I am really intrigued by arcs and the talk latlely about them, Especially the Auto Zenith feature. I was looking at some YouTube Videos and came across one from Carltb but i noticed something weird happen right before he goes for the bar. it's at 1:12. what happened to the auto zenith right as he's about to grab the bar? by the looks of the bar is looks like it swooped a little low?. any ideas?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyNdvUeEPdM

auto zenith is awesome although sometimes it's not perfect. What probably happend in the video was a gust. When the kite shifts back to the zenith and a gust moved in, it can cause the kite to move past the zenith before it corrects itself. It's awesome in smooth wind. And more wind speed means a quicker auto zenith. This is thrown off in gusty patchy winds.

Could have been a little bit of a swirl in the wind. Don't know the lay of the land where Carl was flying, but with what little experience I have on my PL they will search for the wind. That may have been what was happening.

arcs will wonder the window if the wind is a little gusty or shifty... it is a tendency to autozenith. that's tendency,,,lots of factors .....sand in the tips ? wet on one side from a relaunch, with sand? without sand? spar and webbing wet on one side? clump of mud somewhere.

i have have had 1/2cup of sand in each tip in the very kite carl was demo'ing with and still autozenith just fine. if the rig has decent internal pressure and wind, it will work and require very little attention. water is the only maybe in the mix and if its airborne it not a problem for long. i have flown all my arcs in steady rain and the autozen. works fine as well

it rebounded right back up , which it kinda did the same as he chased out the steering line ,,,the kite tried to autozenith as the le falls back.

I watched it a few times and I think what happened with that little bounce is the kite has moved position with a bit of pendulum across the zenith and right at the joint, where the chicken loop is attached on the rail, there is a bracket joining the legs. Looks like the chicken loop rotated and then may have rotated that little bit more and gave a jerk as it rotated around the bracket.

what actually happened was, the kite was drifting about the window and when it got to the edge of the window, the anchor point slipped down the rail slightly and the kite jerked. the way that i anchored the kite was via my suicide leash. all i did was unhook the leash from my harness and then fed it under the bar and attatched it back to the chicken loop. it only really locked into placing when it slipped down to the vertical bar. once there the kite went back into auto zenith mode.

the way that auto zenith works is, just think that you are flying a single line kite. it will react to wind conditions but will always want to climb to the top.