h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Yay! Finally a handy kite entry on here! Gives me a chance to ask the all important question. What does an axel look like and how do I know if I've done one?
From the incredibly obscure looking diagrams I've seen, it looks as tho you get the kite to rotate around the central spar (so if you're looking at it head on so to speak like this /|\ (isn't ASCII art wonderful!) then it would rotate around the central line in the piccie. Is that right?

okie dokie, the axle then.

Assuming that you,ve not already found out. an axle is the trick that separates the men from the boys (and women from girls too) in trick flying. For those unfamilar with trick kites, we're talking dual line kites that you can control.

the trick consists of stalling the kite upright (ie, making it stop) and then making the kite rotate round so that first one wing, then the tail followed by the other wing goes over the lines, while the kite is still stalled, and then back into the normal position.

To accomplish this you must first learn to stall the kite. To do this fly it horizontally to the edge of the wind window and pull it upright while walking/running forward so that the kite doesn't take off. both lines ought to be slack.

for the axle you must let one line (say the left) out more than the other while making sure that both lines are still slack) so that one wing (left) falls back slightly. then pop (tug then slack) the left line and give both lines alot of slack. the left wing rotate round so that the kite flattens out (belly down) and the kite should rotate over the lines and then assume it's normal position again, then you can fly off.

It takes alot of practise to do axle's but once you've learnt them you'll be able to move onto more impressive tricks like the fade

hi there, you can find little more about "axels" at my trick-kiting site http://drachenmanufaktur.com/tricking.htm including an animated gif.
might be a problem that the descriptions are german, try out with altavista 'babelfish' (!) translations - i'm sure you will be having fun with that...
* keep kuhl * fli hi *
greeetings, subsemi.

a quite perfect description I ever heard. great! Just to complete it: one should fly at low wind (2-3 bft) to make this trick, else you have no real chance to make the stall.

High winds, simple - run faster !!!!

http://www.prismkites.com/new-site/flight-training.htm has a fantastic area devoted on how to pull off those tricky tricks. For the bandwidth-blessed, they even have video clips showing the kites in action, including the flyer doing their thing.

I still can't axle yet though...