This tutorial explains how to unhook and hook back in.
Before you consider unhooking, you should be able to jump, rotate and do basic kite
loops.
You should also have lots of kite handling experience such as tricky relaunches, stalling
kites and tangled lines - as these issues are common when learning to unhook.
To reduce risks, practice on a light wind day, when you have just enough power to ride.
Let’s begin with a walkthrough of unhooking and rehooking.
Ride at a medium-to-low speed.
Remove the chicken stick.
Center your hands on the bar.
Stop edging the board and ride towards the kite. Riding towards the kite reduces your
line tension and you can unhook easily.
Avoid steering the bar significantly while unhooked.
Try to keep the kite close to 45 degrees.
To hook back in, ride downwind towards the kite.
Pull yourself towards the chicken loop, and then rehook.
Another way to re-hook, is to leave the back hand straddling the center lines.
Then grab the chicken loop with your front hand.
As you push away the bar and pull in the chicken loop, the kite will depower quickly.
Let’s review that riding in the opposite direction.
Pull out the chicken stick.
Ride at medium-to-low speed.
Hands centred on the bar.
Head downwind significantly, to reduce line tension.
Pull in the bar to unhook.
Do NOT steer the bar.
Keeping riding downwind to pull the bar back in.
Raise the chicken loop onto your harness hook.
Replace the chicken stick before you forget about it.
You can also re-hook, by holding the center of the bar with your back hand, and grabbing
the chicken loop with your front hand.
While unhooked, your bar is pulled in, so you loose the ability to quickly control the
kite’s angle using bar movement.
It can help a little, to first trim your lines for maximum depower.
However, the main way that you control your kite’s power while unhooked, is by changing
your riding angle.
While unhooked, edging against the kite will drastically increase the power you feel and
the speed that you ride.
In fact, it can be almost impossible to unhook while edging hard like this.
Basically what happens when unhooked is: the kite is sheeted in.
This means the kite pulls harder and moves a bit slower crosswind.
Then, when you edge the board, you start riding crosswind quickly.
When you ride crosswind quicker than the kite’s moving crosswind, the kites shifts deeper
into the window.
To reduce the pull of the kite, while unhooked, you actually head downwind.
If you aim the board more downwind than the kite, the kite will loose power.
Riding downwind so much sends the kite closer to the edge of the window.
In summary, riding fully downwind depowers and slows.
Riding somewhere towards the kite, maintains speed.
Edging crosswind, or upwind, increases your speed.
By controlling your riding angle, you can manage your speed. You should be able to cruise
along keeping the kite’s pull under control. When you’re comfortable enough unhooked,
you can try carving the board or switching stance.
When you first unhook, you can leave your leash connected to the safety line as normal.
This is the safest option, of course. If you drop the bar, your leash will pull in only
the safety line and the kite will drop.
However, as you build experience and are ready for your first unhooked tricks, you won’t
want the kite to flag out every time you drop the bar.
It is possible to change your leash connection, so that the kite keeps flying when the bar
is dropped.
The are three leashing options: safety, semi suicide and full suicide.
Safety is the standard option, that you will be familiar with.
Full suicide is where your leash attaches to the top of the chicken loop.
If you drop the bar, your leash holds the chicken loop.
The bar travels away a little, helping to sheet out the kite, but the kite does NOT
flag out on the safety line.
In full suicide mode, if you use the eject, the leash will also hold onto the chicken
loop, NOT the safety line.
Full suicide prevents your chicken loop safety from working.
For this reason, do not use full suicide mode.
Semi suicide is where you leash onto the safety line, and also around the chicken loop.
In semi suicide, if you drop the bar, your leash holds onto the chicken loop.
This keeps the kite flying, depowered.
In semi suicide, however, if you eject the chicken loop, the leashing point should fall
away from the chicken loop. Your leash is then holding the safety line, and the kite
flags out completely.
The click bar, shown here, has a leashing point set up for semi suicide. There is a
hole for leashing to the safety line as normal. But there is also a wider opening, designed
to fit around the chicken loop at the point the chicken loop opens.
If you don’t have a semi-suicide system on your bar, one can be rigged. You just need
the leash to connect to the safety line, and around the chicken loop loosely.
Of course, test your semi-suicide set up, to make sure the leashing point doesn’t
get caught when the chicken loop is ejected.
It’s also a good idea to connect your leash eject to the front or side of your harness.
Connecting to the back of your harness, makes it hard to reach this important final safety.
In summary, make your early unhooking attempts leashed onto the safety line. When you’re
ready for tricks, you can move onto semi suicide mode.
Your steering lines are under tension while unhooked. This means the kite will respond
to any steering of the bar.
You will find that the positioning of your hands can steer the kite.
For example, if your hands are placed a little high on the bar, the kite will climb automatically
while unhooked.
Having your hands centred helps reduce accidental steering.
It is worth bearing in mind that many people tend to pull harder with the back hand while
unhooked, and their kites will tend to climb automatically.
If that’s the case, you may want your back hand split over the center lines, and the
front hand tucked in underneath.
Make small adjustment in hand position until the kite holds still around 45 degrees.
Thanks for watching the start of our unhooking series. There’s lots more to come in this
series, so subscribe or access our playlists for more tutorials.