Postby Dan-at-Duotone » Fri Sep 23, 2016 6:06 pm
Kykeon-
Thanks for sharing your thoughts in such detail. A couple points...
1. You're 100% right about my generic answers re: changes to flying characteristics based on "V" height, no need to apologize... I didn't give a specific answer because I personally never noticed a huge change in kites when changing that setting and I've heard very conflicting reports from riders who say they do notice... so I rely on the designers for their thoughts. Ken gave me his thoughts on the Neo, Dice, Mono, and Juice (pretty sure I posted them somewhere in this thread), but I have not received a reply from the Evo designer. He's still working on the 2017 Evo and he may be taking the "V" changes into account in his designs because of the options offered by the Click bar, so if I get any more info I'll be sure to share.
2. North marketing may rave less about the 5th line safety, but I still love it.
You are correct about the 5th line setup on the Click bar: if you connect red to red, blue to blue, and grey to grey on your front pigtails, the safety will drop the kite to a front line, not the 5th line. I've gone into a bit of detail in an earlier post about how this works... in short it works perfectly in sub-30kts, and it still depowers/drops safely to the water in higher winds, but over 30 knots reriding can be difficult. However, if you switch the red line and the blue line; attach the red front line to the blue 5th line pigtail on the kite, and the blue 5th line accessory line to the red front pigtail on the kite, you will have a fully functioning 5th line safety/relaunch with no sacrifice to performance or safety (thanks to the original inventor of the bar, Jerome, for pointing that out. As soon as he mentioned it I wanted to smack myself in the forehead for not having realized it earlier).
Make sense? Especially for those of us committed to 5th line for safety (and I don't blame you if you aren't one of them... you're right that the front line safety on our (and many other) 4-line kites is great) and relaunch, this system is as good as our 5th Element. The only downside is that the color coding on two of the front lines doesn't match.
Kiterocky- I don't believe we have plans to retail the bar plain, but I'm sure if there is enough interest we will look into it.
If anyone else has any thoughts or questions, please keep them coming.
-Dan