why are you replacing them?

best and ozone lines come in at a good price - 149 for best 25's and 139 for ozone 25's on the KP website. much of a muchness i'd say.

Steve

Here is a post from the FAQ sectionon line lengths

www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2337

I have found quite a big difference with 3m longer lines on my 12m. The longer lines give a bigger wind window however the downside is more drag and longer delay times moving the kite around.

Really short lines around 15m are great for strong wind surf sessions as you can move the kite around a lot quicker.

Cheers

Someone should make this into an archive answer info thingy.
Back in the old days 10 - 15 years ago, Spectra was all that was available. It was a lower grade back then but still awesome stuff compared to Kevlar, which was the high tech line prior to 1990.

No need to go into kevlar properties, it is not used anymore for kites.
Spectra and Dyneema are trade names for gel spun polyethylene, which are long chain polymers, which means that are chemically identical, and have low stretch high strength to weigh ratio.
Spectra is a trade name owned by Allied Mills/Signal I think and Dyneema is owned by DSM once again I think, from memory (things may have changed).
Over the last few years in a bid to out market and out tech each other both manufacturers invented higher modulus grades of fibres (stronger, lighter, less stretch or higher tensile), and Spectra became available as Spectra 1000 and then 2000, prior was known as 900. Dyneema went through the same development because it is essentially the same product, the highest commercial modulus is K76.
Both fibres are produced as white, they cannot be coloured chemically, so the colours we see in our kite lines are produced by coating the lines with synthetic resins (like waxes).

All fibres for kite lines are sourced originally from these 2 manufacturers as fas as I know, but there are numerous spinning mills around the world now that produce lines suitable for kite flying, and ropes for other purposes.

Kitepower is one of the original sources of quality kite flying lines in Oz, we had been importing and custom making flying lines long before we could buy sets of lines with sewn ends.

Now we can import lines as made up sets, very accurately manufactured by companies like Ozone and Flexifoil. In the case of Ozone thay have consistently produced lines of exceptional quality and strength, after all peoples lives hang off their paragliding and kite products.

In general, all the kite lines from all the major kite brands are good quality these days, its just the price you pay for the branding and how many hands the product goes through before it get to you at a retail level.

A few companies that specialise in being the lowest priced, use the lower grades of Spectra/Dyneema, the rest are using the highest grades. Ozone and Flexi use the highest grade of Dyneema, K76, the Ozone kite lines are the strongest rated lines we can source, yet they are not thicker than lower rated lines, this is due to the higher strength of K76 modulus fibres.

Hope that was not too boring?

Length is a personal choice, timing for jumps and turning changes dramatically and is really noticeable when line lengths are changed by around 5M or more. As a general rule shorter lines work better for waves or where a rider wants a more direct, more responsive kite, the only con is lower jumps.
Longer lines work better in lighter winds, because of the increase in the size of the wind window (inverse is true as well), and the optimal length is 25 to 30M, for general flying.
I have personally flown power kites on up to 65M, and 40M is common for people looking to get maximum bottom end form their biggest kite.

Cya and

Goodwinds

Steve McCormack

Thanks for the reply guys.

Bondo: I was thinking of replacing them after I removed some knots in two of the lines. They looked ok after I got the knots out, but now they look as though the rats have been at them. Next time I'm out for a thrash, I'll get someone in the know to look at them.

Kitehard: I think I'll go the vw option, If you've seen my kite skills you'd understand why.

Sunseeker: Thanks for the link. I'm going to the coco's for two weeks and by reading the replys, an extra 3 mtrs might help, not much wave action there (I'm told ) and I'm not at jumping ( on purpose ) stage yet

Gone to the darkside: Thanks, I remember reading somewhere that you should change them over after a while because the front lines may stretch more. Will check there length

KP: Thanks for the molecular kite line lesson 101. ALways wondered why some lines are white and not coulor coded to differentiate front/left /right ect. "now I know"

Tobes: Great Idea about the different section length's.

What is firewire? thats what slingy call their lines...