November 2000

Newsletter, November 2000.

At last, phew, Arcs are in volume production!  Well probably- I haven't actually seen them with my own eyes yet but according to a reliable source, some stock will be available ex stock Holland within the next two weeks which means ex NZ in less than three.  Of course the meaning of "some" is yet to be defined so don't everyone get their hoped up at once!

In NZ, as soon as this is happens, we will change from making standard Arcs to trying variant designs with different geometry and materials that we've been itching to play with but haven't had much time for during this crazy year.  Improvements wont come easily though, they rarely do -not many clever ideas survive the reality check of daily use in violent places- and gains often come from the unexpected.  It will be immense fun playing with all this new stuff though. 

Actually, case in point, we jumped the gun a bit with a few  (actually a few too many) changes in some prototype kites built for Kane and Pete to use on their latest kiteboarding trip.  What a disaster.  Well, not totally, one out of three new ideas seems to work, maybe even two.  The operation was therefore a success even though the patient suffered a lot- and they had a good holiday!

Or maybe not, as I'm sure they wanted to kiteboard not sit around spectating.

But being a kite designer is like this- you usually only ever get to fly kites that don't fly. 

The reason is obvious enough- as soon as a particular design gets sorted out to a level that is useable and saleable it's time to move on to something new that doesn't fly, or at least not satisfactorily. 

Of course, Pete's a kite designer so this was all just part of his job description.

For him and I it's usually even worse than this- on the odd occasions we do get to fly a fully refined kite it is almost invariably because something has gone wrong with it, or even worse, because something was never right with it.  This happens at kite events especially, when we become a magnet for any kite that has developed some problem- and so we should be!  Of course it's all part of the service and good PR, but it's also an opportunity to get the end user's perspective unfiltered by distribution networks and front line staff. ( Sentence inserted by our propaganda dept.).

And this is a job with plenty of compensations.  I can't imagine many things in this world as satisfying as seeing the fun and enjoyment people get out of some of the things we make. (Do we really believe all this bullshit?!)

Kane though, patient Kane- he's just an innocent bystander, caught up in the war. (Now this war bit I do believe!).

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Although usually character building rather than spiritually uplifting, complaints can sometimes be amusing.

With many new people now coming straight into power kiting without much or any prior exposure to kites, we can't currently assume even basic knowledge of the sort we'd given up explaining to kitefliers years ago.

*Kites come back to the factory for repair because one bridle has become looped through another.  On one such occasion all the bridles had been carefully undone- "to save us untangling time".

*'Foils get flown without freeing the bridles from the tie by which they are attached to the kite's leading edge to keep them tidy during shipment.

*Flying lines are expected to be exactly the same length and to never stretch out unevenly.  Kites are expected to fly perfectly with lines more than a meter different in length.

The situation is not different now than during the early days of sports kite flying when I can recall kites "that have never been crashed" coming in for repairs with 100mm of hard earth rammed up the spine.

And the most uncompromising complaint we've ever had, 25 years ago with a returned kids $5(then) single line octopus kite (of the type we've made 100,000,s of)- "This kite doesn't fly, you should be ashamed of yourselves making such rubbish- PS we didn't like the tails so we cut them off".

Of course there are a gratifying number of thankyou's as well, and one that came in last week from an Australian customer is the type we really like- "thanks for all the great kites you've supplied us with this year" accompanied by an excellent bottle of Aust. Cab Sauv.  Now there's a trend worth encouraging!

New things?- Yes, some:

·         Ongoing refinements in kitebars driven by excellent suggestions from users.  Thanks especially to Bob Dawson, Stephanie Gamble, Nick Grant and Mike Holland.  From the NZ end of our business there is almost no such thing as a standard bar anymore.  We will make almost any bar variant you can think of.

·         And our new kiteboat is just days away from the water.  My sense of anticipation is rising daily so even basic courtesies like paperwork, answering E Mails, the phone, even eating and sleeping, are falling off the agenda, if they were ever there that is!  It's big,- but still just trailerable without dismantling- and has all the bells and whistles dreamt of during the last two years while kite designing has been such an overwhelming priority.  See you on the water.

Peter Lynn, Ashburton, 31 Oct '00.

PS Sorry Kane, there ain't no such thing as an innocent bystander.