How to fly a kite

Many water sports require practice to be able to know the environment and know how to handle it, since the state of the water will depend on the climate, the waves, the season of the year, the wind... In short, a series of factors to take into account that will make the activity carried out correctly or not.

If you want practice kitesurf you not only have to take these recommendations into account, but you also need to know how to use the corresponding material, such as case of the kite kite.



How to fly a kitesurfing kite?

The Valencian Raún Arellano is an expert kitesurfer who explains to us through the kitesurfing blog of the Valencian Community how we should do to better control the kite. There are many riders who practice this sport, but could you explain how kiting works exactly?

Seeing how a kitesurfer does a thousand pirouettes in the sea helped by the wind is something truly fascinating and leaves more than one of us with our mouths open. At first glance it seems very simple, but not only does it require technique but there is also a scientific theory behind it that supports why the kite needs to go in a certain direction or perform various movements in order to take flight.

The kite does not fly because it catches the wind, but rather the kite generates a force related to the speed of the wind and the different pressures. Thanks to this game, the force is broken down into two: parallel and perpendicular to the wind, obtaining resistance and lift.

Here we are going to give it a scientific air and we are going to explain Bernoulli's Theorem, the basis for the theory of lift. Below we explain the formula, but it means that the total pressure is the sum of the static pressure plus the dynamic pressure, always remaining constant.
The total pressure should remain constant for a constant flight altitude, taking into account sea level:

P= p_o+1/2 Á V² = Constant

P= Total pressure
p₂= Static pressure
1/2 Á V²= Dynamic pressure
Á= Air density
V= Relative air speed

As we can see in the following drawing, in an air current the wind 1 (V1) that circulating above the profile is longer than the path taken by wind 2 (V2), which circulates through the lower part of the profile. To then reach the destination point at the same time, V1 will have to go faster than V2, but this will only be true as long as there are low speeds.



If we maintain the first premise of the theorem explained above in which the pressure must remain constant and taking into account that on this occasion the speed of V1 is greater than the speed of V2, equality can only be maintained if the pressure p1 decreases. This will create depression in the upper part of the kite, the main cause of the lift and resistance we talked about before:

p₁+1/2 Á V₁² = p²+1/2 Á V₂² = Constant



Here we leave you a demonstration video to better understand the lift force: