What size is a "mallory" and how much do you weigh?
Have noticed that on delta style kites, they don't go upwind as well as a lot of bow/hybrid/sle kites unless you are very light on the bar.
What I'm saying is you need to always be feeding the bar out, trimming the kite for speed, ride the board flatter and keep up your board speed, rather than pull back hard on the bar and edge and point upwind hard.

I ride regularly with a guy that has a 14M Dos, he goes upwind ok on it, not as well as I can on the same board and ozone Light xc, but he still goes upwind as well as the average 08/09 kite. He has learned to be light on the bar with it though, he really struggled with it at first from what I saw.

Cya and

Goodwinds

Steve

Hi Copdr,

The Dos is well known for a lot of things, but upwind ability is not one of them. The board you are riding is fine, The North Mallory is a 132 and is quite stiff and relatively flat, so it will be one of the better boards for upwind unless you are more than 90 kilos.

The tip is for you to keep the kite up into neutral as far as you can, this means keeping the kite low for starters. The lower the kite is, the more it pulls you towrds the edge of the window and less downwind.

Secondly, KEEP YOUR SPEED DOWN! By riding fast, the the apparent wind in the kite is fast which gives you lots of power, but the direction of the apparent wind is the problem, the faster you go, the more your dynamic wind window shifts away from the upwind dierection and point more and more away from the relative wind.

Riding slowly, reduces the headwind effect created by your forward speed. Remembering that apparent wind is the speed and direction of relative wind when combined with the speed and direction of movement. Without writing a complete tome in heavy scientific terminology, just trust me that if you ride slowly (enough to plane but not too much more), then the upwind ability will return.

The Dos will go upwind fine just not as easy as other performance kites, and I'd say the rigging is fine. I'll lay my money on you riding too fast, thus turning your apparent wind window too far away from relative wind.

I hope this makes sense, if not, just try riding powered but at a slower pace, it will solve your dilemma. Let me know how you get on.

Cheers,

I recon the kite may be alittle too powerful for your body weight.

If you have alot of power you will naturally sheet out.

Believe it or not upwind isnt as good when you sheeted out alot.

Sheeting out a large amount actually reduces the size of your wind window because the kite cant bite into the wind and allow the profiles to help fly the kite up close to the wind.

NJPornstar said...

I recon the kite may be alittle too powerful for your body weight.

If you have alot of power you will naturally sheet out.

Believe it or not upwind isnt as good when you sheeted out alot.

Sheeting out a large amount actually reduces the size of your wind window because the kite cant bite into the wind and allow the profiles to help fly the kite up close to the wind.

Nick, stand on the beach sometime and fly your kite from one side of the window to the other.
Do it sheeted it, notice the size of the window?
Then do it sheeting out as much as possible, notice that the window is bigger?

What that means when a person is riding is that they will actually go upwind better with the kite sheeted out.
It can be explained in a more detailed and scientific way but be assured it is absolutely the way that kites work and how a rider goes upwind.
All the rider needs to do is keep speed down and sheet out enough to keep planing and they will go upwind at high angles with a low rocker board.

Cya and

Goodwinds

Steve

Thanks for all your replies, I have a very good understanding of aerodynamics and have tried numerous setups regarding sheeting out etc. The kite does get away on me sometimes and can make for a challenging ride until I can reign it back in.
A few years ago I was told to keep the board speed up to allow me to go up wind better - I think that in this case I will need to drop it off and carve harder upwind.
What baffles me is that wether the wind is at the top or bottom of the kites range all I can do is maintain position.