- :) Took KitetiK out to clear water and prepared for SS launch.
- :) Glorious weather out on Moreton Bay. 12knots, sunshine.
- :) Rigging and initial launch went well.
- :( My friend and former student, RG, opined when seeing my winch system some months ago that it was a MVP. I thought, Most Valuable Player - but apparently it was Minimal Viable Product. (RG is a real engineer who makes things that work - I think he was being generous...) Well, it transpires that it is NEMVP (not even MVP). The rotary encoder failed (probably a wire came out) so mode 1 steering was not possible. Anyone looking at the attached photo might conclude that RG was indeed being very generous!
- :) Although I managed to keep the kite in the air with mode 2 steering, that's rather more difficult.
- :) Rear lines were released manually from bar - thanks MB. That works easily enough.
- :( Big error. Didn't put a leash from the bar to the boat. So over the beam went the bar. Not happy. We're not going sailing without that.
- :( With the weight of the bar on the TE and dragging through the water, controlling the kite was no longer possible - so it went for a swim.
- :) Excellent to discover that using one control winch, having intentionally turned the other off, it was very easy to recover the 16SS notwithstanding that it had disappeared beneath the water surface. I had thought a 5th line, to a wing tip with an additional winch, might be necessary - but recovering off one front line was fine (at least in 12 knots, at anchor with no sea running!).
- :( Thought about rerigging for another go, with a leash on the bar. but decided that time was against us.
We learnt a few more things and spent time on the water in beautiful Moreton Bay - not all bad, even if we didn't actually go sailing.
Some video here shows better the initial launch phases that were not too clear in the last report. The ability to launch the centre of the span from only a couple of metres and the stability of the kite over the first several metres of reel out, with the tow points appropriately separated, really makes things very much simpler than they'd otherwise be. There's not much to see in the second part of the video where I'm moving some line connections around - but it is included in order to show how easy it is. I'll change the rigging slightly to make it quicker and easier - but the point is that it seems that one has as much time as one wants because the kite is so well behaved (even if with the flogging wing tips it's not all that attractive).