Go out with all lines equal at first and launch the kite. If it won't climb, the brakes are too short. If it over shoots the window, they are too long. If they are way saggy, they are too long. If you can't kill it while flying by applying the brakes, they are too long. If it won't reverse launch, they are too long. If the kite is dramatically creased and sluggish they are too short. If you launch and get yanked and dragged down the field and the winds are OK for the kite, the brakes may be too short.

For most kites, you want the brake lines loose but not droopy - just a gentle, taught slag if that makes sense leaving the trailing edge creased but not pulled in to a fold.

Fly it and look for any of the symptoms above to determine if the kite needs brake line adjustment.

Just to make sure red is power? Or does it matter? I've heard Red=power Green=brakes and vice versa. But i have heard the anti latter more. So thats what i did. The sun started to set so i had to come home but it wouldn't launch at all. I had to hold the lines at the larks head, about a foot up the lines. I am going to try tying a 1 foot piece of paracord on my power lines an see if that fixes it. But it was sick!!! like 3mph wind and i jogged backwards towards a hill and i got a good 5 second backwards glide. YAY! I have free flown for the first time in my life. Cool! Lots of power though could have gone buggying if i wanted to.

Ok i looked at my "instructions" and i guess i hooked up my lines backwards. Hey they are simple but they helped out alot! LOL! SO red goes to brakes and green goes to power, makes sense. I will try that way tomorrow.

Hook all 4 lines to an immovable object and see what the relative lengths are just so you know what you are starting with. Linesets are usually all the same lengths with the heavy lines for power and lighter ones for the brakes. I've never had anything green on any of my lines. The only colors I've had are red and blue. That really doesn't matter though. If your new 8 is like both Panshs I've flown, they need just enough brakes to get them to land but no more than that. Brakes are like an anchor on the Blaze and Ace. You can use one to help turn with in a good wind or both to land but that's it.

Yeah I am going to stake them out tomorrow when I fly. But i did have them backwards so Pansh may have listened and cut the brakes shorter. I will try the knots in the power leaders trick. The sleeves on the lines are red and green. Cant wait as there is a hill/cliff thing at my school so i am gonna bring it in and fly after school (We actually have a kite club) *that i started* LOL! but i will let my buds give it a whirl and hopefully i can get the balls to do a hill jump on the cliff.

If they listened, and were going to change something, they would make the brakes leaders longer and make all 4 lines the same length. My Pansh lines were within an inch of each other. Pretty good considering how everyone dissed them. I unrolled them out of curiosity to check and then rolled them back up without ever hooking them to a kite.

Yeah i am actually pretty happy with my lines. Better than the ones on my NPW anyways. (Dacron, its like a rubber band)

NPW,
If you have been paying attention most people choose not to even use there lines or skinny handles from Pansh. I don't think ANYONE would be suggesting that you should be out flying off hills with them Or lending an 8m kite to your school mates to do the same
Folks think kites are dangerous and scarry. All it takes is one person getting hurt and NO ONE in the whole town / County can kite because they have to make rules. We can't kite in our local Bay or it's parks and no one has ever been hurt.
Please think about safety or a LOT of people may have to pay for the outcome ! Sorry to sound like an O.G. but you seem to be pushing the limit before you know your limit and you aren't playing after school games now !
:duh:

My friends have flown both my 3 meter and 5.5 NPW in all wind, and have gotten some good jumps, they are capable of flying my 8 meter. And i wasnt sugesting them to fly off a hill, as they are not ready to do that, i would just let them static fly and buggy. I do know that most people dont use the pansh lines, and i plan to replace them. I would trust them 5 feet off the ground. I have watched all my friends and know what they are capable of and i wouldn't let them do anything they cant handle. I will probable switch my Pansh lines over to my NPW when i get new ones, because at least they don't stretch as much, and there are knots up and down my lines, yeah and i hill jumped with that. LOL!

All I'm going to add to this one is that I think everyone should try and make it out to a major event, or at least one of the minor ones or demo days as soon as they can in their kiting career.

I was pushing like crazy, thought I was good, then I headed down to seaside, went to pull out my 3m in the strong clean wind and saw everyone else pulling out 6-8m kites. By the end of the weekend I'd figured out how to handle a kite way bigger than I'd ever imagined and I've had way less injuries since because now I have a good idea where the limit is and how to kite when near it. I now know what not to ever do as well. Most of my real injuries came from before that.

I learned so much about kite setup, buggy prep, differences between buggies etc. It'll take forever to figure out on your own, when it can happen in an hour by kiting with someone who's been doing it well for years. If you can't make an event, drive for a couple hours to kite with someone fairly close to you that's got some serious time in. Most of the old timers will gladly spend a day to help someone who's willing to travel to learn.

I think pansh did change their lines, in all the pictures I have seen they are all within an inch or so of eachother, not the brakes being so long. I hooked them up backwards and thats why it wouldn't fly, No wind today so I will try the other way tomorrow.

yeah, they have made a change in line mfg. Mine are sleeved and knotted, no sewn loops for me. You might have better usable lines. That looks like about how much I had to shorten my power lines to make my Blaze work.

The lines are pretty nice overall, a couple spots that it "pilled" but seems fairly usable for the time being. I think I will stick with their handles unless i can get a good deal on a kite line bar set on ebay or craigslist. I got a PM from someone that pointed out a brand new 6 meter LEI with lines and a bar for $75.

Ok so question, converting my Pansh to a bar. The brakes go where? And the power go where. Just to clear it up it is a fixed bridle kite. I know depowers have the brakes on the outside and the powers to the harness. But wouldn't pulling on the bar depower it? Unless the brakes were longer and pulling on them increased the AOA.... But to fixed bridles run the other way? Brakes inside powers outside? This would make sense as to why a fixed bridle kite will snap a depower bar. So I want to make a bar for my pansh to get used to the bar style. What relative lengths should I make the leaders. Note I had to make my powers about a foot shorter and it just overflies the window. So should the power leaders just be a foot shorter? That would seem to make sense. Also what is a good lenght bar for the pansh? A kite that requires almost an entire arms length to get any practical turns. Like 60cm? Oh and one more thing when I replace my lines should I get a 100foot set to replace the 85 footers on it now? So it stays in the power zone longer for jumps.

Thanks,
Nick

With a big kite like that you will need to use the Crossover bar tha Pablo introduced in previous threads. Please try and search for it.

I find that we refer to this and the pendulam jump link a lot. Maybe when you find it you can put it in the links for future reference ??

Yeah sure i'll put up a link

Is this it?

http://www.radsails.com/noticias/ver_noticia.asp?v=n=crossov...

man that thing is fancy lookin ummm...is it for a fiexed bridle kite?

That is the basic idea ! Pablo's design is just a little less complicated though. I know it was posted on PKD a while ago. Maybe search Pablo's past posts ?

If I'm not mistaken you had a bar you converted up there. Do you still have that? If so could you post the lengths of each line?

Thanks

Are these correct assumptions? And I am assuming the point of a crossover bar is so when you turn it puts pressure on both the brake and power lines that way it doesn't turn like a tank. I'm pretty sure I can come close to the line lengths by finding a picture of one that gives the bar length and finding the scale size of a centimeter. So the power lines have a pulley tied on and the brakes can freely move through the pulley but the powers don't go through a pulley.

Here is a link to a previous thread. It has a photo of my Naish bar converted to a crossover

http://www.powerkiteforum.com/viewthread.php?tid=3107#pid158...


Pablo shows a link to his drawing here

http://www.powerkiteforum.com/viewthread.php?tid=3107#pid129...

Here is a pic of what I think you did to your Naish bar as far as line designation is that correct? And which do you hook into? Is that a chicken loop? If you hook into the chicken loop how do you depower? Or do you hook into the brake line coming out of the handle and depower by sliding the bar up and down?

K it broke...trying the pic again.

Looks right, green is power, hook into the big D-loop on the bar, the line through the bar centre is your safety line, you want that on your harness or to a KK type of thing. Where you have that "Solid Attachment" would be a pulley, when you start turning the kite that line will move side to side a lot, if you have a solid knot you'll end up pulling on one brake in a hard turn, I put a pulley there to keep the safety nice and snug while still allowing it to walk side to side on that line when the kite's turning. When it goes to safety it'll still pull on both sides no problem.

But if you hook into the loop, how do you brake....? Couldn't you harness into the center line and slide the bar up and down?

You're not talking a depowerable setup, sliding in and out on the centre will just be playing with the kite going to safety.

With the cross over setup, ideally you have a couple inches slack in the brake cross over lines, you can move the bar ends a couple inches without the brakes being affected, when you turn more you end up feeding in 2" of brake travel for every one inch of flying line travel.

You'll get full brake turns if you set it up, but it's not easy to apply both brakes to shape the kite for max power.

Gotcha, So to harness in then you would need one of those spreader bar hook doodads, right? So to kill it you push it down out of the hook? But then you don't get a swivel set up, unless you rigged it like one.... Alright so I printed off a pic of snowbird's crossover bar and measured the bar at 50cm (the length of mine) This way it is scaled to my kite, it came out to a nice easy 1cm=5cm so I measured the lines and ran them through eye hooks for now, (don't have any pulleys, and it's temporary, untill I order mine) It looks alot like the pic, will give it a go on wednesday. So why exactly do I need a crossover bar for a large kite? Couldn't I rig it like a depower? Or like a regular bar? :puzzled: I would love to stick with handles, but it just isn't practical for what I want to do. Also....will it make a huge difference if I tie a leader onto the brakes? (about 6 inches long) as it is the only way my Ace will fly. Notherwords will the crossover bar still function?

Depower and fixed bridal kite setups are not interchangeable without considerable mods to the bridal. They have completely different control setups.

How can I say this politely, you really need some experience before getting too far into the modding and tweaking part of the sport. Any large kite will need brake input to really get it turning, so no a standard bar with just the power lines being moved for turning will barely be able to control a huge kite, you'll have a bus to fly. With the cross over bar you get the same turning speed you'd get with handles, but on a bar. Most decent kites will turn on a wingtip.

But you're touching on another interesting point I've been noticing has been getting a lot of attention lately. One of the big differences between a noobie kite and a intermediate/advanced kite is how they respond to control inputs. Most beginner kites fly great off just the flying lines for steering, brakes can be totally slack. In fact, any tension on the brakes will usually hurt the performance. This is because they're designed to be easy to kill. Light brake application will in most cases collapse the kite making it beginner safe/friendly.

Now take the average intermediate/advanced kite. The brakes have 3-4 different uses. Light to med brake application on just one side will turn the kite on a wingtip, the noob kite will lose power and collapse, the intermediate kite will stay somewhat powered and turn. You can use the brakes to drop the kite back in the window 5-10ft giving you more power, but more downwind to pick up some speed, then cut cross wind on the increased apparent winds. If you get it down you can carefully shape the rear end of the kite with brakes to cup it just a hare and drastically increase the power output of the kite with it right at the edge of the window giving you a big increase in speed/power, or you can kill the kite with a hard application of brake. Of course if you're good with the brake you can kill the power for a spit second to get out of a bad situation and the kite should stay put making it easy to recover.

I've seen a lot of talk about kite speed and aspect ratios, but I'd like to hear how some of these new kites on the market respond at the hands of an experienced pilot. By the sounds of it, some kites are being pushed as higher end high aspect kites but they've simply made a high aspect beginner kite.

When I started flying I had a chance to fly some race kites, I hated them with a passion, too quirky, lots of little things to make flying difficult, luffed all the time. I loved the Busters, Took a little getting used to the Brooza, at first it didn't seem to want to turn, then I started learning to use the brakes properly. Needless to say, after a year I finally got myself back into proper race kites. What was a pain is now a joy. So much control, so easy to get exactly what you want out of the kite. my 10.3m will easily turn on a wingtip. I've noticed the same amazing performance from the RM+ and Yakuza. But give any one of those kites to a beginner and they'll crash and burn.

Noobies love a kite that will turn on flying lines only, but for me, I've got no use for a kite that won't respond well to brake input, well except maybe to train noobies.

Sorry, *rant mode off*

LOL! Even though I am still a noobie I do far prefer a high AR kite that responds well to brakes, a race kite. Some one I ran into had a race and I had some isues with it but I miss the control. I don't know if my Ace would be considered a race kite, but it is a rip of other races, is high AR, and low drag.... IDK? I think someone should make what has been named (in my head) lol the "noodle foil" A kite with an AR of 50.
LOL!

NPW,
You have things highlit and named almost right ! As Pab's mentioned it is a pulley on the line from brake to brake. I found a swivel pulley was best + reducing the weieght of that pulley if you can.

The brake that runs through the bar can also go to your wrist with a kite killer strap. Some bars come that way. I put a carabiner on the piece that would normaly be on your spreader bar so at least a person can hook into their belt.
Tugging on that line is how you reverse launch + land. Just like applying both brakes with handles. If you let go of the bar that swivel pulley should be far enough up thatwhen it hit the bar the kite is at FULL BRAKE and backs down on it's own SAFELY !

Below the bar is a thing comonly called a D-loop. That is what you hook in and out of when riding. The other line with the carabiner is your safety and as discussed can attach to you many other ways but MUST attach to you.

At the top 4 lines head off. The green lines to the front and red to back. Note... This is opposite a depower.