Switch (by Alain Micquiaux)

French kite artist and designer Alain Micquiaux has been designing and developing kites since 1990. After entering the kite industry professionally in 1993, he became a designer for Eolo Gayla in 1996 and worked on modernizing its sport-kite range. He also competed in quad-line precision and ballet, taking third place at the 1998 World Cup in Dieppe.

His later work moved increasingly toward original single-line forms and large-scale aerial art installations, including his Morpho butterflies, Poppies, Fish and other designs intended to turn the sky itself into a canvas. Alain describes his approach as reducing both form and technique until the connection between wind and object becomes apparent.

The Switch is a particularly playful expression of that philosophy: mechanically simple, visually unusual and capable of changing character entirely through the pilot’s interaction with a single line.

No assembly and no loose spars. The Switch’s flexible frame stays completely assembled, yet the entire kite twists down into a flat 15″ disk for storage.

Pull it out, let it unfold, attach your line and fly.

Three simple folds and you’re ready to go home.

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The Switch is difficult to put into a conventional kite category—and that’s exactly the point.

Leave the line alone and the Switch settles into stable single-line flight. Start working the line with deliberate pulses and something completely different happens: its unique sliding bridle changes position, causing the kite to change direction, reverse, rotate and tumble.

That’s the Switch.

Designed by French kite artist and designer Alain Micquiaux, the Switch combines the simplicity of a single-line kite with an unusually interactive style of flying. Axel, fade, yoyo, flip, forward and reverse flight are all part of its vocabulary, with plenty left for the pilot to discover.

No handles. No second line.

Just you, one line, and a kite that behaves very differently depending on what you put into it.

• • Type: Controllable / acrobatic single-line kite
  • Width: 20.1″ / 51 cm
  • Length: 24.8″ / 63 cm
  • Height: 16.1″ / 41 cm
  • Weight: 3.7 oz / 106 g
  • Wind range: 2.5-25 mph / 4-40 km/h
  • Sail: 40 g/m ripstop nylon
  • Frame: 3mm fiberglass
  • Flight line: INCLUDED / ready to fly

Included instruction insert:

https://kiteforge.com/switch-insert

Detailed user manual:

https://www.alain-micquiaux.fr/questions_reponses/mode-d-emploi-du-switch/

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The secret is the Switch’s unusual mobile bridle attachment.

Instead of the flying line terminating at one fixed tow point, it connects to a sliding attachment Alain calls the shuttle. A sharp input on the line shifts the shuttle and changes the kite’s orientation and direction of travel. Stop giving it those inputs and the Switch returns to behaving much more like a conventional stable single-line kite.

It’s an elegantly simple mechanical solution—and one of those kite designs that makes considerably more sense after you’ve seen it fly.

Easy to start. Plenty to explore.

Despite how unusual the Switch looks and flies, it wasn’t designed as an expert-only curiosity.

Alain described the basic handling as something that can be picked up in only a few minutes, and early owners consistently reported much the same thing: stable unattended flight, immediate response once they began working the line, straightforward relaunches and a surprisingly short initial learning curve.

Learning to make it move is easy.

Learning exactly what you can make it do is where the fun begins.

From bag to sky

There is essentially no conventional assembly.

The flexible fiberglass structure remains installed and the entire kite twists and folds into a compact circular package. Remove it from its pouch, allow the structure to spring open, attach the flying line to the shuttle and fly. When you’re finished, the kite folds back onto itself for storage without disassembling the frame.

That makes the Switch an unusually capable little kite to keep handy when you aren’t sure what kind of flying you’re going to feel like doing.

Breakage is extremely rare under normal use conditions, but instructions for replacing the spars can be found here:

https://www.alain-micquiaux.fr/questions_reponses/reparation-du-switch/

Weight	6 oz
Dimensions	16 × 3 × 3 in