The tornado that came through really got me thinking. It was 15 knots before it hit, then blammo, 78 knots. if someone had actually been out with a 16 up when it hit, i'm sure the results would have been spectacular, but what would they actually be

if the wind built steadily , the poor guy at the end would probably travel at over 100kmh, bouncing off everything in a 20k path through suburbia.

but with a sudden explosion like that, something would break first, surely. and not just the poor rider's underpants. I reckon maybe the canopy would split, perhaps just held together by the leading edge. you would then have effectively just big bedsheet flapping uncontrollably at the end of 4 extremely strong pieces of Spectra. The windage on this would still be huge, and you'd get dragged at high speed dead downwind. The QR would then just put the load onto one of the strings only, but the same problem would still happen.

I have no plans to try this experiment, but would be quite happy for someone else to give it a go, if I could watch from a safe distance.

In all honesty, what do you think would happen?

Id let the kite go all together,

stuff the QR, id be pulling my chicken loop QR and every other QR that was anywhere near anything on the bar.

Youd see it coming in most situations id say.

like crazy water spray, white looking water and heaps of crap in the air like roof tiles and trees.

YEp, and still being in the water on a board in 150km winds would not be nice. The kite would be an issue to other citizens downwind, hopefully it shreds in a tree and gets caught up somewhere

would not be a fun scenario whatever happened

"you'd no longer be in kansas, be taking a long hike down a yellow road, and need to click your heels three times to get home"

like your work Jan

glad one of us was paying attention in wind engineering hosko

yeah dan i already had my suspicions just from background knowledge of perths weather (ie. we never get tornadoes) but my suspicions were confirmed by ken on monday...
i'm looking forward to our steel rev. with beers