I can confirm the board that turned up today in Australia today is 5.95kg
This is bare board with the foam foot pads in place (factory fitted), but no straps, fins or screws.
Edit
The complete board with straps and 40cm fins is 8.45kg
Last edited by wdric on Thu Mar 15, 2012 3:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
I'm only at the stage of learning to ride a raceboard. At some stage, I may make a depower rope that I can reach easily to adjust the trim occasionally, but I dont expect to ever try to learn to trim with one hand while steering with the other.
As I understand it, steering with one hand while sheeting with the other is normal for sailors, so Johnny Heineken and Adam Koch as ex sailors are well used to it. The advantage is that they can keep the best stance to hold the most power and speed. Without the trimming rope, a rider has to lean in a lot to depower, so loses leverage and power. It would also tend to unsettle the board a bit. It would be something that would have to be practiced a lot in training until it could be done without thinking.
My idea on it for a non-racer, would be to have a swivel at the bottom of the front lines and below that a pulley for the trim rope.
At the bottom of the trim rope would be a cleat at the top of a single powerline which would go through the bar to a ring clipped into a quick release (Wichard?) on the spreader bar.
The trim rope goes from the top of the cleat, up over the pulley and down through the cleat, with a long enough tail for the required adjustment. At the bottom of the tail would be a loop of rope that went around the bar and back up to the tail. Idea being that whichever way the bar is, you grab the loop on top of the bar and pull the tail to adjust the trim, and the swivels allow the cleat to spin in line with the pull.
The powerline would be only as long as was comfortable to sheet the bar and its lower end would be very close to the spreader bar (no hook). The trim line would also be the minimum length for trimming the biggest kite it has to work with (given the smaller trimming movement of the control bar).
Plan is to trim with the bar without bending much, and any more than that, you have to move the trim range with the cleated rope to keep it within the range of bar movement, so the loop has to be very easy to access and use.
It could also be done instead of a cleat by using a depower strap and a pull/pull system where you have a red ball on one half of the loop for depower and a black ball on the other for more power. Probably using a thin piece of elastic rope to keep the loop half below the bar within easy reach.