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What bar size do you run?

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headintheclouds
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Re: What bar size do you run?

Postby headintheclouds » Fri May 07, 2021 7:53 am

I personally have two 50cm bars for the sizes 6/8/10/12 and a 60cm bar for the 16m. The 16m has a different V split, otherwise i probably would use one of the 50cm bars for it.
With the two 50cm bars i have a 20 and a 24m setup.
I like the idear of having two bars, this way i can lend gear to friends if they show up with the wrong gear or if they come for a visit an don´t want to bring thier whole quiver.
Also had a coupple of ocasions wehere i noticed that on of the lines had quite some wear, this way i was stil able to go out with the oter bar and repair the other one in the meanwhile.

I can see the benefits of having a smaller bar for handle passes and co. but on bigger Kites i can imagine that using a small bar could turn into a workout for your forearms wich could lead to decreased time on the water

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Re: What bar size do you run?

Postby mitchell898 » Fri May 07, 2021 6:21 pm

Would be nice to have a back up for trips and a like-new bar for big air days. Another big part of my wanting to go single bar was compatibility. I hate that Duotone has their own ecosystem with the high y and backwards knot/loops etc. It's nice to have all your kites compatible with all your bars. I swapped my dice for an FX for that reason. For now I can't justify a backup but I can definitely see the need. Hard to have another $600 bar depreciating. I'm kind of addicted to buying and selling gear anyway so I'll keep trying new setups.

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jumptheshark
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Re: What bar size do you run?

Postby jumptheshark » Fri May 07, 2021 7:25 pm

headintheclouds wrote:
Fri May 07, 2021 7:53 am

I can see the benefits of having a smaller bar for handle passes and co. but on bigger Kites i can imagine that using a small bar could turn into a workout for your forearms wich could lead to decreased time on the water
Short bar mean short lever arm and generally less wrist strain when turning the bar from the middle. Longer bars take more effort to turn, but you get more turn rate up to a point. At some point you have one steering line cranked and the kite is gonna turn at its max. You can generally still get that out of a small bar but it takes more angle.

Big kites generally need big bars, but 10m and down you don't really need much bar to tap into the max turning rate of the kite.

Im on small kites that are fast enough and do all my really fun riding one handed. Need to be able to crank redirects for landings and sheet in hard with one hand. short bar is much easier on the forearm and wrist. As long as the kite is fast enough, extra length is needless strain.

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Re: What bar size do you run?

Postby alexeyga » Fri May 07, 2021 8:05 pm

I used to be anal about my bars width. Had to have it adjustable...

Well, end of the day - all my bars are set to the largest setting regardless of kite's size (running 7/9/12) and I never even bother thinking about it.

Exception being - anything larger than 14m definitely benefits of flying on the widest bar available. But even then - it isn't such a big deal. Screwed up royally at least once when I went out with a 17m not having re-adjusted (back in the days when I was still bothering with adjustments) the bar from the previous session on a 7m - and it was perfectly manageable.
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Re: What bar size do you run?

Postby Matteo V » Sun May 09, 2021 4:24 pm

jumptheshark wrote:
Fri May 07, 2021 7:25 pm
Short bar mean short lever arm and generally less wrist strain when turning the bar from the middle. Longer bars take more effort to turn, but you get more turn rate up to a point. At some point you have one steering line cranked and the kite is gonna turn at its max. You can generally still get that out of a small bar but it takes more angle.
Can you clarify what you are trying to say???

Maximum turn rate is achieved when the bar is parallel to the depower lines. A longer bar will always produce a larger difference in the steering lines at maximum turn.

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Re: What bar size do you run?

Postby leeuwen » Sun May 09, 2021 8:34 pm

I *think* he is saying that each kite has a maximum steering input for the smallest possible turn without deforming or destabilizing the kite.
Never actively tried it with an inflatable but it’s probably possible to “oversteer” kites, especially very small sizes.
So the maximum turning rate can already be achieved with a small bar and not even using the maximum angle at the bar.

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Re: What bar size do you run?

Postby knyfe » Sun May 09, 2021 9:41 pm

Whatever is attached to the kite. I have 1 bar per kite and never disconnect the lines. I actually have no idea which sizes I have ;-)

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Re: What bar size do you run?

Postby Matteo V » Mon May 10, 2021 3:11 am

leeuwen wrote:
Sun May 09, 2021 8:34 pm
I *think* he is saying that each kite has a maximum steering input for the smallest possible turn without deforming or destabilizing the kite.
Never actively tried it with an inflatable but it’s probably possible to “oversteer” kites, especially very small sizes.
So the maximum turning rate can already be achieved with a small bar and not even using the maximum angle at the bar.
That's interesting. How did you come up with that idea?

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Re: What bar size do you run?

Postby leeuwen » Mon May 10, 2021 5:25 am

I flew lots of stunt/power kites ages ago and you could certainly destabilize/make them perform sub-optimal with extreme steering.
As I said, I have no clue if that happens with inflatables since these kites are significantly bigger then the stunt kites I flew.
However, I never fully cracked the bar on a 4m kite so who knows. Might depend on how powered the kite is as well since I guess you hit a stall point or max stall point somewhere.

Also it wasn’t my idea so maybe the original poster can elaborate.


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