Six Falhawks!

Recently, I was offered a set of six THP Platinum Falhawks: two super-ultralights, two standards and two venteds. Falhawks were flown in the late 1990s by Team High Performance (THP), and I've always been interested to see how the AVS (Automated Venting System) of the vented version works. Never flown or even seen a Falhawk AVS before, and the asking price for the set of six was very reasonable, so now I had the opportunity!

I'll report on flying the three pairs in the order in which we flew them. Standards ('Pro Comp') first.

They felt good and solid on the lines, relatively slow-flying and with good tracking. Slightest touch of oversteer coming out of corners. Basically, very nice kites to fly, so that's a good start!

Vented ('AVS') next. 

The venting system is both variable and automated. The vent panels have zippers which can open or completely close the panel; this is the variable part, because a completely closed vent panel essentially turns the kite into a standard. With the zippers partly or fully open, the automated part consists of a bungee cord between the free corner of the vent panel and the lower spreader. The idea behind this is that the bungee allows for the panel to be pushed more open with stronger winds/gusts. So, in essence, the arrangement would smooth out variation in wind strength. 

So does this actually work?

General flight characteristics are very similar to the standards. So far, so good. To get an idea of what the variable venting does, we also flew together with one having the zippers fully closed and one fully open.

This resulted in a clear speed difference, as you would expect: the kite with closed vent panels flew faster and pulled a bit more than the kite with the open vent panels.

And then finally the SULs.

We flew them in virtually-absent winds; 2mph was a gust. 

In zero wind, we really struggled to keep them flying, but they only needed 1-2mph for us to feel pressure on the sail. They had drive in such low wind, and flew slowly and serenely. 

So, overall impressions: Falhawks are good classical team kites, they're pleasant to fly and track well. I'm not sure the automated part of the AVS really works; we need to try in blustery winds with one kite having the bungees in place and the other not. And we need to get a better feel for what the optimal wind speed is for the SUL; I'm impressed as to how low a team kite from the 1990s goes; SUL is wrong; XUL is much more appropriate!