Power kite

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.

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.

A high angle of attack setting results in more power from the kite, but at the expense of speed and ability to fly close to the wind.

A low angle of attack results in less power, but speed is increased and the kite can fly a lot closer to the edge of the wind window.

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.

In the 1820s, George Pocock used kites of increased size to propel carts on land and ships on the water, using a four-line control system—the same system in common use today.

[10] The intention was to establish kitepower as an alternative to horsepower, partly to avoid the hated "horse tax" that was levied at that time.

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.

Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, Dieter Strasilla from Germany developed parachute-skiing and later perfected a kite-skiing system using self-made paragliders and a ball-socket swivel allowing the pilot to sail upwind and uphill but also to take off into the air at will.

[17] Strasilla and his Swiss friend Andrea Kuhn used this invention also in combination with surfboards and snowboards, grasskies and self-made buggies.