Has anyone ever actually damaged or had a bridle fail on their SLE/bow kite of any size? (not including pullys)

Not sure if this qualifies, but I had a pulley get stuck once on my TD2. Was kind of odd, the kite looped and crashed dragging me a bit. I tried to relaunch, but she just turned over and crashed again. When I finally dragged it in, I found the problem. There was no damage done. Everything is just fine. Was an odd experience though...

I think you meant bridle, instead of bridal, btw... And its normally spelled poll as well..

edit: when I first saw the post, i thought you were trying ot review some crazy thing you do in texas with brides and poles... wasnt sure what I was getting into until i read the rest of the post...

haha thanks, i just woke up. hahahah

good stuff, so far out of eighty people no bridal failures

There was a thread recently on kiteforum.com, some guy asking for kites without pulleys or bridles (IIRC) cos he'd seen one get stuck/hooked up and injure someone ...

repaired some worn bridle lines on a Cross bow . line abrasion is common. esp. older ones @the pulleys.

inversion is the weak point in a SLE , that's the reason shorter and shorter designs are/where the trend(well since about 08).

more of a problem with packing for the most points of damage or land based abuse/crashes.

Inversion?
The Crossbow I used that one time kept folding the nose under when I dove it to water start ...

during a water relaunch kite my fold THROUGH the bridle. it WAS A bigger issue , but smaller sets are better

Yes, I have witnessed catastophic failure of a Slingshot Link bridle. But then again, I watched a Naish Cult 11m disassemble itself in mid-air as well.

I have witnessed at least 2 of each of those failures plus a couple of pulley failures too. No one died but a few of the occurances, if they had not have happened over water could have come close. Even on the water they looked freightening. :wow:

All happened to bigger guys (in the 200lb plus range) too. Big guys are hard on gear. On closer inspection all incident were due to high wear at those locations.

Proper flight checks would have checked it before something happened.

Nice not to have pulleys. Ozone doesn't have any.

But some kites need them to help relaunch and depower.

Especially since I do many self launches and pulleys can tangle then.