In my long use of flysurfer kites and foils in general I have found a few ways to adjust them. In general though they can be quite fine left alone and doing something like a mixer test or leveling the mixer can actually turn a good kite bad. The reason being that 2 things cancel each other out, 1 the way the mixer pulley lines shrink which shorten B and C and make the kite more stable and 2 the way the bridles shrink with mainly Z getting shorter which is to make the kite less stable. So more stable + less stable = mostly the same.
As to the ways to adjust. You have either altering the mixer lines ABC and Z. Altering the bridles lines either lengthening with pigtails or shortening with lcl loops. And you have restretching the bridles.
To measure you have the mixer test, long mixer test, measuring bridles and something I recently "invented" which is just a quick way to measure bridles the "full mixer test".
By far the easiest and most effectual adjustment is to add an extension to Z and use the mixer test to restore the B limit with the mixer level. Then adjust the length of Z till the kite flys how you like it. Most likely lengthening Z.
The way in which I had adjusted Z on flysurfers, although being clean and needing no extra parts, has the disadvantage of moving the trim position of the bar when you adjust Z length and being a little hard to fine tune Z, although Z is very tolerant to not being exactly right. I think you may be better just using a pigtail, but also still using the rear main and joins to adjust it on the fly.
Of all things adjusting Z is the most important and easiest to do so. I scratch my head how flysurfer has chosen to instead adjust B and C.
PabloQ wrote:does not have an intensive use
Bridles shrink without use.
Armin Harich wrote:
A lot of people for example don't measure under 5Kg of load
While I have used 5kg before I found it to restetch the bridles and so the measurement changes inconsistently. I then adopted to just apply higher force and full stretch them, which works for a while like a new kite does
I recently tried instead to measure the bridles with as little force as possible, just enough to remove the sag. ( now thinking about that maybe laying on a flat surface to use even less force would work even better). My reasoning is to try to capture the length as it is shrunk. I then adjusted the kite as to factory from that shrunk state. The results were/are quite good. Much better than any previous attempt I have done to restore bridles to original by altering the lengths. The state of performance seems to now hold quite steady, especially compared to say stretching.
My theory is that capturing the lengths with little force more accurately relates to their lengths when flying than if using a large force to measure with. I think my theory bears validity given the results I achieved.
There is a bit more to the adjustments I did that adjusting from measured to factory. I still adjust Z at mixer, as I have my own preference and I left Z bridles unadjusted as prefer them like that and I have another theory that flysurfer has designed for some bridle shrink and infact in the process of designing, prototyping, testing, adjusting kites compensating for shrink can be a natural occurrence. My thinking is that you start testing with factory lengths known. You then make adjustments as the kite is used , the more it is used and the later you make adjustments the more the bridle has shrunk and your adjustments are most likely compensating for that shrink. If you either just alter the design length by the adjustment length or stretch and measure you then have a bridle that will "bed in" and not be the correct length till after some use as is observed in flysurfer kites for very long now.
My idea about avoiding the 5kg force is you then get to really see how much the bridles truly shrink. I think with that data you could probably come up with equations for compensating for shrink, which I guess you have by now?
