About Blue Fish Kites

A full sized 8ft sport kite, precise, responsive, turns sharp and stalls on demand. It's also pretty tricky too, particularly floaty in flatspin tricks and great for agressive stabs. I wanted a kite which gave me all the good points of more traditional kites and which tricked well. The Acara offers my idea of the right compromise, offering traditional style drive, tracking, stalls and slides and going very flat in axle / flatspin / lazy susan moves with a good dwell time in the pancaked position.

The Acara was designed primarily as a kite for me and Jim White to fly pairs with. Since there are only 2 of us I didn't need the truck like pull of a traditional teamkite but I did want something solid enough to cope with wraps etc. without getting lost. I also wanted the pull to be constant across as much of the wind range as possible. The yellow/purple and orange/blue Acara's pictured above are in K42 with prosport frames yet they have been flown in no wind and the blue and orange one was flown in winds gusting to a measured 20mph with nothing more than heavy lines to slow it down.
I also wanted something which was just a little faster than some team kites, since with only 2 of us there's a lot of room in the window to fill compare to a 4 kite team. I like dynamic kites and the Acara really fits the bill, you can fly it slowly, or pull on the lines and it will surge forward on demand.
For what it's worth, the Acara's party piece tricks are: fitting in 6 square cuts on 125' lines, Lazy Susans (esp. multiples and with flip over recoveries), Very,veryflat, floaty Flatspins, Slot Machines and Axles, Fountains (real jump up the window jobs too), all day long Fades, Fade - Flatspin transitions, Elevators, Big stabs, Sideslides etc. etc. It is however pretty old school, while it will backspin with a bridle modification and will roll up with about 25g on the tail it will never compete with current French style kites.

This is a scaled down 3/4 version of the Acara, with a slightly different bridle. It's not really a high wind kite though you can use some heavier lines when the wind gets really strong just to slow it down a little. This is a trick kite with oversteer and plenty of bad habits. It does however inherit the Acara's stalls, floaty quality and tracks well for a kite of this style.

I've moved on to a cross-active bridle now which lets the Ram backspin nicely and widens the wind range. It will also roll up with a little weight although it was never designed with that in mind.

Another full sized kite, this was derived from the Acara but has two standoffs per side in the style of some French kites. It has a narrower keel and a shorter spine to help pitch tricks but the precision is great. The Manta will flic-flac like a smaller trick kite. It has also been set up slightly less radical than the Acara, whereas the Acara likes a snappy, punchy style with small hand movements this kite has been set up to stay steady without the need for too much finesse.

The Manta backspins and rolls-up and is forgiving of quite a lot of ballast on the tail but it's a big kite so I've not really developed it any further since smaller kites are a lot more fun to throw around

A kind of prototype for the Thornback, this is a 3/4 sized kite designed to backspin, multilazy etc and it succeeds at this. With just a few grams tail ballast it will roll-up nicely using both 1 and 2 pop methods, insanes and lazies nicely while still preforming good rotational moves such as flat spins and axels. Increasing the weight to 10g or 15g makes 2 pop roll-ups super quick.

After a couple of years out of kiting I returned to find kiting dominated by French style kites with the emphasis on pitch tricks. This is my attempt to create something in that style. This kite is still a work in progress but so far it looks promising; it handles strong winds, it backspins, it lazy susans, it will roll up one or two pop style as well as from a fade and the precision is OK.

Gallery of some peoples Blue Fish Kites

kites/bluefish/about.html last modified 19:57:06 30-Jul-2017


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