Ok, so I put an AAA (Angle of Attack Adjuster) on my Rage 2.5 this weekend.

Overall a very simple process, but I have this horrible need for lots of details... Took me about 30 minutes to put on, taking my time and including a redo on one of the lines and really with no practical experience. Haven't flown it yet, but I assume the kite still flies Excited to see how it handles in the 4 different modes.

I thought the instructions were clear, overall concise but went into detail on some of the most mundane things would have liked detail in other more interesting areas. I also found it funny that they had a diagram of a generic ABC bridal system, but the instructions had you hook the lines into the AAA slightly different than the diagram. I understand why they showed the bridal this way, but for someone who wasn't paying attention or didn't have experience it could trip them up.

The rage has a really bridal setup in my opinion, it's got the brakes along the trailing edge, then 3 sets of paired bridal lines and then the wing tips for each A, B, and C bridals. The ABC bridals all come together to a single line; you just unhook all the lines then reattach the A bridal lines + wing tip lines to one line on the AAA, B bridal lines to another AAA line, and the C bridal lines. Yeah that's it. Pretty simple. Assuming it still flies

A tip might be to make sure that you have the AAA bridal in the right orientation before attaching the lines to avoid twisting the lines. Two of the AAA lines are doubled, so they are flat across one side, I made sure to attach all of the lines in the same direction (towards their kite attachment point) to avoice twisting; also made sure that all of the larks head knots wer of the same handedness. also I found it handy to clip the AAA to the base of my garage door opener and position the kite under it so that the attached lines would hang vertially, be easy to deal with, and be in the sme orientation as they would ultimatly be in the air.

Ok, so my questions...

Question #1... OK, so in my overly detailed and documented disassembly of the bridal I noticed how the bridal lines were attached by the manufacturer. The bridal lines were placed on the bridal loop in a zigzag pattern. The wing tip bridal lines were lowest on the bridal loop and the center A/B/C lines were on the top-most on the bridal loop. Not sure if there is a method to this maddness or not. It would seem advantageous to have the wing tip lines on the bottom since, I assume, the generate the least ammount of force so the center lines would hold the wing tip lines on tightly if the wing tips luff. Of couse this also seems like a bit of over engineering. Another thing this patter seems useful for is simply to keep the lines orderly and to reduce twisting. Anyone know the skinny on this?


A picture, well, it's an attempt at a picture of the bridal loop from the factory. Camera phone, bad light... But you can almost see how the bridal lines are arranged...



Zig-zag patter of the factory bridal attachment for the Rage 2.5.
(bigger picture where you can see the annotations >>> http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3606/3327152936_0b037d96db_o.... )

Question #2... The AAA is setup to attach the A bridal on a loop (as above) but the B & C bridals are attached individually with larks head knots. Is this just because in order to use the same attachment method you'd basically have to either close the AAA line loop around the bridal lines or effectivly attach the bridal lines to the each AAA bridal line individually then assemble the AAA? Are there any drawbacks beween the different attachment methods? Also, as above, is there any adcantage to the order in which you place the brida lines on the AAA line (A top, b middle, c bottom OR C top, b middle, A bottom [presumably you want B in the middle])?


Larks head knots for the AAA B bridal attachment.

Thanks!

I put a triple A on a Rage 2.5 last year. Can't remember exactly how I did it but I did follow the instructions and tried to keep the order of attachment the same as it had been prior to the triple A. IT WORKED GREAT! I put it on the most "lifty" setting and was able to jump with it in about 25 knots. Pretty fun actually! Nice kite. Wish I had a 3.5 with the triple A. That would be a great set-up! Have fun with that thing!

G

Still waiting for enough time to get mine on my 6m... everyone that has the mod, likes it... at least everyone that has it and that has talked about it.

Another thing I found odd was that there were two extra... pig tails...? or looped line that came with the AAA. Guess that was included just for fun, instructions didn't say anything about it and either way I can't imagine what it would be for.

(honest this was not a bump)

is it to extend the brake lines?

Yes...they are to extend the back lines. You have to use these.

Is your Rage on a bar or handles?

mines on handles... funny it didn't mention this in the instructions at all...

I had great success with this combo on a bar. Give it a whack and let us know how it goes!

spam reported

But now I have a question. How can you tell if a AAA is going to work with a particular kite does it have to be flexifoil or can I, say put one on a ozone cult?

The AAA will work with any bridle that has the A, B, and C row bridle cascades completely separate from each other all the way to the last loop connecting to the flying lines, so they can separate cleanly from each other into three different sets to go on to the AAA bridle.

Not sure if the settings would work the same for all kites, but it's easy enough to slide the settings up and down then retie the knots.

you would need one to roughly match the size of your kite though.

I've played around a bit with bridles on some of my other kites, mostly rebuilding the sloppy pansh assembly jobs, and I never went into more detailed thinking than making sure they were in the right order top to bottom..... yep lots of detail in the first post:eekdrull::evil:

does make sense to have the power lines on top of the bundle in a way, but usually I reckon there's not enough pull on an individual bridle line to make much difference, the loads are spread out enough so they're quite small compared to the strength of most bridle lines.

i've only ever ripped out brake lines, all corner ones, all from badly done releases to kite killers by folks having a go at one of my kites. Once the line broke in the middle a couple feet down from the canopy (already weakened i reckon) and twice the line attachment ripped out of the canopy. never a problem up by the bridle attachments / cascades, and I'd remember if there was one, as i had to debuild the bridles to put the repairs in.

This thread is useful as I'm now attempting to put this on my own Acid 2.5 Rage.

Arkay mentions "the instructions were clear" But the 3rd generation b/w xerox provided with my package is pretty atrocious - you can't even see what's going on in the pix! Flexi really dropped the ball on this one - really unforgivable quality.

Does anyone know an online source for the color instruction flyer for the AAA Bridle adjustment installation? All the online PDFs just show the adjustment positions, not the installation process.

yay 2009 I did find a one a while back, I'll see if I can dig it up. But once you grock what you need to do and orient the AAA correctly it's straight forwards mechanical. Believe it or not, although it seems quite confusing. If they just had one good diagram it would be so much clearer. I'd also say to take a look at you kite bridal as it is now. You should disconnect all the lines and play around! the way the bridals are connected is probably easier than you think.

See if the pic half way down on the CoastalWindSports' Traction Kiting 102 page helps.

ATB,
Sam

Thanks, that also helps.

The right bridle was a bit of a jumbled tangle when I looked at it.
The blurry instructions just don't clearly show how to properly remove and retie the knots and clusters.