sandgroper said...
"To all Mr Floats customers that choose to use POWER KITES on land, regardless of who manufactured these kites designed to be used ONLY ON WATER -- DONT. The Australian Kite Surfing Association commented in 2003 following Australia's 2nd kiting fatality that the death was a result of the use of a POWER KITE on land. AKA stated that POWER KITES are designed for water use only and should never be used on land."
If you could just CC that to all your customers Floaty, I'd very much appreciate it.
And you can refer them to the AKSA website safe kiting guidelines here: http://www.aksa.com.au/safe_kiting_guidelines.php
Thanks in advance,
Sandy
"Power Kite" is a term normally associated with smaller kites designed for land, although it could be used to describe all kites, however thats will lead to confusion as it has in your example.
Lach is a responsible kite retailer, your warning sounds silly and is silly, sorry!
The incident where a person died up in Qld was caused by inexperience, overconfidence and a degree of stupidity.
The person managed to get hold of a kitesurfing kite, an inflatable. He had some paragliding or skydiving experience and was a known risk taker with a bit of a death wish.
He teathered himself via some rope to a goal post on a football field, he then managed to launch the kite and began lofting himself into the air, swooping the kite through the powerzone, eventually he either looped the kite or somehow managed to get the lines tangled on another nearby goal post and fell several metres to his death.
The kite was definitely an inflatable kite surfing kite.
Remember that kite surfing as we know it evolved from land power kiting. Hundreds of thousands of people land kite, with purpose designed power kites, everday somewhere in the world.
There have been relatively few land kiting deaths in the last 25 years, since the sport starting evolving, I can only remember a few.
However land jumping with kites is a Darwin Award activity, eventually a person confidence exceeds the ability of the kite to provide a parachute effect and soften the landing (because the kite is not designed for human flight), and injury or death occurs, mostly injury and a lesson is learned by those with some intelligence.
Cya and
Goodwinds
Steve