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2008 SS REW Safety system
Posted Tue Aug 28, 2007 7:00 pm Post subject
Last Thursday Slingshot had a REV demo at the sandbar in the Gorge. I have been a big fan of these kites, but this day was interesting to see how all different levels of riders approach the kites. I think a lot of people were impressed by the range, they had 7m-13m kites out on the water at the same time pretty much all day.Probably most amazing was when my friend and I continually tried to get the kite to get a bridle to wrap by deploying the front line safety. We would stand in the shallows, unhook, kiteloop up in the air then let go halfway through the loop so the leash would activate.
Every time the kite would depower completely, we wouldn’t get yanked at all, nor would the kite spiral out of control, it just fell to the water. We would then pull the bar back to us by working up the center line. Once we got to it we’d feed it slowly back in the bar. The line is nice and thick and easy on your hands, the bar never got tangled, the whole process was very mellow. I’ve also done this in very strong wind conditions in deep water, it really works.
Here’s the cool part, even when the lines were draped over the canopy, nothing ever got caught or tangled. The bridles never wrapped the tips. The kite would always reset perfectly, then we’d relaunch it either by reverse relaunch or standard, very easy, only took a few seconds.
We did this probably 20-30 times, and we tried everything we could to get the kite to get fucked up and wrap a bridle. A few times we thought we had it and we were cheering like ”Oh yeah here it goes…” but it always reset.
SLE / Bow kites are in theory safer because of their depower capabilities, but it only takes one bridle getting tangled to turn a relatively safe kite into a kitelooping death machine. We’ve seen too many kites in the Gorge this year go into out of control death spirals and for some without proper leash/safety systems there may be no way to stop them other than to cut the entire kite loose.
I think other brands should start looking and implementing similar safety systems and do everything they can to keep bridles short so they don’t catch the tips or get tangled. Just an observation…
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2 Svar
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aloha, and great point, it is always awesome to see manufacturers pushing out new innovations so that the rest of the industry can replicate their own technology and keep the sport moving forward. Everytime something new comes onto the market I look at it, see the common sense and ask myself why it was never there before.
I always get real happy everytime I see this sort of initiative from manufacturers this can only be a good thing and give cred to slingshot for doing and not talking.
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Låter mycket intressant!
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