I sort of hear you about the lessons. But imo, the largest threat to access is guys that already know how to ride but decide to ride in an irresponsible fashion. When you do read about stuff going on, usually good riders are mentioned, not total newbs. Kevin K knew how to ride. I haven't seen a news clip with a non-kiter getting hurt or read in the news about a total newb getting whacked.
I can tell people face to face that lessons are step number one and riding w/o them is dangerous (and I do). I rarely see people "just trying" kiting. I guess if large numbers of people did, fliers would make more sense (canvas the beach). If I do see a guy rigging an Ebay kite and can't talk him out of it face to face, I can't see how a flier is going to help. Is he literally going to say "oh.. the flier says so... okay, I won't fly today" -- ?
Did you hand Mr. Fireman a flier? (get my point)
As is, I guess I am actually seeing the flyer idea as a promotion idea (possibly leading to more kiters... and more possible problems). That's not making sense to me as a pro-active way to protect access. Again, if I saw people trying to kite without lessons, (which I don't) I would talk to them.
If they refused to stop, a cop would be my go-to, not a flier.
As stated, I feel uneducated people buying and trying Ebay kites isn't the primary problem. I can't remember the last time I saw a totally clueless guy at the beach setting up a kite. However, within the last 2 weeks I have seen 3 guys (good riders) riding like morons within the swim areas. That's by far the larger problem.
In terms of the experienced riders riding "poorly", we have had tons of talks on here in the past. I gave up on confronting experienced riders personally and on here about 2 years ago. It wasn't getting anywhere and was just causing hardship for me. People either ride responsibly or they don't.
Instead of confronting, I decided to use some of my computer skills to set up wikis, forums and stuff here locally. I was hoping that the local community (especially the instructors) would hop on the Wiki and add sections, info about local riding spots, safety.. you name it. Maybe it would help, I hoped.
With exception of Steve S and a little help from Sammy, no one added an ounce of info to it.
The Wiki is still there and waiting for info to be uploaded.
http://www.tbka.org/TBKAWiki/index.p...e=Welcome_Page
New sections about safety gear, weather patterns, whatever you want.
As was the original agreement for posting to the site, whoever does add info is more than welcome to include a link to their site of business. The information should be just that, not an ad. But, feel free to link to your website.
Here is an example of an Elgg site.
http://www.scottfears.com/elgg/elgg1.5/
This type of approach could be used for sharing information of all sorts (podcasts, vids, PDFs) regarding safety, local launches, etc. There are tons of free platforms out there these days to be used. I feel this one is the most under-rated, which is why I showed it instead of Joomla, which many of you probably already know of.