can I say, he's a nice bloke that runs that kite shop despite the shit I give him on the forum So the mystery box of kites arrived, and here's what was in it... if you have any idea what years each kite was released feel free to throw that in the comment below Flexifoil Blade MK1, the kite I originally was chasing from the collection.
Peter Lynn Waterfoil 3.6M
Peter Lynn Arc 1120
Peter Lynn Guerilla II 15M Arc

The next time @nigel and I get out for a photo day I'll take some photos of them all flying

August 6, 2016

August 2016 News

Catch up on whats been going on around the community with our August 2016 Newsletter! Flysurfer have been incredibly busy, shots of the new Sonic2-FR have been appearing online and we've got a discussion topic full of them! Joel Theodore, one of the Extreme Kites Team was fortunate enough to access a prototype Flysurfer Sonic-FR 6M, which leads us to guess that those who were all wanting a smaller than 9M kite should see a 6M as part of the Sonic2-FR range. North have released a new "Click Bar" for 2016/17 season, removing altogether the centre line depower trim and it's now all controlled via the rear lines. Interestingly North themselves leaked their own images via their Marketing. Everybody spotted them then they came asking if we could hold off publishing them. So we've left what the North Click Bar looks like to your imagination for now and instead went on a crusade and found a heap of Patents which we published here. These patents from BEST, Ocean Rodeo, North and Spleene show that there are a few companies all looking at rear-line adjustable kite bars.
World Records for All Kiting Disciplines

Last month we launched a new World Records section that is filterable and searchable. We've started off with Kite Buggy Speed Records, this month we'll extend on that to include Speed and Distance achievements for Kiteboarding, Landboarding, Snowkiting and other related disciplines. If you're a Kite Buggy Pilot and have a GPS photo of your top speed we would love if you could contribute by submitting your personal best in to our database. The records will tie in to a few new upcoming site sections and features we're yet to publish and still working on in the background whilst the team also tests these before release. Like any new feature we launch, if you find an issue please submit to our Bug Tracker so it can be noted and fixed.
Extreme Kites Community Event Calendar
Upcoming events to RSVP and get to! Moose Meet, New Zealand
October 14th - October 17th
RSVP | Event Discussion Clench @ Speed Week 2016, Australia
October 27th - November 1st
RSVP | Event Discussion Blow @ Kingston 2017, Australia
January 12th - January 26th
RSVP | Event Discussion

August 3, 2016

Getting Started with Extreme Kites

Today we've opened a new Getting Started section on Extreme Kites with the aim to build some useful and helpful guides for those just starting their journey. Over the years there's been many helpful discussion topics and a number of online resources for beginners, unfortunately time has claimed both the relevance and existence of many of those resources. By bringing a fresh set of articles that the community can interact with, comment and update we hope to be able to provide a resource to new kiters that is both helpful and relevant to the current and future times. We will be populating the Getting Started guides over the next few weeks, then I'll be opening up the whole section so Members in the community can contribute articles. Getting Started: http://www.extremekites.com.au/getting-started/

July 27, 2016

World Records on Extreme Kites

Today, Extreme Kites releases a World Kite Records section that allows us to look at the past whilst stepping in to the future. The new World Kiting Records section is fully uniform with drag & drop uploads for your GPS images and optional GPS data. It's fully searchable with a set of filters allowing you to really drill down in to the information that has set each record. You can filter to find out whom the fastest pilots in your country are, perhaps you want to know what the top speed set on a GT-Race buggy is? Even better, what about finding out the top speed set on Discs with a Peter Lynn Vapor? All of this and more is either possible today, or within the next month as more information gets added to the database. Previously we've all been limited to records being maintained in Wiki's, Forum Threads and Personal Blogs. The one thing that all of these inherited was that they are all up to an individual to maintain whether it was here in our Community or elsewhere. Instead we've built a system so that there's a whole team from today and forever in to the future maintaining a database of peoples' personal achievements. This is just the beginning, last year we went through a whole site redevelopment explaining after years we had to finally take two steps back to be able to move forwards and bring you the type of online experience we wanted. We did this by launching the new website, then following on with sections like Blogs, Reviews etc. The Kite Buggy Speed section is just the first, over the coming weeks we'll include more sections along with other kiting disciplines like Landboarding, Kiteboarding, Kite Skates and Snowkiting. We aim over time, as a team to build the most comprehensive, searchable database of World Kiting Records available. Kind Regards,

Joel T

July 16, 2016