I am looking into a depower kite, I will need a bar, obviously if I get a bar it will need to be depower.....but I also want a bar for my fixed brilde kites. Could I use a depower bar on my fixed bridle kites? With the power to center and brakes to bar, just dont slide the bar or maybe put on some type of stop? :puzzled:

Nope, if you hook the power lines to the centre you lose most of your control, you'll be trying to steer by collapsing one side of the sail or the other. then how would you work the safety? You'd have to put the power lines to the bar ends and the brake lines to the centre, but then you don't get enough travel on the centre strap of a depowerable kite to get an effective kill with the safety.

You really need two bar setups to fly depowerable and fixed bridal. While you could bodge something up to sort of work, most methods don't have an effective safety or simply don't perform well.

Start digging through E-bay, you can often find 4 line surf (depowerable) bar setups with lines going for $50 or less. Then buy a second stripped down bar to make a crossover bar setup for your fixed bridal kites, stripped down bars can be found for the $20 range.

What about brakes center and powers to bar?

Basic bar, remove the guts, put about 1m extentions on the flying line leads off the bar ends, then have a line with a knot on your side of the bar, through the bar centre, then about 1/2m from the bar, attach a pulley to the centre line, then use a peice of line about 1m that goes through the pulley with a knot on each end. attach one brake line to each knot. This will allow the brakes to "walk" their way side to side in the turns, when you pull in on the centre line the pulley will still pull on both brakes killing the kite. Attach some sort of kk to the knot on your side of the bar, or attach it to a harness with a clip of some sort. You'll have to mess around a bit with the line lenghts of the centre line to have the brakes hang a little snug while flying, but still give you a complete kill when needed.

You will probably want a fixed D loop to hook into as well, it's a basic fixed loop that hooks onto the bar to go to a harness.

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Originally posted by NPWfever What about brakes center and powers to bar?

I think I see what you are trying to fugure out. Yes, Bar to power center to brakes when moving over to fixed bridle but it's not just that simples. Never is, it seems.

1st you must a least allow the brakes to rock back and forth on a pulley or something or the kite won't fly well at all.
Next, your lines wouldn't just swap back and forth and be the right length. You would need to have some creative pigtails to even things out.
The big stumper would be that you won't have enough travel on your chicken loop to add full brakes to bring the kite down.

Here is my simple solution:

From my experience you will need to have a pulley at the T . Without it the brakes lines can't move naturally and things get squirelly.

Rerigged as a crossover bar now. I'll be giving it the test over the weekend. I'll post pictures with a successful test run.

Ozone Snowkite Rally is so close I can taste it!

Keep updated on this, I am going to have to do this too.

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Originally posted by barnes Here is my simple solution:

Snowbird is right; that won't work. You must have the pulley at the center.

In neutral the power lines, the brake lines, and the bar form two right triangles, with brake lines forming the hypotenuse of each. When you move the bar to turn left for example, the hypotenuse of the triangle on the right side lenghtens, which shortens the brake line of the left, pulling in the left brake throught the pulley.

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Originally posted by barnes Rerigged as a crossover bar now. I'll be giving it the test over the weekend. I'll post pictures with a successful test run.

I have found that the crossover set-up works less well the smaller the kite you put it on. The added weight of the pulleys seems to add just a touch of brake. This isn't too much trouble if you are well powered but in low winds the kite will back down.