Hello everyone! I'm just getting into this sport. I live in Juneau Alaska. I've been flying a 3.1m Prism Tensor four line fixed bridle foil kite on handles for practice. It's great fun at the beach.

I'm looking to get into snowkiting on a snowboard. I bought a Ozone SB harness already. I know someone selling some Ozone kites here in town - some used some new.

I see that the newer Ozone models have 5 lines. So there's a new 2013 Access 10m with 5 lines, and a used 2011 Access with 4 lines.

What is the big deal with this extra line? Should I even worry about it? The used 2011 with four lines seems like a much better deal to me.

Are there any other differences between a 2013 and a 2011 that would make it worth it to buy the newer one?

This is a great site!

The 5th line is a safety line only. It is not used for actually controlling the kite in any way. It is attached to the center of the kite so that if you pull the safety, the kite folds into a reverse taco and safely floats to the ground with zero power. It is also very simple to relaunch, as all you have to to is walk hand over hand back to your bar, reset your chicken loop safety and hook back in and you are ready to relaunch.

Depower foils that are four lines will only give the same effect as kite killers on handles when you pop the safety. The kite will fall to the brakes, which can sometimes leave it powered enough to still be able to drag you on higher winds. I have used the 5th line on a friends Ozone Summit, and it works very well. I have only used four line safety on fixed bridle foils in the form of kite killers, so I cannot speak to the actual effectiveness of it, but I have had my kite killers still yank me pretty hard as the kite flops around on the brakes alone and sometimes tries to reverse launch with a bit of power.

The ozone access bar for 2012 - 2014 all use the fifth line for safety. When the wind is too strong for the kite and the brake lines will not control the kite, the fifth line kills it immediately. I have had no problems with the fifth line being present. The bar from the 2011 kite will not work with the 2012- 2014 ozone kites if you upgrade and want to use your bar and lines. The fifth line is not a problem and works very well to quickly and totally dump the power of the kite when things get questionable. My comments are from using 2012 - 2014 Access kites using a buggy.

I'd go for the 2011 model. I have the 2010 4m which I really like. Didn't get on with Ozone's 5th line system on the Frenzy.

I've never used the 4 line model, got 3 access kites, the 4,6 and 10m.
The 5th line does have a tendency to get a little twisted at times in the middle, but it is extremely usefull for example if your kite goes into a death spiral, this has happened to me on the 10m when one of the knots went through a pulley prior to or during launch ( possiblly caused by tangled with a bit seaweed on the beach) you can just pull the release on the chicken loop and dump the kite, it will become a tangled mess, but you won't have to chase it down the beach. Sadly from experience it takes the best part of an hour to tidy it all back up to relaunch.
The access kites are marketed as a snow kite, and the 5th line function could potentially save your kite from going over a cliff, if you're in such a location in the snow, or even just trying to catch a kite in a couple feet of powder as it runs with the wind would be a challenge.
The 6 and the 10 I love, the 4 less so, I'm not sure how much they changed from 2012 to 2013, other than the 4 has a very short bar compared to the 2012 model, also the depower line when pulled fully in makes the kite prone to folding at the ends when caught in a bad( luff - gust) I have had it on a number of occasions go into a spiral, which is disappointing considering its their flagship gusty wind kite. Example of the spiral in this video at 1.22 minutes ( https://vimeo.com/86761654 ) but all said and done, I'm happy enough with the 5th line, but I can see why some don't like it.

Thanks a bunch for all of the replies. I think I'll just go with the 2011 instead of the 2013. The price difference is $550 vs $960. I like newer better safer, but $410 savings sounds pretty good if the two kites fly pretty much the same. And lots of people must have learned just fine with the 4 line version. I can use the savings for my next kite!

So, tremo, how has the learning been going?
How do you like the Access?