Interview Express, Peter Lynn flying objects trainer
Publié : jeu. 24 oct. 2013 20:47
English version: (La version française est en dessous)
LesFoilZ: Hi Peter, you are a very well-known person to most of us here at lesFoilZ.com (and elsewhere), but maybe not to all our readers. Your name is likely to be associated with the twin skins kites and now LEI brand but this is far from covering all what you have done as an engineer and kite maker. Could you tell us something more about yourself and what brought you into making kites (amongst other things)?
Peter Lynn: I some how or other became obsessed with kites as a kid- before I can really remember even. As an adult, I sold my first kite in 1971 and kites have been my career since then- single line initially, then traction kites from 1987,- kite sailing and the beginning of kite surfing, buggies from 1990 with Peels, C Quads, the Ngen, Arcs and now Skins (single skin traction) . Strange as it might seem to your readers, single line kites are far more difficult to develop and understand than traction kites, and I have put more time and effort into understanding and describing the relationships that determine single line stability than into steerable kites (which obey pretty easily understood rules ). Very large kites have also been a bit of a distraction at times- the latest being 1250sq.m, currently the world's biggest .
FZ: It seems, that your involvement in traction kites dedicated to snow kiting, kite surfing or land boarding had decreased over the years since the end of the 90s. Did you lose interest? What are your relationships with Peter Lynn, the kite company? Do you exchange on kite design?
PL: From about 2004, I ceased direct involvement in kite manufacturing while retaining the PL brand name ownership. With financial security ( from having had a few successful products) the idea was to get more time for thinking about some fundamental kite things without the daily distraction of staff and business. This change has given me a lifestyle that many would envy and has worked brilliantly by providing opportunities for new people like Michel Dekker (Vapor designer), Pepijn Smit (PL LEI's), and Simon Chisnal (in my view the worlds leading single line show kite designer now) to blossom, but it has been quite frustrating for me at times because I identified some emerging trends before most people had realised they were coming and was then unable to convince my licensees to commit to them. Examples of this are the move to de-power foils for buggying and snow kiting, the move to direct selling ex China by way of developing close relationships with manufacturers there (which is revolutionising the single line kite world) and now the development of single skin traction kites. It is also true that more than 40 years at the physical extremes of kite development has come at a cost; I suffer quite debilitating lower back pain if I do more than a few hours of traction kiting , and have a recurring rotator cuff failure that severely limits what i can do .
FZ: During the summer, a couple of news appeared on your personal website indicating that you were somehow back in the traction kite game with your single skin foil kite research. What motivated you to investigate further into that direction?
PL: Very simply , I yearned again for the good old days when it was possible to develop a new kite today and have it out in the market tomorrow. Kite businesses now generally have far too much inertia in their development processes, their supply chains and their marketing to allow this. So I thought, why not just have go again directly- and I can do this without disloyalty to my licensees or hurting their businesses providing I'm clear as to the alternative structure (yes I'm the designer of the Skin, but NO- they are NOT a Peter Lynn brand product) and provided I make it possible for them to come out with a branded version of the design if and when they choose to.
FZ: Could you tell us how a single skin kite works? What did you discover? How do you achieve stability (in particular at the tips) and depower with a single skin foil? More generally, what are the pros and cons?
PL: I made a first prototype about 2 years ago in an attempt to persuade my licensees of the opportunity that single skin kites offered. It was a big surprise to me when it immediately worked so well. I'd deliberately tried things that were towards simplicity, and quite different to what I considered to be the mainstream of new single skin design at that time (The Ozone XX lite and similar ) . In my still developing understanding, a key to tip stability is to have a very efficient mid- span section for the kite so that the tips can be rigged at a higher angle of attack without the kite getting into the dreaded reverse flying mode that NPW's are prone to. Obviously aspect ratio helps in this respect also- because the tips are smaller as a proportion of the total area.
The main virtues of single line kites (in addition to lower cost) are higher lift coeff (more pull for size) and the ability to fly reliably while still generating useful pull in less than half the wind speed of any known foil or LEI. They are truly amazing in this respect, and this feature alone will extend the market for traction kites into previously unavailable realms (larger boat kite sailing in light wind places for eg). Their disadvantage is lower L/D- and upwind performance can be pretty discouragingly bad, especially in draggy mediums ( soft snow, soft sand and water) , but I'm assuming that dedicated incremental development of the type that Michel Dekker is a genius at will improve immensely on what they can currently achieve. I'm just one person working by myself now - no team- (albeit that I can make and test at a rate approaching one prototype per day because of economic freedom and no distractions)- so one of the choices i've made at this stage is to use handles not bars. Handles allow more precise control, so inform more understanding of what a kite is actually capable of than the mono-dimensional control afforded by bar flying. Of course I understand that the market will require them to be flown off a bar, and the Skin style kite is fundamentally ideal for this, but for now they are set up for handle flying -and it's almost comical watching those who have never used anything but a bar trying to adapt. I should stop playing this particular game, as it's just pissing off most of the potential market - but it's a sort of salute to the past.
FZ: It is not unusual to have a large spectrum of sizes for the same design (Designers tend to of course to make some modifications from size to size). But Flysurfer, for instance, only proposes two sizes (6m and 9m) for their new single skin kite (The Peak) with more or less the same wind range for both sizes on their tech sheet. Would that mean that the single skin concept cannot adopt the same solution for the bottom and the high end of the wind range? That is, the design of a light wind and a high wind single skin differs dramatically -- maybe it cannot even be used at the high end (say above 20 knots)?
PL: SS kites can fly, without any bridling change from 5 km/hr through to 80km/hr and above (if you can hang on)- because I've flown some of my prototypes across this range . And the bonus is that at the stupidly strong end, they really don't try to kill you- like foils seem to me to be doing at times ( and I even have suspicions about Arcs) . They also appear to be scalable . I don't yet have certain knowledge of this, but will stick my neck out here and say that less than 1sq.m poses no issues, and that at the other end, I don't expect anything terminal until around 300sq.m- and maybe much more.
FZ: In addition to snow kiting, land boarding or even kitesurfing in trips for which weight matters, there is one area in which single skin kites may excel, namely with crafts (SUP, small kite boats, etc…) aimed at boat trips along the coast that can combine paddling and kiting. Do you investigate into that direction as well ? Given the time that you have devoted to the kite boat, this seems to be a natural step forward, isn't it?
PL: Definitely- but having put so much of my traction kite life effort into kitesailing (fruitlessly so far), I have an almost visceral reluctance to jump into this particular bit of water again right now- but next week?!
FZ: Do you think that a mixed design of a closed foil leading edge with a single skin could be worthwhile to be explored, in particular for water use?
PL: No, I'm pretty convinced this is not a good option - and the reason is that Skin and NPW style single skin kites , lacking a lower leading edge, have no pockets or corners at all that water (or snow) can catch in . For water launching, get any corner of such a kite above the water and into some wind, and the kite eventually comes out and flies Even an SS with a lower leading edge (like the Flysurfer Peak- otherwise an exceptional kite I think) will not do this. Son Pete had a pretty serious attempt at developing an LEI equivalent using a ram air inflated closed leading edge instead of a pumped up tube more than 10 years ago. A problem was, that any practicable valve that will let air in, also lets water in - so nose down they took up water and become almost impossible to relaunch - and flew like dogs if they still managed to.
FZ: Thanks Peter!
Stef for lesFoilZ.com
LesFoilZ: Hi Peter, you are a very well-known person to most of us here at lesFoilZ.com (and elsewhere), but maybe not to all our readers. Your name is likely to be associated with the twin skins kites and now LEI brand but this is far from covering all what you have done as an engineer and kite maker. Could you tell us something more about yourself and what brought you into making kites (amongst other things)?
Peter Lynn: I some how or other became obsessed with kites as a kid- before I can really remember even. As an adult, I sold my first kite in 1971 and kites have been my career since then- single line initially, then traction kites from 1987,- kite sailing and the beginning of kite surfing, buggies from 1990 with Peels, C Quads, the Ngen, Arcs and now Skins (single skin traction) . Strange as it might seem to your readers, single line kites are far more difficult to develop and understand than traction kites, and I have put more time and effort into understanding and describing the relationships that determine single line stability than into steerable kites (which obey pretty easily understood rules ). Very large kites have also been a bit of a distraction at times- the latest being 1250sq.m, currently the world's biggest .
FZ: It seems, that your involvement in traction kites dedicated to snow kiting, kite surfing or land boarding had decreased over the years since the end of the 90s. Did you lose interest? What are your relationships with Peter Lynn, the kite company? Do you exchange on kite design?
PL: From about 2004, I ceased direct involvement in kite manufacturing while retaining the PL brand name ownership. With financial security ( from having had a few successful products) the idea was to get more time for thinking about some fundamental kite things without the daily distraction of staff and business. This change has given me a lifestyle that many would envy and has worked brilliantly by providing opportunities for new people like Michel Dekker (Vapor designer), Pepijn Smit (PL LEI's), and Simon Chisnal (in my view the worlds leading single line show kite designer now) to blossom, but it has been quite frustrating for me at times because I identified some emerging trends before most people had realised they were coming and was then unable to convince my licensees to commit to them. Examples of this are the move to de-power foils for buggying and snow kiting, the move to direct selling ex China by way of developing close relationships with manufacturers there (which is revolutionising the single line kite world) and now the development of single skin traction kites. It is also true that more than 40 years at the physical extremes of kite development has come at a cost; I suffer quite debilitating lower back pain if I do more than a few hours of traction kiting , and have a recurring rotator cuff failure that severely limits what i can do .
FZ: During the summer, a couple of news appeared on your personal website indicating that you were somehow back in the traction kite game with your single skin foil kite research. What motivated you to investigate further into that direction?
PL: Very simply , I yearned again for the good old days when it was possible to develop a new kite today and have it out in the market tomorrow. Kite businesses now generally have far too much inertia in their development processes, their supply chains and their marketing to allow this. So I thought, why not just have go again directly- and I can do this without disloyalty to my licensees or hurting their businesses providing I'm clear as to the alternative structure (yes I'm the designer of the Skin, but NO- they are NOT a Peter Lynn brand product) and provided I make it possible for them to come out with a branded version of the design if and when they choose to.
FZ: Could you tell us how a single skin kite works? What did you discover? How do you achieve stability (in particular at the tips) and depower with a single skin foil? More generally, what are the pros and cons?
PL: I made a first prototype about 2 years ago in an attempt to persuade my licensees of the opportunity that single skin kites offered. It was a big surprise to me when it immediately worked so well. I'd deliberately tried things that were towards simplicity, and quite different to what I considered to be the mainstream of new single skin design at that time (The Ozone XX lite and similar ) . In my still developing understanding, a key to tip stability is to have a very efficient mid- span section for the kite so that the tips can be rigged at a higher angle of attack without the kite getting into the dreaded reverse flying mode that NPW's are prone to. Obviously aspect ratio helps in this respect also- because the tips are smaller as a proportion of the total area.
The main virtues of single line kites (in addition to lower cost) are higher lift coeff (more pull for size) and the ability to fly reliably while still generating useful pull in less than half the wind speed of any known foil or LEI. They are truly amazing in this respect, and this feature alone will extend the market for traction kites into previously unavailable realms (larger boat kite sailing in light wind places for eg). Their disadvantage is lower L/D- and upwind performance can be pretty discouragingly bad, especially in draggy mediums ( soft snow, soft sand and water) , but I'm assuming that dedicated incremental development of the type that Michel Dekker is a genius at will improve immensely on what they can currently achieve. I'm just one person working by myself now - no team- (albeit that I can make and test at a rate approaching one prototype per day because of economic freedom and no distractions)- so one of the choices i've made at this stage is to use handles not bars. Handles allow more precise control, so inform more understanding of what a kite is actually capable of than the mono-dimensional control afforded by bar flying. Of course I understand that the market will require them to be flown off a bar, and the Skin style kite is fundamentally ideal for this, but for now they are set up for handle flying -and it's almost comical watching those who have never used anything but a bar trying to adapt. I should stop playing this particular game, as it's just pissing off most of the potential market - but it's a sort of salute to the past.
FZ: It is not unusual to have a large spectrum of sizes for the same design (Designers tend to of course to make some modifications from size to size). But Flysurfer, for instance, only proposes two sizes (6m and 9m) for their new single skin kite (The Peak) with more or less the same wind range for both sizes on their tech sheet. Would that mean that the single skin concept cannot adopt the same solution for the bottom and the high end of the wind range? That is, the design of a light wind and a high wind single skin differs dramatically -- maybe it cannot even be used at the high end (say above 20 knots)?
PL: SS kites can fly, without any bridling change from 5 km/hr through to 80km/hr and above (if you can hang on)- because I've flown some of my prototypes across this range . And the bonus is that at the stupidly strong end, they really don't try to kill you- like foils seem to me to be doing at times ( and I even have suspicions about Arcs) . They also appear to be scalable . I don't yet have certain knowledge of this, but will stick my neck out here and say that less than 1sq.m poses no issues, and that at the other end, I don't expect anything terminal until around 300sq.m- and maybe much more.
FZ: In addition to snow kiting, land boarding or even kitesurfing in trips for which weight matters, there is one area in which single skin kites may excel, namely with crafts (SUP, small kite boats, etc…) aimed at boat trips along the coast that can combine paddling and kiting. Do you investigate into that direction as well ? Given the time that you have devoted to the kite boat, this seems to be a natural step forward, isn't it?
PL: Definitely- but having put so much of my traction kite life effort into kitesailing (fruitlessly so far), I have an almost visceral reluctance to jump into this particular bit of water again right now- but next week?!
FZ: Do you think that a mixed design of a closed foil leading edge with a single skin could be worthwhile to be explored, in particular for water use?
PL: No, I'm pretty convinced this is not a good option - and the reason is that Skin and NPW style single skin kites , lacking a lower leading edge, have no pockets or corners at all that water (or snow) can catch in . For water launching, get any corner of such a kite above the water and into some wind, and the kite eventually comes out and flies Even an SS with a lower leading edge (like the Flysurfer Peak- otherwise an exceptional kite I think) will not do this. Son Pete had a pretty serious attempt at developing an LEI equivalent using a ram air inflated closed leading edge instead of a pumped up tube more than 10 years ago. A problem was, that any practicable valve that will let air in, also lets water in - so nose down they took up water and become almost impossible to relaunch - and flew like dogs if they still managed to.
FZ: Thanks Peter!
Stef for lesFoilZ.com