Novice kite flier

Transcript

About a year ago I was cycling around Lake Biwa Museum, where I saw some people with kites in a large open area. One young guy was flying a kite with two control lines, one in each hand. That kite was darting all over the sky, climbing, diving, flying around in all directions like a swallow.

After a few minutes he landed his kite, and I got back on my bicycle. As I rode away, I thought I'd like fly a kite like that some day. A few months ago I decided to try it, so bought a Prism Snapshot 1.2 PowerFoil, a little parafoil kite for beginners.

I'd thought it would be easy to fly such a simple kite, but it was really frustrating at first. Launching it was harder than I'd expected. When I first pulled the control lines and ran backward, the kite would spin and crash instantly. I tried five or six times just to get it up in the air, and then I flew it straight into the ground several times. Fortunately, no other people were there. My failures were humbling enough without spectators.

For quite a while I thought I'd wasted my money, but a few days ago I finally succeeded. It still took a few tries to launch the kite without crashing it, but finally I was able to keep it aloft, and I gradually learned how to fly it in different directions. It wasn't as dramatic as that big delta kite I'd seen last year, but it flew pretty well as long as I handled it very gently. I'm still a novice, and I have no intention to advance very far, but I think I can call myself a kite flier.