I just bought a PKD Century II 8.0m for the pathetic summer winds and I'm looking for lines and handles for it. After a fair bit of searching I found HQ Quad lines and Handles at Kitty Hawk Kites. I've heard stock lines are generally pretty good and these seem to be rated fine for my 170lb self.

Is there any reason I shouldn't get these? I've seen some people here suggest making your own handles and I'd definitely be up for that, but I haven't found decent kite lines for this price ($76) alone.

I imagine I might be able to do better than this if I buy bulk line and pre-stretch it myself, but the pre-stretching seems a little challenging and not worth the effort unless I was going to be doing this a lot.

Why not try the ones from your beamer first?

I was thinking I'd probably want have both ready-to-fly at once so I could quickly switch between them should the winds pick up or drop down. I guess it doesn't take that much time to detach one kite and attach another though. Hadn't seriously considered it.

Is that common? If I just want to fly on the same length lines is there any advantage to getting another set?

Longer lines will give you a larger wind window. I was just suggesting the swap to see how it would feel since you already have what you are considering to purchase. I'm kite OCD. I like all my birds RTF.

It depends on the strength of the lines you are getting. HQ makes some very good linesets for their higher end kites, but some of their lower end kites can be a little less desirable. For your 8m kite, I would suggest something at minimum 440lb test for the main flying lines and min 220lb test for your brake lines. Because an 8m kite can pull pretty good, something a little stronger than that wouldn't be a bad thing. Basically anything made from a high quality Spectra or very high quality Dyneema would be acceptable.

Hope that helps.

awindofchange: These are 485/220 lines. As someone who only weighs 170lb I imagine these lines are perfectly fine for me.

I'm mostly just wondering if there's anything I'd be losing if I get these lines as opposed to the slightly more expensive ones I see elsewhere.

You should be fine with them. HQ uses a high quality Dyneema line and 485 should work perfectly.

Be sure to give consideration to the length of the handles... I have the Peter Lynn Longhorn handles on my 8.6m... the bigger the handles the easier time you'll have utilizing the brakes. I formerly had the 8.6m on standard length handles and found it easier to handle once I switched over. For a frame of reference, the longhorn handles are about 2x longer than the handles they put with their 2-4m kites.