Kite · Pioneers
1990
Peter Lynn puts a kite on wheels
In New Zealand Peter Lynn builds the modern kite buggy and starts a line of traction kites that eventually leads to the water.
10,000+
Peter Lynn kite buggies in use, according to the American Kitefliers Association
Peter Lynn, a New Zealand mechanical engineer born in 1946, had been developing traction kites since 1987. In 1990 he took a kitesailing craft he had built on three skis, replaced the skis with wheels, and had a land buggy. The first runs were at Argyle Park in Ashburton, on a three-wheeled buggy pulled by a parafoil.
The buggy was a breakthrough for traction kites. Lynn followed it with the Peel, a two-line wing, in 1991, and in 1997 with the C-Quad, a single-skin delta with the bridles of a foil kite, described as the world’s first hybrid traction kite. By 2010 more than 10,000 of his buggies were in use.
Power kiting on land and kiting on water grew up side by side. In 1995 Cory Roeseler, who was already riding a kite on water skis, visited Lynn at Lake Clearwater in New Zealand. Lynn’s movement, as the American Kitefliers Association puts it, branched out into kitesurfing.