At last DONE!!!

Well i finally finished the board. It took longer more because i was being picky about the pads etc rather than it being hard, was rather easy actually.
Complete with Cab bindings. Not the best pic but its all i could get as my cam aint doin too well. I seriously could have made this board look a million dollars with a bit of extra work. But i didnt want to spend a huge amount of time on something that may fail anyway. I now know how things react and go well or bad together, that's enough. Tried a few things , patched it up and tried again.

It's 140 x 40
3 layers of glass on the bottom and two on the top with an 8mm cedar core that was reshaped in the middle of me making it, lol

I didn't measure the fins , just lined em up and drilled.
All up with the bindings , fins and handle i think it cost me about $100, actually if i think about it maybe less, i had all the glass and resin already
Bindings $40
fins $20
handle $5



There is the bottom, the spots you can see is gold fleck through the resin on the bottom.



And this one with the fins on the side

Yep , i just drilled through the board and threw stainless bolts and washers in and sealed them on the underside.Seriously, there was nothing hard about making it, just getting all the stuff together was a bit of a pain.

For my first attempt i think it went pretty well.

board again - almost buggered it up

Well i kept going with it and got the top sheet on, it went ok.
So i wanted to get the bottom done and get the board going cos i don't have one yet and want to get out practising.

So i put down the first sheet of glass and mixed up the resin. problem there was that i was going to use two lot of resin but when i measured it out i forgot all about this and put in double the amount of hardener in the single mix,,, OOOPS

So i had to get it spread and the glass down before it went off, in that 37 deg day, yes yes i know .

It clumped up and i knew it would turn out a bit bad but went for it anyway.



It has a few voids in it as you can see but they are between the bottom ( outside layer) and the board. The outside is smooth with no dry spots.

So i kept going with it, ill probably wreck it anyway I shaped it using a power plane then finished off the rail curves with the hand sander you can see in the picture. I'm just going to give the rails a hot coat and then that's all done.
Just need fins and straps now, i saw a cheap board but it was bought the day before so i have to wait to get the straps at least. Ill make some fins from aluminum.

I went out looking for wetsuit booties as i lost one of my el cheapo ones last lesson. Can you believe anaconda ones are $59, you gotta be kiddin me.
I went onto wetsuit wharehouse and got some for 29 with free shipping, at least something worked out ok.

Im spewing i missed out on that el cheapo board.

Chears

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Lesson 2

Almost but not quite-------

Well had my second lesson down at Point Henry and to cut a long story short,, i wasn't able to get up . However i was very happy with the lesson because of the confidence it gave me with my kite. 2011 LF Havoc 12mtr

First off i set up my kite.
This was great as id never had it out of the back yard. We got it ready to put up and noticed that one of the lines were switched about (pigtails) . Center to back and visa versa. However that was only on one side, i changed all of the tails around but didn't realise than one side was right Instructor laughed a bit as he was going to put up the kite first time and check it out. Asked if i wanted him to be looped out into the bay. My reply was  "better you than me Joel" 

So up it went, comment from Joel was "she's a big girl" and "there's some power up there"  and probably the most important was , "It's a good looking kite" .  So he handed it over to run some body drags and i found it really easy. I went higher up wind than i could go in my first lesson and went a lot quicker whilst doing that.

Then all of a sudden PFSSSSHHH , a big rush of air. Landed it in the water and found that one of the tubes connecting the LE to the strut valves let go, he pushed it back in and  we pulled it back in and checked it out. Couldn't see why but reseated the valve anyway and pumped it back up.
Then OMG the tangles in the lines were amazing. Seaweed and crap were in them as it was my turn to launch the kite. There was a mass tangle in the middle as some seaweed hooked it all together. I walked to the knot and fiddled a bit and to my surprise it all just released and untangled. Also one line had half hitched itself around a pigtail, something he said he hadn't seen before.

So up it went , almost, the wind dropped. Sheeted in and I kept it up and was warned to be ready for it to pull hard and yep damn it was about to pull hard but i was able to keep it under control. We then did a drift launch and i commented that it was exactly like a relaunch only that you mean to have the kite on the water, that worked pretty well and i was surprised how easy that was.

So it was time to try get on the board.
We were in water just over waist deep. I just couldn't get the hang of keeping the kite at 12 with one hand , grabbing the board with the other, putting it on my feet and keeping everything square. The water was deep enough that i was fully floating. Damn that was hard, all this new stuff to think about all at once. I had a tendency to grab the bar from under instead of over the top.

Needless to say the kite hit the water a lot, yep a lot.

 I re-launched it a lot and most of the time rather easily and the kite didn't spring a leak again , so that was fixed good.
By this time i was well and truly stuffed. So Mr instructor went for a cruise with it while i regained some energy. I guess we had about 20 minutes left when i tried again.

This time i was able to keep the kite at 12 with my left hand and i was able to get the board on and keep squared up. I managed to get the power stroke where it needed to be quite a few times and got up for a bout 2-3 seconds each time.

I kept turning the board to far up wind and would drop back in whilst pulling the bar to the left and down it came. I got up once and dug the front of the board in and went over. He told me if i hadn't have done that i probably would have kept going as everything looked under control.

Plenty of power , just not straightening up properly, once i thought screw it and i went over the front, splat!!!! After a few of these i managed to keep the kite up even though i went under water. I think he wanted to keep going even though the lesson was about to finish, i was just to stuffed though.

Yep i was a bit underwhelmed about not getting up , but in a way i am glad i didn't. I had the feeling that i was able to fluke it and get up early, what happened when i crashed it, how did i get the kite up and get the board on etc.

I spent plenty of time learning the kite ( not sure im a fan of the under bar depower, hard to pull when the kite has power) and in the and was able to get it to do what i wanted ( mostly) , not what it wanted me to do. I crashed and got it up again over and over. Kept it up after id went under over and over and did that near the end without needing to think about it.

I really spent about 35-40 minutes trying to get up and most of that was trying to get the damn board on and be able to keep everything controllable

Really happy with what i learned
Good stuff

Board again

Well it's been a while but i finally got a cedar core together and cut  the rail channel on the CNC. It did ok but you can see the small cut 1/3 up that the machine made for no reason.

I had to make the cuts in 4 sections as the table isn't as long as the board, it's cutting area is 550 x 600 the board is 140 x 42 and that damn middle board is a touch off center. :dontknow:  It's 8 mm thick. Im either going to put carbon on the side of the cut or 2 layers of glass.
I may pour the rail on the weekend, not sure yet. The shape? well i just drew it in the cnc program (vcarve pro) so there is nothing scientific about it.

I guess we will see how it goes :good:

Pure Havoc

This is the kite ive ended up with. A freind got it for me from QLD kitepower and to the uninitiated it's a Gen 5 2011 Liquid Force Havoc.

Yes i realise that this is not a beginners kite but you can't look a gift horse in the mouth can you?

It is in really good condition but has one small repair patch just behind the leading edge in the center of it.
It has the CPR bar and its in good nick as well. There is some wear on the depower line  the center safety line and the pigtails that connect the lines to the kite need replacing. In all that will cost me about $50 all up.
All the bridles, pulleys etc are in very good condition.

I have had this kite for about 8 months now and hadnt really looked at it properly untill the last couple of months , once i knew my lessons were coming up. I didn't want to get all hyped up and want to try it prematurely.

Right now i think i have put it up and down about 8 times, unrolled the lines, untangled them and checked out the bar and line length in the local park tethered to a pole with me at the other end just to see if they are equal length.
Ive pulled the lines off the bar and figured out how to replace the depower and safety line. There was nothing on the net that i could find that showed me how to do this, had to figure it myself. It was a really good learning experience and i think i may even do a video on how to replace the lines once i get the new ones and post them on youtube.
Below is the type of bar and it's setup

I guess the kite takes about 5 minutes to pump up, no biggy there and to pack up takes a bit longer, practice makes perfect i guess.
When i do my next lesson in a couple of weeks the instructor told me to bring it along and we will use it, should be interesting.
I've got myself a new Mystic Aviator seat harness, it was really comfortable when i put it on at the shop and it's going to stay where it's meant to stay.

So that's it so far.

Lesson done

Had my first lesson today , finally. :good:
Flew a trainer 1.2 Imp for ten minutes, Joel had to make sure i could actually fly a kite like i told him when we talked on the phone. No board work today , that's the next lesson. :good:

 The kite for the lesson was an Ozone Catalyst 10mtr
Went through the rigging, holding and positioning the kite  :pump: then assisting instructor to launch and what to look for both good and bad when helping others.
Then it was straight into the water and some kite control/safety system instruction. Pulling the release letting the kite hit the water , resetting the safety and relaunching the kite. Also some right of way stuff and where to hold the kite. The kite dropped from the sky a couple of times because of flukey wind early on and only once i wasn't able to keep it in the air.

Then onto body dragging up wind and down wind. It was funny trying to control the kite and concentrate on how you should position yourself in the water. All those new things you are trying to do at once make it a bit of a challenge at first but it was fun too. What i did notice was that it made more difference sheeting in and out the kite whilst dragging up wind to keep the kite powered and be able to turn it properly.
Dragging down wind giving the kite some power was good fun , i was told to give it some curry to be able to feel the power. Steering from 10 - 2 in small figure 8's for i guess 50 -100 mtrs, then drag up wind tacking back to the instructor.

Then right near the end was self rescue. The thing that surprised me about that was you can actually go across and at times slightly up wind  whilst sailing the downed kite back in depending on how you hold onto it.

The lesson was at Point Henry Geelong and apart from two other people out the, the water was free of people. Instructor was Joel, great bloke and likes to have a bit of a laugh but obviously knows his stuff.
When someone like that says to you that there was no need for him to hang on whilst giving the kite power downwind because he was happy that you can control the kite is a huge boost. I wanted to keep going to Avalon  :yes3: 

So apart from the obvious what did i learn. 
FUN....  And that things arent as hard as they seem or look. But in saying that i also learned that things could go wrong if you're not taught properly. It was kinda more naural for me to depower the the kite than it was to pull on the bar when the wind picked up from time to time, was surprised that i didn't just try to hang on.
 It wasn't as hard as i thought it would be but it wasn't as easy either, not sure that makes sense but that's how it felt. Kinda respect the power of the kite but not be overwhelmed by it.

Was a good day and cant wait for the rest

Finally Here

Well at last , today i have my first lesson . It's been a long wit till everything settled into place but today is the day, well hopefully. lets hope the wind stays decent. Right now it is 10-15knts , here's hoping.