It's an 08 rebel, and I've been riding it for a season now. 99% of the time, no problems, relaunch great, love the kite etc. BUT - if it finishes up on it's back with the wingtips in the air, I'm screwed. Usually only happens if it's been thrown to the 5th, or I've majorly stuffed up jumping.
I've tried pointing the bar, I've tried swimming towards it as the manual suggests, but the end result is always the same - it gets wind under the wrong side, comes off the water inside out and from there I'm done - Best case I finish up with a steering line inside a front line, go back to the beach and untangle. More normally it's a horrible knot and ends up thrown to the 5th.
WTF am I missing? If anyone has any suggestions I'd be grateful - seriously contemplating making sure my next kite only has 4 lines...
in that situation, try letting the bar go, and reaching up as far as you can and grabbing the centre lines/fifth line and yanking on them a few times, or just holding them and pulling them right in towards you. be very careful of tangles and do NOT wrap them around your hand. be ready to let go quickly when the kite begins to fly again. good luck.
i've found you have to work it slowly to the side, but dont pull on back line too early, really needs to be perpendicular to you
in deep water need to swim sideways
One thing to ensure is that when setting up the kite and when you put your steering lines on the pigtails you get the bungee and pull the loop end of the bungee up over the pigtail and steering line knot so that when you let it go the bunge pulls the pigtail back towards the LE and inwards. This keeps it where it should be. failing to do this from my experience means that the bungee (when flying and the lines are tight) slips up the pigtail effectively doing nothing.
Keeping the bungee over the knot (the connection of pigtail and steering line knot) means that when the kite hits the deck the line won't roll over the back of the kite and cause it to flip over on itself. It keeps the kite in a more likely better position in dumping. Also I found that you just point the bar and pull that line and just wait, only a few seconds but wait and then it comes around.
btw the 2009 Rebels now relauch easier again, they bascially relaundh themselves so stick with the Rebel as that 5th is very handy IMO.
Dazza
