g-force junkie - 3-10-2011 at 04:40 PM
Is there anybody else that doesn't like the auto relaunch of the new bow kites?Long story short ,was out the other day for several hours on my 13
Scorp and atb and had a great session, wind started to gust and lull so decided to pack when a buddy showed up with his 13.5 Kahoona and wanted to
ride.We setup and launched the Kahoona, it was jerking my buddy around pretty good so I took the kite to show him how to keep the kite in the neutral
zone.Flew it around a bit to get the feel of it and went for the board, luff, kite falls on leading edge downwind, no problem I think,just steer the
kite to the edge and launch, as soon as I thought that the kite hot launched with no bar input, QR'ed and handed the kite back.Might be a great
feature on waves but not good for land and snow.
bigkahuna - 3-10-2011 at 05:16 PM
I pretty much only kite in waves and I think an "auto relaunch" kite could be a real problem in waves also. Every once in a while I'll have a really
bad crash and get disoriented. In those situations I've learned to not steer and just let the kite crash (or in the case of an Arc, let it return to
zenith). Once the kite has crashed and I'm not being dragged upside down at a kajillion miles per hour I'm able to re-orient myself, return to the
surface and sort out the kite and board. I had one such crash in chest high waves last week. I gybed to toeside to catch a nice left but timed it
wrong and ended up going over the falls backwards. I did a couple rolls underwater while the kite surged and then crashed. Had it been an auto
relaunching kite and assuming I wasn't able to re-orient myself, I probably would have had to pull the safety release.
IMO if you're crashing your kite frequently, you probably shouldn't be kiting in waves (at least not big waves). More importantly, I think, is being
able to flag out the kite if you do crash it and can't relaunch it. It can be pretty hairy to be connected to a kite that just got hit by the full
force of a crashing chest high wave. Instant chiropractor.
At any rate, while I was watching the FS Unity demo video earlier today where is shows how easily it auto relaunched, I was thinking how if I were
using that kite that day I probably would have gotten into some serious trouble.
Easy relaunch is good, auto relaunch (unless you're a noob or doing tricks on flat water) is probably no bueno.
PHREERIDER - 3-10-2011 at 06:21 PM
crashing alot . good point . auto idle is one thing, auto start leaves too much control to the device.
the "falling" lei, man what a thump when it catches at the bottom. really have to run those in to catch. THATS! how stuff breaks..including your
back!