[extragoode]

It was crazy windy this weekend, so the wife and I decided to make the best of it and go fly a kite. Yay! We went out the lake near our house, because we knew of several large open areas that should suffice. Once we get there she picks out this nice area near the water and SURROUNDED BY TREES! I humor her and the kite actually made it up in the air! Then I started noticing that when the gusts would die down, it would fall just a couple feet and then it would be below the tree line. It would just flutter eratically, then once it was completely behind the tree, just fall. That got me thinking. If you're considering a new wind generator install and are unsure of the effect of nearby obsticles, go try to fly a kite there. If there's not enough wind to keep a kite up almost any time, it probably won't generate very much electricity too. I was also thinking some sort of scale could be attached to tell how hard it was pulling. That would give a quanitative value that could be compared to existing installations instead of just a qualitative feeling. What do you think? Does it have any merit, or does this idea not hold any air?