I have been rather disapointed with the crossover bar on my 3m. The added weight creates a back stall and less than perfect individual brake control. You MUST move the bar to get individual braking. No brake turns.
I much prefer the feel a bar with by wheels and boards. I find it much easier to introduce people to kites on a bar. I usually fly the 3 in big wind so the backstall isn't obvious.

Yesterday I found a good sized field with some choppy wind due to houses. The wind was all over the map but I could join up some gusts. I just took the 3 because a wind warning was about to hit. I was having big troubles when the wind shut off and on. I swapped back to handles and had far greater success ! Most valuable was being able to tweek each brake just that bit so when it dropped I could turn / set it to catch apparent wind as soon as I regained tension. The little Brooza stopped dumping it's air ( due to the weight on the back ) and started holding it's shape like it should now that it was flying on it's front lines only Seems that little extra weight makes a difference in a number of ways :ticking:

So...... for all I promoted the Cross over bar set-up, 3 of my 5 fixed bridles are running on handles now I've always prefered handles in the buggy so am running 3, 4.5 and 9. I'll keep the bars on the 5 and 7 but find that the ace would probably performs better on handles as well :sniff: :sniff:

Looks like I get :bird: for breakfast :wink2:

I've had to do a lot of experimentation to find what works for me in my lumpy, dumpy, gust ridden light wind park and sometimes there is just no substitution for handles.

I tried various bars and other setups on my race foils back in late '99 and 2000. Didn't have much success. I thought you had to have a bar to surf with because I had an original Wipika kite on a bar.
Nothing beats a set of handles if ya got the skillz for most all tricks :tumble:

Scott