Highlighted in the Kite Talk blog, the Sausage Scale was originally posted in the Flexifoil Forum by a Scottish guy called Geoff, but you now need to register with the forum to read it, so I have re-posted it.

“So Geoff, what did you get up to yesterday?”

“Well I went out with the kite, but there was no wind. Not a sausage. So I went to the pub and did a crossword.”

“’Not a sausage’? Is that a technical kiters term? How much wind is a sausage anyway? And do you get, like, ‘megasausages’ of wind and stuff?”

“Er….have you been sniffing the line-cleaner again?”

[sharp exit]

It got me thinking though – the Beaufort Scale is very general, it’s all in terms of flags, trees and umbrellas turning inside out. Surely we need our own specially adapted version for land kiting (kitesurfers can sod off, they’ve already got their own maritime version, and anyway, I’m just jealous.)

I would like to propose the following: (it’s a logarithmic scale, by the way, simply so I could get ‘kilosausage’ etc in)

0 Sausages
Kiters weep, cigarette smoke rises vertically, lots of frisbee activity.
1 Sausage
Only ultralight deltas evident. Powerkiters attention is drawn to the sky. Cigarette smoke waves slightly.
0 Sausages (1 decasausage)
Larger kites are removed from bags. Cigarette smoke gets in the eyes of the person next to you. Stunt kiters stop running backwards and tripping over people
100 Sausages (1 centasausage)
Big foils begin to twitch and even fly. Buggies have flowery cushions, armrests and cup-holders removed in anticipation.
1000 Sausages (1 kilosausage)
A moderate sized foil will get you moving on a board or buggy, stunt flyers actually look like they mean it. All kiters begin to grin.
10 000 Sausages
Great wind for jumping or any other power-type activity. Big stunt kites begin to bend alarmingly. Cigarette lighting tricky without well cupped hands.
100 000 Sausages
Foils from 4m+ start to become a tad scary. Kiters begin to fall from sky. Seagulls do that cool hovery thing.
1 000 000 (1 megasausage)
Board jumping possible with a 1.5m kite, cigarettes blown from mouth, beaches useful for sandblasting old paintwork from buggy frames.
10 000 000 Sausages
Buggy-jumping possible with Stacker6. Even the seagulls go home.