Theory of flight part 2 – Wind Window

Second chapter of “Teoria e pratica del kitesurf” by Geppy Piloni

Wind window width and window edge position.

During the course you learned the basics about the wind window, but there are some considerations to make to better understand some kite behavior.
The following figure is the one that is generally shown by the instructors:

It is a plan view, and therefore in 2 dimensions, and it is the one we will use for almost all the following examples, given that for our calculations at the moment this representation is sufficient.
The first thing to say is that a kite in flight, naturally and inevitably tends to reach the window edge, the kite never stops in a position that is not the window edge.

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Theory of Flight part 1 – How Kites fly

This is the first part of an interesting guide (Geppy Piloni – Teoria e pratica del kitesurf), modified a bit and traslated in english for you! Hope you find it usefull!

Theory of Flight part 1 – How Kites fly

Immediately after the kitesurfing course, in that phase during which you can ride but still can not return to the starting point, I began to wonder why some kite behaviors and in general what were the rules that govern the kitesurf practice.

I progressed rather quickly, but I could not fully understand all the theory and physical phenomena that determined the techniques of conducting the board and the kite: I was learning without knowing why. At that time, there were very few very good practitioners and even fewer experts: every time I meet another kiter, I was bombarding him with questions but almost always the answers were unsatisfactory or even conflicting or inaccurate, so I started to think , to make sketches and calculations.

When I thought I had found a satisfactory explanation for the questions, I thought that maybe my notes could be useful to someone else and I decided to publish my conclusions on the Internet.

In order to fully understand the concepts expressed, the reader should be a kitesurfer who knows the basic terminology and flight techniques, who has done a proper course at a good school and maybe some session independently.

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