First launch..
Today my friend rigged his slingshot machine 8m with the sentry bar and launched it and then kited for 30min. Wind was 20-24kts
Second launch..
When he was taking rest, I wanted to try it.. He helped me launch it without any problems. I noticed right away the kite is pulling too much to the right. I’m fact on my tacks going to the left, sometimes the board speed would keep going down as the kite is slowly moving to the right. So I assumed the left steering line is longer than the right. Everything felt awkward but I could still do some 3-4m jumps. I attempted a backroll transition (originally going left transitioning to right) with nose grab and dropped the kite (naturally it dropped to the right).
The crash…
It was a relatively mild and slow crash. But the kite deflated as apparently my friend didn’t close the slingshot deflate value properly. So I pumped again read to launch
Third launch..
I checked all the connections to make sure it was connected at the same knot on both sides..
He was assisting my launch and as soon as he released the kite, and I slightly pulled the right side of the bar(exactly as I did 100s of launches before), but the kite rocketed through the power zone and lofted me and threw me (maybe 5-6m) downwind. Luckily no broken bones or cuts but very sore leg and waist tip of pelvis bone on which I landed
Fourth launch..
My friend was convinced I did something wrong on launch so he wanted to try himself. I told him something is clearly wrong with the kite or bar and advised him against launching it again
. He tried to do a very careful launch sitting on the sand while I assisted with the kite. As soon as I released the kite, it still rocketed through the power zone and smashed on the right side and he got dragged in the sand lol
We went back and checked the bar and as expected the left steering line was 7-8inches longer than the right one
Here is the strange mystery….
The first two launches were perfectly normal. What happened so suddenly during the relatively mild crash that the next two launches went haywire??
Wind was steady with no major gusts during both the failed launches
Our best guess is the left steering line was already longer in the morning but somehow it became even longer after the crash. Seems unreal but we don’t have any other sane explanation for what happened
Obviously we didn’t check the line lengths in the morning before the disaster so we have no way of knowing. The kite and bar are relatively new. About 30-40 sessions