What am I doing wrong and I keep breaking my TT boards?

[Gpet78]

In engineering terms you increased the impact rather than reduced it. The impact forces will be a function of the de acceleration, the quicker you stop the higher the force. Might be a good idea to research the mind set of the Kota guys with respect to their attitude to hot landings.

My undercarriage has been knackered for years and I would choose anything but flat even weight. If I had too much forward speed I would be pulling my feet up and engaging arse hopefully to try and skip and then engage an edge. Anything but a sudden stop, especially as you obviously have heavy Kahoonas!

It is the instant forces that matter in bad kiteloop landings so if I have a bad timing in my kiteloop (a few milliseconds less airtime can be the difference between a good and bad timed kiteloop as mentioned above) is better to try to spread the pressure in both my legs even if this means I will not land the jump properly rather than try to land the jump properly full speed pointing downwind, in this case the back leg gets lot more pressure than the front leg or you lose board controll due to high speed and end crashing hard. At least this is how I avoid hurting myself when my kiteloops go wrong, hit the water ass first is also a bad option in my opinion with quite unpredictable results especially if you dont wear a wetsuit you must have balls made of steel.

[edt]

especially if you dont wear a wetsuit you must have balls made of steel.

ballslap is a real thing. Damn that hurts. Even on a warm day I like to wear neoprene shorts under my board shorts lol. There's really only one good way to land on a hot kiteloop, if the board breaks it breaks get a stronger board. You don't want just pure strength tho, for instance, the naish monarch is one of the strongest boards you can get, but damn that board is stiff so I don't like the landings. You want a combination of pure strength, lightness of the board and flexibility so it softens the landings. Your perfect board is out there keep looking. I suspect the Naish drive (2020 or 2021) might be strong enough for you, as it has good strength flexibility great upwind but I don't land hot enough to tell if that will work for you.

[Herman]

I am not suggesting you use your butt that is just something I would do to protect my decrepit knees. I also agree you want to spread the load as much as possible. However if you are talking milliseconds counting for loop timing I am talking nanoseconds counting for landing forces. If the back leg hits first it might give you a split second. If your board is not flat it will penetrate farther into the water another split second etc. In any case the landing takes less than a second and so any split second you can find to prolong the process can have a significant effect imho. It may only require a small change in mind set to get a reduction in the force applied to the board. If you are trying to maximize the force land as flat as possible!!!

[andylc]

So you are timing your landings to the nanosecond?? That being 1 BILLIONTH OF A SECOND??

[plummet]

Maybe time to get a custom board. Get one made stronger to suit your style.

I agree with others, Wood core is the go. For really robust look at bamboo, that can take a beating.
I would also add, rocker to the board, that will dissipate the load on landing better.

Why not carbon? I thought that carbon boards are stronger, but I never owned a carbon board.

Anyway I will just let this board rest in peace and forget about it. Custom board is a good idea. Thanks everyone for your input, writing about this situation and sharing it with you helped me to get over it and let it go. I don't want to bash the company, shit happens, but I am not going to buy another board from that company soon.

PS With my new kite I had some kind of strange landings where I did not point the board downwind at the landing after the kiteloop and I landed with a huge splash of water and making a loud sound that could be heard 100s of meters away and made everyone look at me. I think this was happening because I was too afraid to point the board downwind because I had too much speed and forward pull and I was almost sure that if i point the board downwind my boards nose will catch on the water and have a bad crash, so I preffered to crash with both feet so that the impact of the crash is less.

Yes indeed go carbon. Wood core with carbon reinforcement. I have been beating my bamboo/carbon home builds to death and back for years. I can literally smash them into boulders and keep on riding. I dont know any custom builder that used bamboo, so I may be putting does a route that is unachievable suggesting bamboo. But certainly explore the custom end of things. Sure they are more expensive to buy. But if it doesnt break then it will be cheaper in the long run.

[knotwindy]

At some point wouldn’t you rather the board break than your leg? Where do you want the weakest link?

[edt]

go look at the woo impact records people routinely land at 10 g's and never get hurt but that if you're an 80 kg kiter is around 800 kg or nearly a ton many many boards break with this much force so you really do want to get a board very very strong

[Herman]

So you are timing your landings to the nanosecond?? That being 1 BILLIONTH OF A SECOND??

It has nothing to do with timing. If you hit with the board coming from parallel to the water, that it was I call landing flat. If you hit with your board coming in at an angle the forces will soon align the board with the water but the time this takes still reduces the peak impact force. An extreme example of this is a nose first landing on a windsurfer from a monster jump.

What would be interesting to know is whether the Kota guys value avoiding flat landings or are they happy landings flat to maximise their ability to use their legs as suspension.
I don’t profess to know the answer, I just know I would not want to land flat.

PS 10g will be a bit of a pile driver if you keep doing it. Somebody out there may know what I am talking about. Also as forward speed is involved, board orthogonal to line of travel at a slight angle would probably be worse than truly flat ie whatever stops you quickest is potentially the highest force.

[edt]

95 percent of the time pros land butter smooth in a mega loop after a heli loop on big jumps it's the wake style that gives them the big impact 5 to 10g landings when they drop straight down from 15 feet up on a handle pass. Can't be good for the knees! In any case the board should be strong enough for one or two 5 to 10g landings in a year

[Herman]

Edit point about making time for heliloop might be the ultimate aim.