Miltsface wrote:I see that you already located the holes, but here's a tip for the future, or anyone else with the same problem. It's usually pretty hard to exactly locate a small hole once you pull the bladder. I start with the soap trick to find the hole with the bladder still in the kite. Then I take a pretty thick needle and poke right through the LE to make an even bigger hole in the same spot. When you pull the bladder, its now pretty easy to find the bigger hole. As much as your brain will be screaming "NOOooo!!!!!" when you hold the needle up, you're gonna put a patch on it anyway, so it doesn't really matter if you now have a bigger hole alongside your original hole.
... sounds crazy, it might just work! But ...
I found, especially if the kite is fairly new or rather, hardly used, the bubbles can travel along the LE or strut and present in a different spot. If you poke a hole in, you may have just made a new hole. Some times the Dacron material is air tight too.
A little example, I once had a valve peal off my LE bladder one pump which fed air to the strut. I pumped up the kite and noticed one strut was down. Hmmmm. I attempted to open the clamp on the hose but no air came through. I studied it closely and eventually I pulled the hose off and no air was lost, just an open valve. Then while lifting the kite over I noticed in the sun light the hole in the bladder where should have been a valve, roughly 180 degrees around the other side with only the LE dacron holding the air in. The kite sat there for 30 min while I showed everyone to laugh at. I was amazed the kite didn't deflate
.
cheers for now,
Robbie