I hope not

bennie said...

what happens if your colour blind

Then the green bit is your ocean where there is no rules.

I think they have relaxed a bit, the airport climb path is still off limits, but the red area to the left of the yellow bit was full of kiters when we were there in June. There were heaps of poleys too, because it was 25-40 knots every day.

The kiters who can ride out there seem to be wise enough to either stay away from the peaks the poleys were charging or they had the skill to mix and not get in the way.

And yeah that will inevitably be coming to many spots that are within the major citys in Oz.

One of the reason the yellow area runs two miles out to sea is obviously departing and landing aircraft, but if a jet loses a engine on take-off, the certification will guarantee a single engine climb rate of 154feet/nautical mile. This is not alot, but means that in an emergency, a rather large jet, say a B777, could be climbing in that corridor at only an altitude of 50-100feet! I have flown in and out of that airport several times, and sometimes the kites look pretty close. A kite wrapped around the leading edge of a large jet would probably bring it down, especially if it was climbing out at best single engine climb speed, called V2. Obviously the rider would not fare very well, either! In Sydney, for example, a heavily loaded B777, losing an engine on runway 16R, will probably pass through Botany bay heads at less than 200 feet AGL.

bennie said...

what happens if your colour blind

I guess you just read the "No Kiteboarding" bits in black & white

shannon8888 said...

what if your colour blind and dyslectic

Then you read that as Lysdexia ;-)

I think it fair to say that it's a good idea to keep the **** away from any airport, runway, landing strip, heli pad or bay/river or whatever that is used by seaplanes.

There are usually thousands of useable kilometres of empty ocean that can be used adjacent to these sorts of places so no need to go within 1 km of any approach lanes or airport boundaries. In fact, the FAC usually stipulate 4km from the airport boundary.

Be smart when kiting, remember you represent the kitesurfing community at large and by you doing something stupid, brings the whole sport into disrepute.

DM

I thought it looked like this :

Yea Wellie is like that too... only the airport thing.... allowed to kite on western end of Lyall Bay. Works perfectly. You don't really wanna be messing with a 747 anyway lol... i'm sure that would be bad for your kite.

But we kite at a few spots in the Manukau Harbour which are near to Auckland International airport. But we are off to the side so no real biggie... similiar to the setup at Lyall Bay.

What's more a of a problem of course is the other area where its more "kiter vs swimmer" as opposed to "kiter vs jumbo". Like you guys in OZ we have the occasional bad press due to kiters in amoungst swimmers. But over here (in auckland where most ppl complain) we are sorta lucky cos our better winds are the best in spring and autumn NOT summer. Even in summer its never both hot AND windy so unlikely your gonna be kiting a crowded beach unless you like grovelling in 8 knots at takapuna haha (which is what causes the problems).

Yeah you still get the odd person swimming in windy condituions but they are the crazy sort and hence don't whinge when a person whizzes by on a kite... infact they WANT you to jump over over them