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A power kite or traction kite is a large kite designed to provide significant pull to the user.
Foil kites consist of a number of cells with cloth ribs in each cell. It is the profile of these ribs that gives the kite its aerofoil shape and enable it to generate lift. The most common type is the ram-air foil, where each cell has a gauze-covered opening at the front, meaning air is forced in during flight, giving the kite its stiffness and enabling it to hold its profile. Some ram-air foils are closed-cell, where a one-way valve locks the air inside the cells, giving some increased water relaunch capability.
Leading edge inflatable kites (LEIs) are made of a single skin of fabric with, as the name suggests, an inflated tubular leading edge and inflated ribs. The leading edge and ribs are inflated by the user with a pump prior to launching the kite. The profile of an LEI type kite comes from the inflatable edge and ribs. LEI kites are primarily used for kitesurfing, as they retain their structure when wet and can be easily relaunched from the water after sitting on the surface for an extended period. Conversely, an open-celled foil kite crashed into the sea immediately becomes saturated with water and unflyable.
Power kites can also be used recreationally without a vehicle or board, as in kite jumping or kite Man-lifting kite, where a harnessed kite flier is Kite mooring to the ground or one or more people to provide tension and lift
Research is also under way in the use of kites to generate electric power to be fed into a power grid. are a type of airborne wind turbine. As an alternative to fuel-powered generators, shipping container sized generators can provide electricity to remote locations using large computer-controlled foil kites and battery reserves. Kites are used to reach high altitude winds such as a jet stream, which are always present, even if ground level available to are absent.
Kites of related design are used for sailing, including speed sailing. Jacob's Ladder, a Kiteboating, set the C-Class world sailing speed record with a speed of in 1982, a record that stood for six years. A Kitesurfing was the first sailing craft to exceed a speed of in October 2008.
Power kites range in size from . All kites are made for specific purposes: some for water, land, power or maneuverability.
Depowerable kites have safety systems that work in a similar way, but since the kite is semi-permanently attached to the user's harness, a toggle or handle is used to activate the safety system which releases the bar and power lines from the harness.
Some depowerable kites have a 5th line safety system, the 5th line being redundant during normal use until the safety mechanism is activated. Here, all of the usual four lines are slackened, causing the kite to either fold or roll backwards, and lose its profile to the wind and therefore its power. The kite is left attached to the user by the 5th line to allow retrieval.
In October 1977 Gijsbertus Adrianus Panhuise (Netherlands) received the first patent[4], Patent NL7603691 (A) ― 11 October 1977 for KiteSurfing. The patent covers, specifically, a water sport using a floating board of a surf board type where a pilot standing up on it is pulled by a wind catching device of a parachute type tied to his harness on a trapeze type belt. Although this patent did not result in any commercial interest, Gijsbertus Adrianus Panhuise could be considered as the originator of KiteSurfing.
On 28 August 1982 Greg Locke and Simon Carter, from Brighton UK, set the world record for kite traction at sea, travelling nearly 26 miles under wind power alone along the English channel.[5], Kitelines Vol 4, No. 3, p60 This followed a successful crossing of the English Channel from Sussex to France by Locke & Carter the previous year.
Through the 1980s, there were occasionally successful attempts to combine kites with canoes, , snow skis,Mark Harris Sea kayaking and kites , July 2002 and roller skates.
Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, Dieter Strasilla from Germany developed parachute-skiing and later perfected a kite-skiing system using self-made and a ball-socket swivel allowing the pilot to sail upwind and uphill but also to take off into the air at will. Strasilla and his Swiss friend Andrea Kuhn used this invention also in combination with surfboards and snowboards, grasskies and self-made buggies. One of his patents describes in 1979 the first use of an inflatable kite design for kitesurfing.Patent DE2933050
Two brothers, Bruno Legaignoux and Dominique Legaignoux, from the Atlantic coast of France, developed kites for kitesurfing in the late 1970s and early 1980s and patented an inflatable kite design in November 1984, a design that has been used by companies to develop their own products.
In 1990, practical was pioneered by Peter Lynn at Argyle Park in Ashburton, New Zealand. Lynn coupled a three-wheeled buggy with a forerunner of the modern parafoil kite. Kite buggying proved to be popular worldwide, with over 14,000 buggies sold up to 1999.
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