Theory of flight part 6 – Apparent wind and window’s edge
Now let’s debunk one of the most common clichés among beginner and intermediate kiters.
Certainly from beginners you will be found in this situation: In the water, you start to glide planning with your board: at a certain point (because at the moment it does not matter) we can no longer properly load the upwind edge of the table and we begin to accelerate downwind and immediately we see the kite move back in the window while the traction continues to increase and we have the impression that it is no longer possible to bring the kite back to the window’s edge (whose position we mentally identified on the ground when we did take off the kite or in the water just before leaving) and you have the doubt to make a mistake, feeling the traction growing too much and we fear that the kite is running away in power zone.
Most of the times I have asked for explanations of this phenomenon, I have heard myself answer that “you have to bring the kite back to the window: make it move forward and you will see that it will pull less and you will be able to control it”.
In reality the increase in traction is not due to the fact that the kite is flying in power zone, but, as we have shown previously, it is a consequence of the apparent wind: in practice the kite is already at the edge of the window, only our reference is the flight window we identified on the ground.
As mentioned at the beginning, it must be remembered that it is impossible for the kite to be ‘stationary’ in power zone, it tends naturally and inevitably to reach the window edge: if we want to keep it, we must force it by turning it and countering its natural tendency to get out of it , but we are riding, with the kite standing against our body and the table.
So what actually happens?
We try to illustrate the situation, taking up the scheme used to illustrate the concept of apparent wind and superimposing the outline of a flight window.
The design shows how the entire flight window rotates around us, leading to a “backward” of the window edge, with an angle that is greater the greater the speed of the table compared to that of natural wind.
This angle has the same width as that formed by the apparent wind vector with respect to that of natural wind.
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