One for the techo's

+1 for the nugget. Was out on my 14m Vegas and 5'2 nugget this season when people were out on 17m zephyrs and working the **** out of it, so it's not all about size, it's got to do with what you ride and how you ride it.

And like rowdy says, a big kite you have to ride completely different to a small kite. The more you lean back and edge into a bigger kite, the more it has to use it's power to hold you up from falling backwards, rather than using that power to go forward and hence upwind.

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AndyHansen said..

Charl dv said..

high as a kite said..

lovelife said..

could ask one of the guys to bring one down to robe over easter if you want me to try for ya??

If you can that would be great E. Knowing Robe the wind will be light

Charl dv said..

how long are the lines on the 17? having shorter lines puts the kite further upwind but will sacrifice a little bit of power. you might find that helps the upwind ability. reduce the lines by 2 - 3m

That's something I haven't played around with yet charl, will try this weekend.

you'll find it loses a bit of power, but flying and turning speed increases as well as position in window so it's a bit of a balancing game. play around between 1 - 5m if at all possible.

Mate what kite are you on? longer lines just gives you a longer down stoke (which gives you longer power delivery for each down stroke), and takes longer to travel through the wind window when tacking. Also give you more time to downloop if you kite stalls out in very light wind.

Longer lines does not effect the kite angle or how close it gets to the edge of the wind window, unless you using damn think lines the drag caused by them is minimal.

Draw it out if have a alternate theory.

I've flown such a huge variety of kites in my time in the sport it'll take a while to write them all down. With 5 odd years of instructing experience I have also flown on multiple line lengths in various conditions.

You can take any kite, put one on 20s and one on 25s and fly them side by side and if you don't notice the difference in positioning at the effective wind window edge you're either not looking properly or you've learned how to defy physics. This is especially more apparent on the more marginal days where the drag vs lift ratio becomes more noticeable.

When you remove 3m, you've removed 12 - 15m of line depending on if it's a 4 or 5 line kite. lets say you have a 4 line kite, you've removed 12m of line, say a kite line is 1mm thick (i'm sure it is a bit thicker). This leaves you with a total of .012m^2 of projected area exposed to the wind which is slightly more than the equivalent of a 10cm x 10cm square. Now not taking into account things like surface curvature etc I can say that's a fairly significant drag area.

You are right in the sense that you have a longer travelling distance during power strokes, and does take longer to get through the window.. this is all happening with the kite 5 or maybe 10 degrees further downwind so unless you have the right board and edge control you will be travelling down wind further due to a kite sitting deeper in the window. More power yes, better up wind probably not. During park n ride positioning you'll have the kite further towards the edge, the raw grunt might not feel that much but you are getting better apparent wind. Like i said clearly in my first post though, it's a fine balance between losing power and gaining upwind.