What is the best line length for flying? Any differences besides response?:puzzled:Pablo - 10-6-2007 at 06:32 PM
Depends, what are you trying to accomplish. Shorter lines will make the kite more responsive, quicker when doing stuff like sending the kite up for a
jump, the window's smaller so there's less distance between flying at the side of the window and the top, jumps will have more pop, direction changes
will happen a lot quicker. Longer lines will give you a lot more bottom end, way longer power strokes, easier to work a kite in the window. But you've
got a lot of ground to cover with the kite when doing something like a direction change. It's a long way from the left side of the window to the
right. Jumps will be sloppy as well and it'll be harder to hold an edge for the time needed to send the kite up to jump. Long lines will put the kite
up higher into clean winds as well if you're flying inland with stuff blocking the wind down low. Short lines work better for small crowded parks.
If you take a kite like my 13m and are looking for responsiveness, it'll fly wicked on 20m lines, but you've got to be sure of how to fly the kite.
You've also got to have enough power to park and ride. With the short lines the kite will not be able to turn around in the window, only places for it
are right, left or above. It simply needs a bigger window to do a figure 8. You've also got to be really careful of it on shorter lines, if you send
the kite up quickly at speed it'll hit the top of the window pretty quickly and take you for a ride whether you're ready or not. I like it on longer
lines so I can loop the kite easily, fly it wherever I want in the window when I want to. It also slows down the sudden direction changes and helps
keep me from being lofted.
I' usually run my 3m and smaller kites on 20m lines, most other kites on 25m and save the 30m lines for the low wind kites, my 9m Buster I and the 13m
Century are both on 30m lines I usually fly the Century in low winds, but sometimes it's just too squirly for a race kite so the Buster comes out. I
think my Scorpion is on 27m, not 100% sure of that though.khooke - 10-6-2007 at 10:23 PM
