^^^ The freebar was more designed for wave riding as it still gave you the ability to depower the kite and a lot more flexibility on where / how you held the bar. Having said that they didn't really take off as it's still nowhere near as good a wave riding setup as unhooking
stamp said...
i think i remember old mate from new kiteboarding developing a mini 5th for unhooking. but from memory it attached to the spreader bar so when you were waveriding unhooked you could extend the bar away from you to put tension on the line and depower a bit.
I'm pretty sure RRD did something similar back in the dark ages (c kites) for a wave kite, but on theirs they had it setup so that when you pushed the bar away from you it engaged the 5th line to really drop the power out of the kite.
Pulling on a 5th line tends to make the kite want to fall out of the air unless you have the kite towards the edge of the window (not ablve your head) and could balance the tendancy to fall out of the sky with a compensating back line.
It worked well as a short term (less that a few seconds) depower solution but not much more than that.
