Today was my second experience putting a kite in a tree. My session ended even before I had a chance to start:evil: I was going to get a buggy session in but bad luck said otherwise. My fault really....I set up just down wind of a large tree so it was behind me, didn't think it would come into play like it did. Got my PL Phantom all set up and pre-inflated. I start backing up and begin the launch, get it half way up then it stalls. I pull in some trim, tug on the front lines and up it shoots like a rocket. It shoots past zenith and starts heading over my left shoulder. I grab the bar, pull it down to the right, then I realize I have the bar backwards and end up steering it further left over my shoulder and into the tree behind me. Lines are up and over three branches with the arc hanging free style. At this point I started feeling ill to my stomach....how the heck will I get this down? Well, after unhooking and looking at the situation, I was able to reach one end of the kite and unhook it. Pulled the rest of the kite closer to the ground but now the bar is 20ft in the air. I give the kite a couple hard tugs from the remaining attached end and snap goes the spar, crap! I unhook the remaining two lines and pack it up. After this I was able to grab all four line ends and tug but one remaining branch wouldn't let go. There was no way I could climb the tree safely to get my bar down. Luckily by releasing two of the four lines the bar did lower a few feet and stop. I would raise it a couple feet and it would lower some more. Repeated this until I could reach it and pull the remaining lines out of the tree, whew! Extremely lucky everything ended up ok without any rips to the kite or frayed lines. Thought for sure I wasn't getting my bar/lines back. I made sure I said a little prayer after I got home. Now I need to shop for some new spars, any ideas?

When I needed to replace them on one of my old kites I ended up using www.intothewind.com had them cut/ship me the right size carbon tubing and connectors. Not a great store for power kites, but they have amazing customer service/support, and good prices in my experience. They're my goto catalog/store for non-power kite stuff. I've heard rumors others have used tent poles, but those are heavier.

Your local model shop (think RC) might carry carbon tubing. It's been hit and miss for it vs fiberglass in my experience around here. I also like being able to get the thicker tubing if I want.

Doh! Glad you and the kite are ok...!

angus used to have some better than original aftermarket ones on his site I think. You might contact him.

good thing it was an arc and not one of your other kites with an elaborate bridle. I made the mistake of trying to test my nasa on no lines in front of my house and it ended up in a barberry bush. If you know what a barberry bush is then you know it and a kite don't mix.

Quote: Originally posted by ssayre

angus used to have some better than original aftermarket ones on his site I think. You might contact him. good thing it was an arc and not one of your other kites with an elaborate bridle. I made the mistake of trying to test my nasa on no lines in front of my house and it ended up in a barberry bush. If you know what a barberry bush is then you know it and a kite don't mix.

Right on ssayre, if it were any other kite with a messy bridle (like a Peak for instance) I don't think the outcome would have been very good at all! I'll shoot Angus a message since his website is under rehab at the moment. These were the original spars so they were pretty "seasoned" if you get my drift

You can get carbon and other types of tubing at Aerospace Composite Products in California. We use them as wing spars in our R/C
sailplanes.

glad you got it down. had a tree incident from a microburst 60+ ! snatch it right off the beach, blow into a tree 1/4mile down the beach way up in a pine ! i just reach one line ...snatched that joker ! it came down in pieces!

good story man!