New F-one Halo. Any more info about this kite?

[Regis-de-giens]

first test yesterday; very pleasant and beautiful kite with a very good turn and loop ; not very power loop but quick and no delay with the command.
8 meter , hydrofoil, in 12-16 knot; my sweet spot is about 15 knots I think.
It has a quite high LD ration vs Soul, Pulsion, kitech FRS or Pansh a15 and Hyperlink ; so be careful for full beginners or trials of news trciks : it backstalls and loose it power if to sheeted in ; depower and stability are excellent.

happy to have it in my quiver .

[ronniejamesgio]

So, after being really satisfied with a Halo 10m, the kite had had an incident, or however you wanna call it.
The kite and bar were less than a month old when it happened. I have to say in advance, that I am in contact with F-one, though the first response was that they will not take any resposibility for the damage that happened.
I do not want to accuse or blame anyone with this post, since in the end my kite could also have been one flawed of hundreds of well working ones, which probably occurs within any brand.

Here's my experience with the kite, or rather my brothers, since he was riding it when all went down.
My brother is a 23 year old kiter who already kites like 8 years, he's round 70 kg and was riding with a Spleene RIP39.

I asked him to discribe whaat happened:

"I was having a very good session with the Halo 10m with 17 m lines ( foil bar).
We had about 14 knots when I entered the water and the wind was constantly picking up. At the summit of the thermic there were about 20 knots of thermical wind. The wind was little gusty but still very constant.

Due to the perfect conditions I was able to do some beautiful jumps. The Halo was delivering a very smooth lift and so I ended up in doing beautiful long airtime jumps.

In order to manage smooth landings from some high jums, I was completing most of the jumps with low pressure heliloops.

Everything was going good when I was doing a slow haeliloop to end a jump. Then in the middle of the heliloop it did a very loud sound and I discovered myself on one line. 3 lines were ripped off at the same time... I had to collect the kite which was connected to me with only one line and swim at least an hour to get to the beach.. All the time I was wondering what had happened and especially why. I couldn't find any reasonable reasons for 3 lines ripping off at the same time, while doing a soft heliloop for landing..

At the beach I opened all the kite to see what had happened... I was very curious!

As one can see in the pictures the damage was even worse then I could imagine. 3 lines were ripped off in addition to this, the fabric was ripped off in 3 separate places. (along the suture, where the lines are connected to the fabric)"

Please don't see this as a hater comment , I really am not trying to denounce F-one or something, since I have their foil and harness which do their job really well...
And I loved the characteristics of the kite anyways, until this point... Anyways if anything new from F-one I will report here,
stay safe out there everyone

some pics:

[kitexpert]

That is a seriously damaged kite but still repairable. What I can see from the pictures line attachment points don't look very strong, this is probably because nowadays kites should be light weight and also cheaply produced. Details in reinforcements are costly because foil kite like Halo has dozens of line attachment points.

Repair should be done by opening the seams, adding similar fabric to the sides of the panels and then sewing parts together. If repair is well done kite will fly as well and is as strong as it was new. In general foil kites are well repairable.

10m kite is used in moderate to highish winds so there is quite a lot strain in it, especially if big jumps are done. When that kite rip down there was apparently a kind of chain reaction which lasted until kite didn't produce much lift any more.

It may be Halo isn't the best choice for big air, at least I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who jumps 50ft or more or weighs more than average. Damages in the pictures and user report suggest that kite structure just failed.

[ronniejamesgio]

That is a seriously damaged kite but still repairable. What I can see from the pictures line attachment points don't look very strong, this is probably because nowadays kites should be light weight and also cheaply produced. Details in reinforcements are costly because foil kite like Halo has dozens of line attachment points.

Repair should be done by opening the seams, adding similar fabric to the sides of the panels and then sewing parts together. If repair is well done kite will fly as well and is as strong as it was new. In general foil kites are well repairable.

10m kite is used in moderate to highish winds so there is quite a lot strain in it, especially if big jumps are done. When that kite rip down there was apparently a kind of chain reaction which lasted until kite didn't produce much lift any more.

It may be Halo isn't the best choice for big air, at least I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who jumps 50ft or more or weighs more than average. Damages in the pictures and user report suggest that kite structure just failed.

Exactly, my wish would be that instead of investing in more and more light material and thinner lines(it's not a race kite(!)), especially in kites in smaller sizes, they should rather make them durable.
And yes I'll repair it, but after that sell it since it can't do justice to what I expected from it.
Well my mistake probably was to listen to it's marketing, where F-ONE sells it as a kite made for freeride (and foil). And also, that I expected it to be an upgraded Flysurfer Soul with a different design, since people use the Souls in over 30 knots.

[jakemoore]

Is the front line broken at the ending of a splice? Maybe it was not correctly tapered.

There is no question breaking a flying will put huge loads on the remainder of the loaded bridles. Old 3 line flysurfers before the days of LCLs had some big damages from broken center lines.

I’m not so sure a kite failure would cause the flying lines to fail. So I would blame the flying lines.

[Horst Sergio]

Hi ronniejamesgio,
as far I can see with the given information I don't think it is about the kite:

It could be just about the bar, its flying lines and their combination with use and sand.
It looks like there is a ripped of frontline at the bars splice. At this point sand enjoys to enter into the splice and can then work through the material until it breaks. And when one front line breakes and you have thin backlines it is not impossible they also break by the shock load they see in this moment. In the same moment the inner connection lines of the last connected front line will also see an overload situation towards the side with the broken front line, so the canopy can open here as you see in your picture.
Don't say that it happend exactly like that as also haven't had the kite in my hand, but it looks pretty much like this, so maybe just a small combined reason for all of the rest:

A foilbar with maybe too thin lines, a bit too much wear and maybe a bit of sand in one of the splices ...

Thats why I do most of my flying line splices myself, use stronger lines at this point and try to never put my bar into sand.

... and talking about what is broken no manufacturer does a reinforcement of canopy towards conection point, just towards cell and that is not broken. So as I said can't see any reason to be worried about the kite. If a front line breakes during flight you will have those additionally damages in most kites on the market. Just my humble experience from having seen about 100 broken kites helping in different workshops from time to time and having done drop to destroy tests for manufacturers 14 years ago ....

[evan]

Is the front line broken at the ending of a splice? Maybe it was not correctly tapered.

Point me one big manufacturer that properly tapers the splices in their flying lines. I can't remember I have ever came across one in all my years of line repair.

They just cut the lines at 90deg, splice it for 100mm (way too short) and stitch the hell out of it to stay together for the time being. Cheap and somewhat effective, but don't expect it last...


Damage in the kite is from a cascading failure after one powerline gave up behind the splice. Does their foil bar have extra thin lines? Only seen the standard Lynx bar.

[ronniejamesgio]

Hi ronniejamesgio,
as far I can see with the given information I don't think it is about the kite:

It could be just about the bar, its flying lines and their combination with use and sand.
It looks like there is a ripped of frontline at the bars splice. At this point sand enjoys to enter into the splice and can then work through the material until it breaks. And when one front line breakes and you have thin backlines it is not impossible they also break by the shock load they see in this moment. In the same moment the inner connection lines of the last connected front line will also see an overload situation towards the side with the broken front line, so the canopy can open here as you see in your picture.

My guess is that the line broke right after the splice or however you call the blue thingy in the picture below

so exactly where the thicker and thinner line are sewn together. And that caused all the other reactions, sadly
Weirdly though I had a F-one linxbar in my hands the other day and the lines seemed to be exactly the same, and there they have to resist way more pressure

[jakemoore]

Point me one big manufacturer that properly tapers the splices in their flying lines.

FS used to have a tutorial demonstrating a tapered splice with an XActo knife. I can’t find it. There were a few reports of pigtails breaking at the splice a few years ago. It seems to me FS have stood by their work when things break. My experience with them has been very good.

Most for the sewn short square cut splices I’ve seen are on leader lines. I like to do my own as Horst Sergio, in part because I like my own looked out bar. The downside is if one breaks and causes the kite to crater the manufacture would certainly blame me.

It’s hard to see exactly what is happening with this line because of the photo quality. Also, are these race lines or are they specced for jumping?

I’m a fan of a lighter weight kite and thinner lines even if it means there is a risk, so my own wish if for reasonable warranty claims. If we demand free service on everything that breaks manufacturers will be forced to choose durability over weight and drag.

Again I like FS model of labeling race and air style lines, and excluded free repair on the ultralights.

[Regis-de-giens]

Has anyone compared the low end of the 12m Halo vs competition in same kite ratios ? (like Soul/PulsionS/Hyperlink/Nova/FRS) ?