Hello,

I went snowkitting this week-end in light wind with my rise09 14m

When the kite was in the air I find that my rear line was very loose… the 3m extension was on, should I take it off when I ride in light wind?

After landing the kite I saw that maybe there was not enough pressure in the tube… with the cold weather, the valve was leaking a little bit… Does the low pressure can cause the feeling that my rear line was too long?

Thank you

All 4 lines should always be the same length so if you are taking the 3m off the back you have to do so to the front too, otherwise your kite will be very difficult to fly and will likely stall.

If you have very slack back lines you have likely taken too much trim out of the kite and should be using a smaller sized kite for the wind conditions. General rule of thumb is that if you’ve taken more than 8” of trim out of the kite you should go down a kite size (2m) at least!

All of our kites perform best when fully inflated, this means the LE and struts tight like a drum. If the LE is floppy the first thing you will see is that the kite will buckle under load, especially when being put through the power zone of the wind window. Eventually, with a soft enough LE the kite will just refuse to fly, regardless of where it is held in the window.

John Z - OR

thanks for your fast reply,

I didn’t use the trim… I was in very light wind…. I still don,t understand why my rear line was so slack… I will try to understand next weekend

Not sure about your slack lines, but as for the valve, it shouldn’t be leaking if properly set… the colder it is, the harder you need to push the plug in… sometimes you need to breath on the plug and valve to warm it up a bit to ensure a solid seal.  I’ve had OR kites out in -40 celcius with no problems.

Another tip / trick is to ensure your kites are stored with the plug inserted.

Cheers,