hey dude,

my vote is that the bridle did in fact suffer and its not as obvious as you think. It only takes a little bit of stretch or shrinkage for it to go out of wack. I'm talking a centimetre or 2 is all it takes.

The bridle lines are essentially normal kite lines and like a bar, the lines will shrink a little after a while especially if the kite has been used a bit. If you happen to crash or give it a reasonable tug on one side, those lines sometimes stretch back to their original length and you only have to have one or two sections or parts of the bridle on one side of the kite to put the whole thing outta wack. Symmetrical bridle left and right is very important for it to fly true.

Compare the left side with the right side and when I say compare, be really accurate, pay attention when comparing, you'll be surprized how 1 cm can make a difference.

Each section of the bridle has a little tag sewn in it. With the correct measurement, measure each section. This too will identify if you have a problem. Same as mentioned above, make sure it is exact, again, 1 cm here and a cm there can add up to a ****e kite.

If you find too many of them out of spec, its time to get a new bridle set. If you find a couple that are out, you can with a bit of mucking around add the corrections with little loops made from old kite lines. It takes a bit of practice and patience but can be done. I have done it and it works but the easiest is go get a new bridle set. Go see your local shop and hopefully they can help you.

A new bridle can make your kite feel brand new man!!!.

Good luck dude!

Robbie :)

Another cause might be the bladder is twisted in the leading edge causing the kite to fly to one side
Pump the kite up and put it on a flat surface (garage floor) leading edge down
It will be fairly clear as the kite will not be sitting symmetrically on the floor
You can usually twist it till it sit evenly on both sides if that is the problem

Thats a good order youv chose to do em in because the last one is a ball ach if you wanna do a dodgey some proper double sided tape used for sailmakeing can tighten her up a little till ya get it right and resew but id rather just deal with the asymetry by offsetting with line length changes or if shes too far gone sell/turn into a smart casual jacket time.

Keep ya good kites out of the waves to be honest i pump a little extra hard if i know shes gonna be a big swell so that extra pressure and bouancy makes her relaunch so much faster and helps prevent the water from flowing over and flooding the canopy too much

bjornWA8 said..
Thanks for all the advice. Much appreciated.
I'll pump it up inside to check for twisted bladder. If looking ok I'll then swap the bridles around to see if it starts to pull the opposite way during the next session - there is about a 0.5 to 1.0cm difference in one of the 29cm bridle lines, which I thought was not significant, but by the sounds of the above it may be. When I had the kite pumped up before inside, it didn't look to have any obvious twists and the canopy didn't look stretched, but I'll take a closer look at the stitching next time, and also sit the kite on the trailing edge.

Its not a twisted bladder thats just not possible. The bladder would need to be removed and refitted incorrectly for there to be a full twist in the bladder. The bladder is a very thin and flexible material and would not be able to exert enough pressure on the dacron LE tube to affect it.
Most likely cause is that bridle length asymmetry. If the kite copped a decent pull from a wave then thats the likely cause or the other cause I've seen over the years is the Dacron LE has been stretched out of shape especially if the kite was wet when it was bagged and stored (so it dried with the twist/stretch in it). Replace stretched or shrunk bridles, or try wetting them and stretching the opposing legs together between 2 nails in a bit of wood.

If that the case inflate and wet the kite, twisting it with a helper to get it sitting as symmetrically as possible and then let it dry indoors.

bjornWA8 said..
I have recently swapped the bridles from the left side to the right side as well as the steering line attachments. This has seemed to correct the kite and it now flies straight. I'm not sure what the problem was exactly, it could be that when it had a light tumble it may have tightened the knots resulting in some slightly longer bridle lines turning the kite to the right. Since taking it apart and putting them back together on the opposite side of the kite the knots may be all the same taught making it even. Or it may be that the "stretched" bridle swapped to the opposite side is compensated by a possibly stretched canopy on the other. Anyway, whatever it was has been fixed and the kite flies correctly, only annoyance is that the red and black lines are on the wrong side of the kite so just have to be careful setting it up and not putting the bar on backwards.

That was interesting.
Thanx for that ..