Reverse Kiting with Cross Brakes

In December of '97 while working with paragliding students practicing reverse kiting with correct (cross) brakes I thought... "there must be a way for students to get kiting time with a computer simulator that provides correct braking input". With a good simulator, the student would learn the correct right/left response and would then only have to dial in how much brake to apply with the real thing and not end up constantly pulling the WRONG brake time after time.

In 5 short hours I had a joystick modified with sticks and strings as shown at right and the normal behaviour of the wing with inertia, weight, instability, yaw, pitch and roll was programmed in basic and the pilot's view of the wing was put onto the screen. The rapid success of my effort had me in awe that no-one else had already done it. Within 2 days I had two students that each had put on some simulator time and showed almost immediate mastery of reverse kiting with the real thing. One student who had spent a month pulling the wrong brake nearly every time he had previously pulled the wing up did a 1 minute reverse kite on his second pullup after a 90 minute session on the computer and commented with delight that it was "just like the wing on the computer".

This small but effective program is an example of how I can give a bit back to an industry that has provided a lifetime of flying fun. Anyone that wants to have a copy of the joystick version of the game can have it.

The basic compiler only allows limited memory to the joystick and most computers made since '93 output too great a value making the joystick version unplayable on many computers. Go ahead and try the joystick version to ensure it works before you spend any time modifying an attachment for your stick. If you have programming experience and want to rewrite the small 50K program in C++ or something that supports joysticks please email me and I'll send you the qbasic source code.

Click here for the keyboard version. It should work on nearly all pc's. Not anything like actually having strings to pull down but it is a bit of entertainment and fun. To reduce how many buttons had to be pressed I had the brakes actuated by tapping only one button for each brake. Each touch of the key adds about 20% of that brake's range and it constantly fades so a constant tap is needed to keep brakes applied. Enjoy the game and let me know what you think. Please remember that the joystick version with it's ability to quickly add and remove brake height using actual strings is the only way to go for training purposes and help is needed to get it programmed in C.