windy day on Cleeve Hill

So I've been flying in some fairly big winds recently: I find that if I'm on my own I tend to be a bit of a wimp, but when I've got company my bravery gland pumps out stupidity and I often push the envelope or whatever people say.
For example: last Friday I was flying in fairly dirty wind with turbulence (or wind shadows as we call them) coming from the radio masts as the wind swirled through them. Despite this, and because I had someone to fly with, I achieved 32mph. Pretty good speed for a bumpy field.
Today though, my courage abandoned me, in the worst wind I've experienced in many months, my sensible gland won out and I decided to live to fly another day.

I guess that's one of the aspects of flying that makes it so interesting, since you're reliant on the wind, every day is different. In fact, some days the weather - and therefore the wind - can change several times in a day with small weather systems like a bunch of cloud bringing faster and sometimes gustier wind, and fronts can cause the direction of the wind to change, and the direction has a lot to do with how smooth our wind is.

Then there are the kites: slow "learner" kites have a low aspect ratio (AR), meaning they are "squarer" and often thicker in section, are the best fixed foil kites to fly in gusty winds ,while race kites, having a high AR and thinner section, are much less gust resistant and tend to "bowtie" (twist inside themselves) in a nasty wind. And then there's the depowerable foils that fly on a bar. These kites can be trimmed by pulling or pushing the bar which changes the "angle of attack" (AoA) of the kite, which simply put means they can not only fly in a bigger wind range than fixed foils, but also can soak up some of the gusts by depowering the kite as the gusts hit.