4WD Electric Mountainboard

Joshua T. from California used his Third Coast connection to build this awesome 4WD Electric Mountainboard - Top speed: 24mph with 4 wheel independent electric drive!

Third Coast Kites

Wallaby Boomerangs on the Third Coast

Wallaby Boomerangs is proud to provide a high-quality line of all natural, sport boomerangs handcrafted in his workshop in the Montreal, Canada. He’s one of the major manufacturers in North America and the first one to develop eco-friendly boomerangs made of different species of wood, bamboo and now biopolymers.

Wallaby combines timeless contemporary design with a thoughtful ethical way of working. By taking traditional craft methods to a contemporary level, Wallaby savoir-faire in working with this living material.

The red line through all these products is the company mission to design and manufacture new products with minimal environmental impact, using as much as possible renewable or abundantly available natural raw materials, while offering the highest technical and health safety standards for our customers. The company product range encompasses ecological paint products, varnishes.

We assume responsibility for our environment that is one of the principles of our corporate philosophy. For us, that means minimizing the ecological impact within the bounds of the financially defensible. We are therefore constantly upgrading our production processes and ascertaining, evaluating and minimizing the use of raw materials, emissions and waste volumes on an ongoing basis.

Wallaby is committed to :

- Sharing innovative and modern applications of different materials with the consumers around the world to give more value to my skill.

- Contributing to the preservation of the environment, continually searching for and educating on more ecological manufacturing and production processes.

- Maximizing social equity and sensitizing consumers to current social and ecological issues.


Check out some video: Third Coast Kite and Hobby YouTube Channel

Third Coast Kite and Hobby

KiteWing adds a new dimension to kiteboarding

The KiteWing is easier to learn and handle than windsurfing or kitesurfing gear. It’s also very safe for the people around, since there are no lines. The wing is also TOTALLY depowerable, since you have direct control to the wind. (holding the wind in your hands) Compared to windsurfing rigs a KiteWing covers easily 4 windsurfing sail sizes (which often requires two different masts).

Check them out!

Video: KiteWing test on land and water in Maui -
KiteWing instructional video (water) -

More info: KiteWing -


Third Coast Kite and Hobby

Seagull Robot Takes Off And Flies On Its Own, Just Like the Real Thing

Ok...I know it's not a kite, but this is still pretty damn cool. What you see here is a new lifelike seagull ‘bot is one of the most realistic bio-inspired flight machines we’ve seen. SmartBird takes off, flies and lands on its own, flapping its wings and turning its head and tail to steer. It is modeled on the herring gull and its appearance and movements are uncannily similar to the real thing.

Designed by the German firm Festo, which also brought us the elephant-trunk-inspired robotic arm and the autonomous robotic jellyfish, SmartBird is Festo’s newest entry in its Bionic Learning Network program, which involves several universities in the U.S. and Europe and aims to use nature as a model for mechatronic systems.

The bird has a 6.5-foot wingspan, so it’s much larger than a real gull, but it looks pretty much like the real thing, as you can see in the video below.

SmartBird flies like a seagull thanks to an active torsion system combined with a complex control system. Its wings each consist of a two-part arm wing spar with an axle bearing on the torso. The wings and tail are the only mechanisms creating lift, and Festo engineers had to figure out bird flight in order to do it.

The company explains: “First, the wings beat up and down, whereby a lever mechanism causes the degree of deflection to increase from the torso to the wing tip. Second, the wing twists in such a way that its leading edge is directed upwards during the upward stroke, so that the wing adopts a positive angle of attack.”

The tail acts as an elevator and rudder, stabilizing the bird in straight-line flight and helping it change direction.

Check out a video of the SmartBird in action:

http://www.facebook.com/video/?id=81334776533#!/video/video.php?v=1466732328197

Third Coast Kite and Hobby

Buy Starkites at Third Coast Kite and Hobby

ExA 2011- Power and Performance
Sizes Available: 7-9-11-13

The 2011 ExA, Starkites hybrid model is designed and built for one purpose, top notch freestyle performance. It is intended for demanding riders looking for big/lofty jumps, high powered tricks and mega loops.

Now on its third R and D year, we specifically focused on dynamic stability control.

This enables the ExA’s potential to be fully exploited at high winds, enhances safety at the extremes, and steering comfort in order to stay focused on the actual trick instead of the kite. Keeping our competition riders in mind, we have maximized upwind ability in order for them to throw more tricks during their heats.

The ExA comes in one-pump system and reinforcements at the leading and Trailing edges.

With its huge wind range, heavy duty construction, and ease-of-use, this kite stays at the top of the charts.

Technologies

Starkites R&D team has devoted a large amount of time to testing and improving each detail of ExA 2011. The result is amazing … See for yourself!

As with all the Starkites products, the ExA has been developed using state of the art technology and our specialized know-how to make this kite a market leader.

The Auto Morphing Profile enables a dual action:

1. Auto-stabilisation of the kite when it is located at the edge of wind window in gusty winds.

2. Double De-power allowing the kite to flatten the center profile in addition to reducing the angle of attack when sheeting out.

In more technical terms, the ExA s Central Strut Curve Curve is inverted and linked to the canopy by a fabric wall. This feature prevents the kites stalling in gusty winds and also increases the effect of sheeting in and out. Kites with standard struts change the angle of attack when the rider sheets in or out. The ExA changes both the center profile shape and the angle of attack which all leads to better de-power capacity using smaller movements on the bar.

The bridle system is key to a kites’ performance. With the ExA, we focused on developing the Dual Bridle System

This bridle system will always keep the kite arch in the same shape and ensure power transmission to be complete. The bridle does not absorb or lose force, which makes you get a real and direct response from your kite.

In the Dual System, the central bridle keeps the leading edge in a constant perfect shape, and the lateral bridle gives direct power transmission while maintaining the best kite balance according to the kite s center of power.

ICE technlogy stands for Inner Curved leading Edge.

The leading edge shape ensures minimal contact with water when the kite is on the water. It also guarantees a fast and easy re-launch.

Just power-up and pull one of the leader lines a few centimeters and it will re-launch the kite. No more swimming needed!

This is the same technology as developed for Starkites SBOW kite, a renowned model for its amazing re-launch capabilities.

Central Inflation

The ExA 2011 is available in with Central Inflation – we have the simplest and strongest system on the market, easy for repair and simple to use.

High Strength Structure

The ExA’s high strength structure creates a very reactive kite thanks to its hybrid radial construction : 1/3 bi-radial and 2/3 tri-radial.

Fabric fibers are orientated in the same exact direction as the power is distributed from, which creates a strong and stiff structure that results in minimum energy loss, increased reactivity, easier control and increased wind range.

Third Coast Kites

Kite / Wind Powered Car Crosses Australia

Cruising along in a car of their own design--part kite surfer, part wind power turbine, part EV--a German duo has driven across the vast majority of southern Australia on about $15 worth of electricity. According to their own account they’ve set several records for their particular class of vehicle in doing so, and we’re inclined to believe them if only for the fact that we’ve never seen anything else quite like the “Wind Explorer.”

Like many eco-minded innovators before them, Dirk Gion and Stefan Simmerer wanted to create an emissions-free source of personal transit, one free of both direct carbon emissions and secondary emissions from consuming fossil-fuel derived electricity. So they built the Wind Explorer, a 441-pound auto that transports its own wind turbine--a 20-foot bamboo mast that can be fitted with a 9-foot-diameter rotor--for charging the 8 kWh batteries during the night.

But that’s not the only sense in which the car is wind-powered; with the right crosswinds, the passenger can deploy a parachute-like kite (similar to those used by kite surfers) to provide added thrust for the car.

It’s important to note that the Wind Explorer’s journey from Albany in southwestern Australia to Sydney in the east wasn’t entirely unplugged. During early technical adjustments and fine-tuning of their equipment the team plugged into the grid from time to time, as they did during Cyclone Yasi when they couldn’t erect their wind turbine due to the weather.

But their point was never to prove that they could cross a continent with a zero-total carbon footprint, but rather to show that there are different ways to think about automobile travel outside of the existing paradigm. And they’ve certainly succeeded at that. Have you ever seen a kite-surfing, turbine-toting, electric vehicle before?

Third Coast Kite and Hobby

Nuance in the art of Kite Mapping

June 22nd, 2010

By Jeffrey Warren

By Lauren Craig; reposted from the Louisiana Bucket Brigade blog.

Since May, volunteers and staff from the LABB have been working with students from MIT’s media lab on an aerial photography mapping project. The Gulf Oil Spill Mapping project is so simple that it baffles people: attach a basic camera to a kite or weather ballon and set it to automatically take a picture every 5, 10 or 20 seconds. Let the rig out 1000 feet and cover as much coastline as you can. The photos are then sent to some smart guys at MIT (including the project’s fearless leader, Jeff Warren) who then stitch the photos together pixel by pixel and georeference them to make a map.

The simplicity of this project is what initially sparked my interest in it. The kits are assembled from relatively inexpensive materials, and almost anyone can perform the basic tasks of attaching the camera and letting out the kite or balloon. Since its inception, the project has successfully accumulated a lot of quality data. However, mapping the gulf coast oil spill is different than mapping, say, the festival grounds at Bonneroo.

The first, most obvious challenge is access. At Grand Isle, for example, the beaches remain open to the public, but only up to the water berm, about 30 feet back from the high tide mark. Even under low-wind conditions, it is almost impossible to get pictures of the coastline from this distance–especially when the Coast Guard and mysterious private security teams involved in the beach clean-up are breathing down your neck. When it is windy, the kite or balloon is carried even farther back from the coastline, and you end up with a bunch of pictures of people’s camp roofs. The old standby for us there has been the pier at Grand Isle State Park, which allows us to position the kite or balloon directly over the coastline. However, it forces us to limit our mapping to a very narrow section of beach, since we are confined to the pier. In contrast, the Mississippi Coast remains open to the public and our brave volunteers have actually waded out into the water to properly position the camera over the coastline–with great results! (But, we don’t know how much longer the MS beaches will remain open.)

Isle Grand Terre, a barrier island off the eastern coast of Grand Isle, hit the mainstream media a few weeks ago when its shores and wildlife were covered with thick, black oil. The day after oil hit, our volunteers were able to hitch a ride on a boat with researcher Adam Griffith from Western Carolina University and photographer Richard Shephard. The amazing results of that trip can be seen here:

However, access to the island has been significantly restricted since oil was found there. On Thursday, LABB volunteer Elizabeth, HandsOn New Orleans volunteer Erin, and I were lucky enough to score a boat ride with Greenpeace to Isle Grand Terre, along with a marine biologist and a filmmaker from California. Technically, Greenpeace warned us, we were not supposed to even go to the island. Getting on the beach there would require us to tow a small skiff boat and use it to ferry our group’s members to the beach. The prospects for toting a heavy helium tank on a boat with 8 people and then transitioning it to an 8-foot skiff boat with a 2-stroke engine seemed dim. I opted for the kite.

The boat ride from the Bridgeside Marina on Grand Isle to the fort at Grand Terre was slow. The entire bay is essentially a no-wake zone. In addition, there are larger oil-soaked fishing and shrimping boats constantly leaving and arriving at the docks of the Sand Dollar Marina at the eastern end of the island. Booms set up around Queen Bess island and large barges transporting tanker trucks present further navigational challenges. When we finally got to the island, we saw that the clean-up operations had been effective on the beach–the four-inch thick pools of oil were gone. But, thick, brown and orange oil remained trapped in the rock jetties and the marsh grasses surrounding them. Standing on the jetty, I looked down through the spaces in the rocks at pools of oil and brown frothy mess.

It is difficult to imagine how, or if, it can ever been cleaned up. When I set up the kite, I was disappointed to find that the wind was not strong enough to lift it up to 1000 feet. The more I let out the reel, the further from the coastline the kite ventured, with little rise in elevation. The results are that we captured plenty of pictures of the island’s interior, but only a few of the coastline (and these were at low elevation). My next option would have been to trail the kite behind the boat, but divergent interests among the boat’s passengers and the fuel level of the boat ruled out this scenario. All in all, the mapping trip was not the most successful one we have had so far. But, it also was not a total failure. Elizabeth obtained some excellent shots of the oil on Grand Terre, dolphins looking for food in shallow water and the clean-up operations, which can be viewed on the LABB flickr site.

We were also grateful to establish a relationship with Greenpeace. Having never worked with Greenpeace before, the organization’s reputation for in-your-face environmental activism made me a little wary of their intentions and tactics in the gulf. Although my personal sentiments toward off-shore drilling and the energy sector are closely aligned with theirs, I recognize the importance of petroleum to the economy and culture of coastal Louisiana; and I politely keep my opinions to myself here. A moratorium on off-shore drilling is not a popular idea in Louisiana–and Grand Isle is no exception. Further, I believe that using any disaster as a backdrop to bolster a political agenda is not only exploitative, it’s disrespectful. If you’re going to bother coming down to the gulf right now, you better have something to offer the people that live and work here–and anti-drilling rhetoric doesn’t count. Save it for Washington.

To Greenpeace’s credit, I was impressed with their staff’s efforts to keep a low profile and not isolate the community along political lines. The organization is funded entirely from private donations and does not endorse political candidates or accept funds from them. Their work in Grand Isle is focused specifically on providing boat transport to independent journalists, scientists and organizations who lack the funds to charter boats. Sure, they are also taking their own pictures as well. I am grateful for their services and appreciative of their respect for the sensitivity of the issue here.

The moral of this story: we can’t depend solely on the generosity of Greenpeace to get us where we need to go! Boats cost money; and mainstream media outlets have a lot more of it than we do–but they don’t have kites! If you are interested in our mapping project and would like to see more images of areas that are only accessible by boat, please visit our Grassroots Mapping page to make a donation!

Third Coast Kite and Hobby