does anyone else care about linear bar response?

[edt]

I read a lot of kite reviews and just throw them all in the garbage. I'm left wondering why doesn't anyone else talk about the single most important thing in a kite to me? It's possible that nobody else cares about it I guess. When I say "Linear response" I mean this: When you pull in the control bar 1/4 of the way you get 1/4 of the power, when you pull in the bar 1/2 of the way you get 1/2 of the power, when you pull the bar in all the way you get 100% of the power. Most kites are not linear. So for instance you pull the bar 1/4 of the way you get almost nothing. maybe 5% of the power. Pull it in more nothing. Then at somewhere around 3/4 of the way you go from almost no power to 90% of the power of the kite coming in all at once. I hate that! For me a kite that isn't linear is just so damn finicky it's like you have a gas pedal on your car that doesn't work right, the engine either revs full blast or nothing. How can you control a kite with a non-linear response.

Anyway, I never see kite reviews that talk about if the kite has a linear response or not, curious if anyone else cared about this stuff or if it's just me. What brought this on was demo-ing a soul. Best kite that flysurfer has produced in ages, very quick to loop amazing hang time, great relaunch blah blah blah but . . . the kite does not respond to control bar inputs in a linear fashion. That's a black mark in my book. Still like the kite but, nobody ever talked about that so I end up having to always demo kites myself to find this stuff out. One of the most linear kites ever made was the old 5 line rebel, what a great kite.

[thewindego]

xr5 is very linear.

[Matteo V]

Most tame kites do have a somewhat linear response in bar throw. Inflatables are extremely good for this. Foil kites can be made to do this, as in the Ozone "Access" series. But most foil kites designed with higher performance in mind, do not have a linear bar throw.

The property you are talking about may be overlooked by some kiters due to their approach to turning the kite. If your particular style is more geared toward freeride, you may just turn the kite to get it going the other way. If you have more of a freestyle or wave approach, you likely turn the kite for placement in the back of the window. Both approaches do well with a more tame bar throw. Somewhere in the middle and even outside on the fringes of styles, a kite with more capabilities (and unavoidable quirks) can utilized to achieve things that a more tame kite cannot.

But it takes time to learn these "gas pedals". And the key to why a more complicated bar throw can be higher in performance is when the kite is turning. A kite without an "exponential" or "log" like throw can allow one side of the kite to stall on a moderate turn while the other side does not power up too much. If the bar is turned more, than one side stalls, but the other will power up. On top of this is that sheeting the bar while the bar is turned will allow minimal power development as more of the tensioned side of the kite stalls as the other side powers up only slightly.

One of the things I have noticed about CORE kites when demoing them is that they are extremely simple to understand. As the previous poster stated, they do have a pretty tame depower throw. For me, that means that I can use those kites instantly without a long learning curve. Other kite model/brands are not as friendly on a demo day when you don't use them regularly. But those unfriendly ones have some very impressive potential - if you have the time to learn them.

Personally, given that I am not an extremely fast learner, I prefer to stick to the same brand/model of kite across my entire quiver. This means that I understand and can exploit the uneven bar throw even when changing sized kites.

[Toby]

For me it is very important!

I need to dose tricks EXACTLY to be able to make them look nice and to land them.

e.g. Barefoot Slides
Exact dose of power is needed to not lift off too far from the water, to get back onto the water and to feel where the kite is to start a loop at the right time.

I think it all depends on the steering force of a kite. Like a sports car with direct steering vs a power steering car.

All (?) the kites with pulleys have less tension on the bars, so you feel them less, and this way you feel less power to be able to dose it correctly.

I tried a pulley kite two years ago and I couldn't feel the kite the way I need to. Leads to more crashing for sure.

Not needed for normal riders, but at my level it makes THE difference.

[dylan*]

Not really. I'm either sheeted in or sheeted out, anything in between gets trimmed with the rope.
Having super linear sheetable power requires design with lots of pulleys that destroy the handling of the kite, anyway.

[edt]

I've demoed hundreds of kites, I really don't think that the pulleys destroy or create linear response. I think it's just something that they do when they design the kite and it's like Matteo said above, when you want to make a kite respond like this there are trade offs of some sort.

[Hansen Design]

Theoretically, lift is mostly linear with AOA up to stall. Foils with speed systems maintain the front towpoint and tip the profile uniformly with bar movement. Inflatos have a wide variety of bridle systems which allow towpoint movement and structural shape changes which may or may not be proportional to bar position. In addition, rear line catenary due to drag on the rear lines can allow bar movement without a direct input until the slack is sufficiently removed.

[TomW]

My Hyperlinks and Sonic 2 13M have totally linear power delivery. That's why I like them more than Lei. They are outstanding on a hydrofoil.
It's my nr. 1 most important element of kite behaviour along with steering control with bar in depower trim.
I think the gas pedal analogy is good. My foil kites are like a BMW with 8 speed automatic compared to my lei that are like a 69 VW bug with 4 speed and no synchro on the gear box and a sticky gas pedal ( I've owned one!)

[tomtom]

Where is kite speed in all this? Talking about power without kite speed is ehmmmm. Only linear power dosing can be while ridden at constant speed on edge without moving /im used move my kites a lot/. Any kite moving and kite relative speed change a lot. So for me what is important is dosing while kite is moving. Sonic and Soul are worst possible kites for this /and probably all race kites/. If you send them it is possible that depower on bar actually make them fly faster and pull more...

[edt]

Well how a kite performs while turning is another thing the point is kite reviews usually tell you how a kite loops or turns. Reviews never talk about linear response. Hansen makes a lot of sense if that's the case why are so many kites on/off instead of linear