Why Kiting ?
That’s really a good question. Eventually you have seen my kiting biography already, so you know what I have done in the kite scene. But why is sports kiting – or to be more specific – trick and competition kiting my very favorite sport?
As a teen I was skateboarding all the time (besides computer stuff). Driving around on a skateboard is not really complicated. But when skaters are doing their fancy tricks, you know that this is very complicated and you really need time and effort to master these tricks.
So what have we done all the day? Yeah! we went skateboarding, meeting friends to show them what new tricks we have learned. Then they showed their new tricks and moves and we had fun and learned from each other.
When I bought my first trick kite in 2001 the same fever came up again. Bringing a kite up to the sky is very easy. But then you see some guys (and girls of course!) who are not just flying from left to right, but do very nice tricks with their kites. So I talked to them and started to learn how to fly these tricks, meet other kiters and the same game as with the skateboarding began.
I think I really had much luck. I found the right people to learn from, including several master pilots (German master class kiters, team flyers, indoor kiting masters etc.). This allowed me to get very fast into sport kiting.
But next to flying the kites a new aspect rised up: fine-tuning and designing kites:
Early in 2002 I joined the indoor kiting group in Velbert (near Wuppertal, Germany) and started to learn how to fly indoor (with a Level One Amazing which is a great kite).
After a while I saw an announcement of a new light wind kite “Sweety” from Mr. Siebert (Drachenkiste). I already had one outdoor trick kite from Mr. Siebert, the TRIX-E.
I asked him for a sample to test it, but Mr. Siebert explained me that the Sweety is not ready to sell. But if I like to get a rough prototype, he would send me one for testing purposes. At that early stage, the Sweety was nearly unflyable inside sports halls.
After several phone talks with Mr. Siebert, we agreed that I am allowed to modify every part of the Sweety till I am satisfied with its indoor capability.
With the help of the kite group in Velbert I learned very much about constructing a kite and that prototype was changed in all aspects. The sail, framing, bridle and shape needed to be changed.
In the summer of 2002 I was flying quite well indoor and Mr. Siebert was also very happy about the results of my work together with the indoor group of Velbert.
The basic indoor-kiting and kite building experience which I learned from the Velbert indoor group brought me to the next level: Starting my own kite group in Dortmund (that’s in Germany too ;-)!
After a while I found the sport group of TSC Eintracht Dortmund and started my own indoor group with around 10 flyers. My indoor kiting experience was good enough to teach other kiting newbies at least the basics indoor moves.
Since then I gain more and more experience in teaching other flyers to fly indoor, constructing kites and learning advance indoor and outdoor tricks.
After the core members of the indoor kiting group in Dortmund were formed, I found more time to work on the already working Sweety prototype kite again.
I continued modifying several things on the design of the kite, because the base setup which we made in Velbert was okay to fly the kite for indoor beginners, but the Sweety had a very limited spectrum of tricks. The prototype struggles to do especially backflip tricks, which were very popular in 2002. After several prototypes I completed my very own Sweety construction and setup with the gained experiences and Mr. Siebert was very satisfied with the end product. The Sweety got into public production and is still getting sold very well.
So building sport kites, flying, teaching and learning from other flyers is why I’m into sports kiting.
I believe these are all good reasons for to fly sport kites, but there is another good and eventually the best reason:
I never found such a nice and friendly scene! In all the time when I was flying kites I found new friends all over the world. There are no country or cultural borders and respect is a lived word in the kiting scene.
Join us!