Billy Lofted By Foil

[ricki]

Kite buggy mishap mega loop on flexifoil 8.5 blade with billy parker.

"Billy parker tries kite buggying for the first time and flying his first flexifoil blade- the video starts as he just sits in the buggy for the first time, on his first and only run a freak gust sends him 20ft straight up then backwards maybe 60m down the beach, heroicly he doesnt hesistate in throwing the 8.5m into a kite loop, incredibly he initiates the second loop before landing. To loop an 8.5m almost twice airborne is a crazy prospect. Thankfully he lands feet first and all is well but he's very shook up."


Lots of kiters today have little to no time on foils or handles. The thing is the handles allow rapid killing of the kites power or simply backing off of it. The guys that set Billy up with the buggy didn't do him any favors by not spending some time on applying the brakes before setting him loose. Glad he is ok! The dual looping is impressive particularly with handles but with the brakes he likely never would have been lofted in the first place.

[ARCSrule]

can't fix st**id. i really doubt there was a freak gust...suspect more inability to control.

[ricki]

Billy is an extremely capable kiter one of the best in the state. Too many firsts has undone lots of folks. I even heard that said about diving recently, "avoid too many firsts" on any dive. Anyway, even though he apparently didn't apply the brakes he still did some advanced moves to deal with the aftermath of the lofting. If he spent some time with a Blade foil the outcome would likely be impressive.

[kent]

WOW is all I can say. On a guess I'd say that nearly anyone BUT Billy would have been living in a chair after an incident like this. To see Billy bugged out gives perspective to the danger involved. Mad skills!!!

Nice save, but I agree that your buddies didn't do you any favors on this one. Good to see you made it out ok. Hope that the rest of your trip is noting but fun!