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Old 04-19-2012, 08:50 AM
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ricki ricki is offline
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Welcome to the sport Matt! Steve makes many good points worth thinking about and acting upon. I second finding a good instructor and going through some quality training. It costs but you will learn a lot safer, faster and more completely with the right instructor than on your own. People used to teach themselves to hang glide, sometimes with homemade gliders to boot. You don't see this any more and for good cause.

I am working on an article currently about others who found themselves in your situation. They were from several countries around the world. Many were young, strong and athletic and all motivated to get into the sport on their own, sometimes with friends.

All of them experimented with full sized kites on land as you did with no intention of going into the water at the time. Tragically all of them suffered fatal accidents being dragged or lofted into hard objects on land. The last one happened about a month ago. When you are ready to move on to a full sized kitesurfing kite from a training or small traction kite, you should take it to the water and not play around with it on land. This despite what you might see others doing at times on the beach.

This sort of thing doesn't happen to everyone but the risk is high enough and threat to common kiting access significant enough to warrant finding a good instructor. Not all are equal by any means and you need to do your homework and select well. More about this in the top three stickie posts in this section. http://fksa.org/forumdisplay.php?f=45
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