No It is 100% right. Especially with a small inflatable kite in light winds. In the video you cannot see the kite, but you can see from the lines, that I pretty much do a 180 before the kite redirects into the side of the wind window.purdyd wrote: ↑Mon Oct 28, 2019 7:14 pmThis seems completely backwards to me. In light winds with a small kite I have to start the kite turning well before the board turns.f you send the kite before you initiate turning the board, the lines go slack and the kite stalls, especially in lighter winds or with small kites.
I’m talking about a small inflatable kite. Say 6m on 22m lines in 12 mph average wind speed.
Do you have any videos of what you are saying? Maybe I will learn something but maybe we aren’t comparing the same thing?
Are you talking about racing? You mentioned a 21m kite on short lines.
I found a nice video you made on Vimeo. Looks like a down loop gybe at 1:20
. https://vimeo.com/160464796
That looks pretty normal to me but for some reason you cut the complete turn. You also have a lot of speed and make a pretty wide turn because of it. So you can start the downloop as you turn the board which is what it looks like to me in that video.
It does not matter if I am talking about racing on short lines or about a tube kite on long lines. Correct techique is correct technique. With a 21m Kite on short lines however, bad technique gets punished instantly.
Here is some of the "physics" behind why you need to turn the board first.
1) If you redirect the kite first, either in a a downloop or turning the kite up you put the kite straight into the middle of the wind window. This gives you an extremly short period of time to get the nose of the board to go from pointing across the wind in your original direction of travel to the new direction without going straight downwind.
2) If your timing is just slightly off, the board will head straight downwind towards the kite as it is diving down, this will slack the lines and the kite will fall out of the sky in light winds or stop steering. You can usually hear and see this from guys who turn the kite first as the kite stalls mid turn and in really light winds will hindenburg and if lucky you can just recover the kite before it hits the water. It might work, but that does not make it the right way of doing it.
3) If you turn the board past 90deg (straight downwind) before you pull the kite into the loop the board will be heading in the new direction and you will keep tension on the lines.
I will try to make a video where this will be very clear as soon as we get some decent conditions to film it.
Here are some examples.
Here I turn the kite first. Watch how it stalls.
It may be kneeling down, but it is still a gybe. Not how late the Kite redirects/loops.
Here is an example with an 18m Foil Kite on long lines in almost no wind. Even thought I start to turn the kite a little before the board goes around (bad technique on my part) I only pull hard to redirect once I am almost 80% the way around:
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Gunnar