I have been riding a Switchblade pretty hard for two season and found the depower point creeping further and further up the centre lines. After checking out the tech tip videos I have retuned the bar and it feels great however after an hour or two the bar starts detuning. It was dead on at the start of a session and two hours later I am starting to struggle in gusts so I go in and check again and it is out 5cm. Returned, retuned and went out again. No problems. I have done this twice now (two different sessions). My steering lines are at maximum extension and now I am adjusting the centre lines. I am trying to figure out why the continual creep away after such a short time. Could the lines be defective and they need replacing after just two seasons? The figure 8 knots cannot slide so it is not knot slippage.

Anybody notice something similar or have some insight?

PS a great session at Bbay today. Friendly crowd - locals beach goers and kiters.

Warrentch said..

I have been riding a Switchblade pretty hard for two season and found the depower point creeping further and further up the centre lines. After checking out the tech tip videos I have retuned the bar and it feels great however after an hour or two the bar starts detuning. It was dead on at the start of a session and two hours later I am starting to struggle in gusts so I go in and check again and it is out 5cm. Returned, retuned and went out again. No problems. I have done this twice now (two different sessions). My steering lines are at maximum extension and now I am adjusting the centre lines. I am trying to figure out why the continual creep away after such a short time. Could the lines be defective and they need replacing after just two seasons? The figure 8 knots cannot slide so it is not knot slippage.

Anybody notice something similar or have some insight?

PS a great session at Bbay today. Friendly crowd - locals beach goers and kiters.

I have a SB as well, and I had a similar problem. What I was doing wrong, was the way I was shortening the centre (depower) lines. Cutting the lines and re-tying doing sheeps-knots to shorten them was shortening them alright, but I was actually stretching the lines even more, to the point they snapped clean! Scary situation just as I was about to do a loop. If that's what you did, stop! You need to learn how to splice the lines properly and remembering that for every 1cm you shorten them at the kite end (bridles), it becomes 2cm shorter at the depower point above the bar. I don't know why it occurs, but it did with mine. So I went and got a Fid and learnt how to splice the lines properly because that way I would pull in 1cm of the top line and 1cm of the bottom line together at the same time, cleanly without knots and it made for a precise adjustment. Of course the Cabrinha test of having all the lines together at the tree/fence end and the bar just touching the chicken loop made it all even for me, and had no problems since. Of course, to avoid all the hassle, just take the bar/lines to your shop and they should be able to do it.

Thanks but I did not cut the lines in anyway. I just used the built in line length ajustments on both the steering and then later the center lines as per the tech tip videos.

Check that the rope in the mainline (plastic tube that runs through your bar) is still holding up. They get sand in them and slowly wear over time. Yours might be about to break through, hence the growth in the centre lines.

Connect it up to something solid and then to your harness and put a bit of load through it. Check if the main line is stretching by looking to see if safety line is moving in relation to the end of the mainline.

There were some faulty lines around a couple of years ago, but have not heard of any in the last 2 seasons, including the current season 2014 kites, go back and see your dealer Fecal.

If your lines on your 2-3 year old kite are flecked, as in white lines with red and black flecks woven into them, they are the faulty lines and your local dealer should still have some replacement sets. We actually replaced all our lines before the kites were sold, so I'm confident that there are not many locals that have this issue but I cannot vouch for how other dealers handled the recall by Cabrinha.

I agree with daggy. Stop buggering around and kite