Welcome to kitemares and how to avoid them part 2.
Let’s look at the first kitemare and see what we can learn from it.
So what happened here is the kiter rode downwind at the speed of the wind or faster.
As you move downwind you feel less and less wind.
And the same goes for your kite. When you match the speed of the true wind
you feel no wind at all. The wind speed that’s apparent to you is
0 knots. At around this point a kite will definitely
drop out of the sky. This is a classic foiling issue, because foils
have such extremely low drag they can keep their speed even when riding downwind.
Although this can happen in other situations. For example, if the wind is light and you’re
riding a wave downwind, you’ll quickly find yourself with no apparent wind left.
To avoid this the kiter could have carved a tighter turn.
They’re doing a long turn, which is why they travel downwind so far.
But if the turn was tighter, they would have not gone downwind so much.
The lines would have felt slack for a moment, but there wouldn’t have been enough time
for the kite to drop. As the foiler crashes, they also start a death
loop. This is because the center lines are so slack
and the bar is tilted. The slack center lines easily get caught behind
a bar end. This holds the bar in steering position and
makes the kite loop. The kiter is very quick to spot the problem.
They eject the chicken loop, which is what they should do as a beginner or intermediate
with a looping kite. In this case the eject succeeds in stopping
the kite. With the kite not steering itself anymore,
the kiter is quick to reach the bar and fix the cause of their looping kite.
Let’s look at the next kitemare. The kiter crashes after a trick attempt, which
can happen of course. At this point, the bar and lines are still
in order and a relaunch is possible once the bar has been rotated.
The only issue at this stage is that the kite is sitting close to downwind so it is in high
power. A more serious problem occurs, however, because
the kiter is floating in the water and drifts slowly downwind.
While the kite, on the other hand, reaches the beach and its leading edge gets stuck
on the sand. As the kiter drifts downwind the leading edge
stays put, and the trailing edge rolls back. That’s why the kite ends up laying on the
topside of its canopy. This is not what you want.
To avoid this completely the kiter could have practised further out.
Then, at this stage, they could have stood up, which would have prevented them drifting
downwind towards the kite. And this would have enabled them to walk to
the side, moving the kite out of high power. Once the kite rolled onto its topside, the
lines were affected. With the kite rolled back the steering lines
become tense and the center lines become slack. Then as the kiter tries to relaunch, the slack
center lines easily get wrapped around the bar and hold the bar in steering position.
This is what causes the kite to loop, just like in the previous kitemare.
This could have been avoided with basic line inspection.
Before landing or launching you must check you lines.
You shouldn’t be happy relaunching with your lines looking like this.
If the kiter straightened out the center lines by hand, that would have prevented them getting
caught behind the bar end. Let’s look at the next issue.
The kite loops a few times and the kiter ejects the chicken loop.
Ejecting is what a beginner or intermediate should do with a self-steering kite, but unfortunately
this time that safety step was ineffective. As soon as the chicken loop is ejected there
are plenty of visual clues that the kite has not flagged out.
It should be laying flat, aligned with the wind, and flapping loosely.
This is called flagged out. Instead, the kite still has its flying shape,
standing up perpendicular to the wind. Even worse you can see the left wing tip is
pulled in, so the kite is clearly about to steer itself.
You can also tell the flag out failed because the bar has not slid along the safety line.
The bar is jammed at the bottom of the safety line.
For the kite to flag out you generally need the bar to slide along the safety line a distance
similar to the span of your kite. That didn’t happen here, of course, and
the kite keeps flying after the chicken loop was ejected.
The kiter then makes the correct choice to eject the leash and free themselves from the
kite. Let’s look at the next kitemare.
So here we have a kiter getting launched by their own kite.
You often see this but generally it’s someone that’s not taken lessons and who’s man
handling the bar. They’re steering aggressively which makes
the kite move fast and pull hard. Here, however, Laurent gets launched even
though he’s using very minimal steering inputs.
He’s only making small movement of the bar. Yet still, this results in a fast dive of
the kite that drags him over on the beach. The strong wind speed here is a factor but
it’s not the only one. If we look a bit closer at the bar and lines
we can see a problem. Even with his bar out fully, the steering
lines are taut. There is no slack in them.
The steering lines are so taut, in fact, that the bar is pinned against the stopper.
If your lines are this tense with the bar out, you really cannot control a kite safely.
Firstly, this means you can’t depower fully. The tense steering lines are increasing the
angle of attack. Also, with tense steering lines, any small
touch of the bar will immediately pull the wing tip and the kite will steer.
On top of all this, with such tense steering lines your setup will tend to steer itself.
So you really must have slack in your steering lines with the bar out.
To make sure the kite can achieve a low angle of attack across the wind.
And to make sure the kite becomes unresponsive with the bar out.
Of course, in stronger wind, you will notice a bit less slack in your steering lines, but
there should still be some slack in the steering lines even in strong wind.
You may need to use your trim system to achieve this, but it should be achievable.
The next question you may well ask, is why are his lines like this?
Well there are a few possible reasons. It could simply be bad design, or old design.
Many set ups do not handle strong wind properly. Another very likely and very common issue
is line stretching. This is where over time the center lines,
which are under far greater strain, tend to end up being longer than the steering lines,
which are under far less strain. If the center lines are longer than the steering
lines then you end up in a situation where your steering lines are more tense than they
should be. You’ll find that in strong wind you can’t
depower fully, and you’ll also find in light wind that you backstall the kite easily.
A small difference between the length of the steering lines and center lines can easily
be accommodated using your trim system. If there’s a bigger difference then you
may need to stretch your steering lines. And for even bigger differences you might
need to go to your local kite repair shop, and have the lines replaced or repaired, depending
on their condition. Let’s look at the next kitemare. You may
notice some similarities in what caused it. So here, the kiter uses okay kite control.
They’re not heavy handed. They’re only pulling a little on the right
side of the bar. The kite should climb slowly, or maybe even
drop back down with gravity, with this little input on the right side of the bar.
However, this kiter’s minimal input gets the kite steering rapidly.
Like before, this is mostly because the steering lines are tense even with the bar out, making
the kite overly responsive and making the set up steer itself.
What’s interesting here is that this problem is completely visible before the kite is even
launched. With the launcher holding the kite, the steering
lines are tense with the bar out. For someone with enough lessons or experience
this should fail a visual inspection. Before launching you need to make sure everything
looks in order. The center lines should be unobstructed and
straight. The steering lines should be unobstructed.
The steering lines should bow with the bar out.
And the steering lines should become tense as the bar moves in.
This is a great example of why kite lessons are so important.
During your lessons you get plenty of time with your hands on the bar and you’ll start
to learn how a kite should feel and how it should look.
With that experience you’re then going to be in a much better position to assess a kite
at the moment of launch. You’ll be able to tell if it’s safe to
launch or not. Another thing to note, is the kiter is flying
with one hand, as they should, but their other hand is doing nothing.
Their other hand should be on the chicken loop eject.
You often find problems with a kite set up at the moment of launch so you need to be
ready with a hand on the chicken loop eject. Then the moment the kite behaves strangely
you can eject the chicken loop. That is so important.
Imagine if there had been a rock or post or bollard here then this mistake could have
been fatal. If all kiters and instructors focus more on
steering with one hand, and resting the other hand on the chicken loop, during launching
and landing, then we could hugely reduce the number injuries and fatalities in kite sports.
Thanks for watching and safe kiting to all of you.