when i rode LF hifis.. i never found the top end of the 7m... i eventually found the bottom end around the 25 - 26 mark.. 30 knots and i could still manage to unhook without being a sky ballerina....

60 kg 10m SB3 constant 30 knots. choppy as hell. rode out lost my board and had to body drag back. got my board back

im 53kg and can ride comfortably on my 9m REV in 27knots.

Either kites have really great depower or there is alot of people who times the real windspeed by 1.5 to quote it on a forum

No wonder there is so many kitemare vids on youtube

75kg
11m 07 fuel to 22/24kn
9m 06 fuel to 30 knot consitantly with 34 knot gusts
on a ****ing tiny board...

i weigh bout 100kg and the max wind i have been out in on a 9m fone bandit is 51 gusting to 58 knots recorded last summer in whyalla, south aus. Absolutly lit off my chops watchin all the other guys huddle on the beach with sand blowing everywhere. It only took 3 guys to launch and land me ha ha ha.

cabstar said...

oh and i way 75kgs

no weigh dude

You guys are soft!! the only reason i have a quiver of 5 kites is so i can stack that ** before i go out. MAXXX POWWWERRR YEAH BABYYYY!!!! WWOOOOOOOOOOO

yeah well to dism i would say you should come to whyalla, we get serious wind, compared by one out of town windsurfer to gero on a good day. As for wind speed calls we have numerous weather stations around the main being at our airport, so i think they would be fairly close. We do kite at our main beach near the rock wall but its pretty safe hey.

Whilst I won't disagree with the fact that your local is windy

Facts are your post about kiting 50-58knots is exaggerating the truth

Last Summer (the time in question) (Dec 07, Jan and Feb 08 by my call), Wunderground for Whyalla shows that it did gust max to 58miles/hr (approx knots), but max wind was only 30 something miles/hr

See the monthly readouts
www.wunderground.com/?cm_ven=cgi

Or is there some other data somewhere else?

Hence, huge overstatements are occuring here. Yes it is windy, but not that much.Its late, should be doing assignments, do you give me a HD for that^?

dism my records of this wind came from bom.gov.au, and were seen by more than just me. If you think whyalla only gets wind up to 30 knots or there abouts you are sadly mistaken. Yes i do know that 50 knots + is very windy thus why i am so stoked about being able to kite it. Either way you can believe what you like, but i would throw the offer out to you to come here and experience it for yourself. Make sure you bring your small kites.

My kite bandit dos 12m can handle 30kts

I'll back up the 2 lads from windy Whyalla,yes wind gust do blow hard I have seen large foreshore shade structures flying through the sky complete with there concrete footings.The thing is the 50+ knot gusts are short lived but 35-40knots is common for the next few hours.As I have witnessed these,they tend to come with the change from hot northerlies 25-30 knots and then bang 40knot+ from the south.The BOM is not situated on the waters edge and therefore does not see the wind that hammers up the gulf to the hot desert at the back. I arrivred in Whyalla in the summer of 88 and for 10 days straight I used a 3.7m windsurf sail. I had never seen anything like it.I would have used a smaller sail but they were not that flash back than. The wind in Whyalla appears to be similar to the Gorge as the Flinders Ranges compress the wind into the ever narrowing Spencer Gulf as it makes it's way to the desert in the north.Those early days in Whyalla were the windiest,than the Bureau started to talk about ElNino in 91 and the every day wind strength became lighter over the next 10 years the 3.7m sail came out less and less,but the huge squalls were still there.
Anyhow having to use that many guys for an assisted launch I hope they hung around to help you [Max14] bring your kite down,good crew.The flat water behind the sandbar or the mangroves further south used to be great fun on slalom gear.Whyalla is much more suited to kiting.
Enjoy and I hope to kite in Whyalla 1 day soon. The last 3 days in Geraldton remind me of Whyalla 30knots + and flat.
Cheers EB.

hey max, no one is doubting that the whyalla crew are friendly or that its a kn windy spot.
but your original claim of 51 gusting to 58 knots is a bit off don't you reckon?

stamp said...

hey max, no one is doubting that the whyalla crew are friendly or that its a kn windy spot.
but your original claim of 51 gusting to 58 knots is a bit off don't you reckon?

Stamp 51 is the average windspeed the minimum would have been around 45kts with regular large gusts and as EB stated the bom site refers to an airport that is inland and sitting behind a hill. We also have a weather beacon which you can check that is almost 10kts more than the airport the whyalla beach lands between these two points and we are normaly somewhere in the middle is what we get.

Just remember this forum is called my kite can handle stupidly high wind speeds.

less than 30kts isnt stupidly high wind unless you are tiny or your kite is huge.

I have seen max out on a 18m torch in 27kts when everyone else was on 8 & 9m this guy can hold a serious edge and loves being fully powered. so if he can hold a 18m in 27 then he should be able to hold the 9m in 54+ kts.

There are a lot of people in whyalla that can vouch for this and we also have some video of them out in 48kts and one kite going over the sea wall + a windsurfer smashed up on the rocks.