U can fly the kite in with crossed lines.... land...then sort it.
That way your not losing ground.

Fixing inverted lines while flying the kite (I call this a hot fix) is really tricky and potentially dangerous. It involves getting a lot of slack in the kite, unhooking the chicken loop and feed it through the lines as you're describing. One crucial moment is when you've fed the bar through but your leash is wrapped around the bar. This makes the kite almost impossible to steer and can get you caught in a death spiral (when one end of the bar gets snagged on something and the kite starts looping uncontrollably until inevitably crashing in to something). You then have to unhook the leash, unwrap it and hook it back on, meaning you don't have the safety of the leash to rely on while it's disconnected. Obliviously all of this is really sketchy and you risk damaging or loosing your kite, drifting away from the beach or potentially getting injured or worse.

It can be done, but I strongly advice against it. If you however feel like it's something you want to try, only attempt it where the water is shallow enough to stand (to prevent drifting downwind) and ask someone (without a kite) to hold the back of your harness (to further prevent drifting downwind and to hold you down in case anything goes wrong). I would never do it in deep water or on my own, that's just asking for trouble.

My advice, regardless of the spot and the situation, is to keep flying the kite with inverted lines, go slow and safe, and land the kite safely on the beach and fix the lines there.

curls said..
My advice, regardless of the spot and the situation, is to keep flying the kite with inverted lines, go slow and safe, and land the kite safely on the beach and fix the lines there.

That's it. Good advice. Don't try and sort out lines whilst hooked and kite flying. Land asap.

Does the kite invert when stacking hooked in or unhooked? I used to invert my kite all the time when I started unhooking and stacked, let go of the bar and had the kite flag out with the 100% depower. This all changed when I started setting the leash to suicide with safety instead of just regular "safety". Now it only happens maybe once every 10-15 sessions when I stack really bad or land a hooked jump too far downwind so the kite frontstalls and falls out of the sky without any line tension. Anyway, flying it in and fixing it landed on the beach is almost as fast (if not even faster) than doing a hot fix in the water, so there's really no point in even attempting a hot fix.

However, if you invert your kite often you're probably doing something wrong *<|:-)

kemp90 said...
Definitely go in and re rig. Not really worth it.

It's worse if you have a 5th line. Someone posted a vid on how to unwrap the 5th of your kite. Have used it twice and worked really well the first time. Second time didn't work.

+1 on the video that showed how to untangle the 5th by releasing the chicken loop and letting the kite untwist its self. used it twice to get back to the beach and un tangle, third time was to far gone to save.

curls said..
Fixing inverted lines while flying the kite (I call this a hot fix) is really tricky and potentially dangerous. It involves getting a lot of slack in the kite, unhooking the chicken loop and feed it through the lines as you're describing. One crucial moment is when you've fed the bar through but your leash is wrapped around the bar. This makes the kite almost impossible to steer and can get you caught in a death spiral (when one end of the bar gets snagged on something and the kite starts looping uncontrollably until inevitably crashing in to something). You then have to unhook the leash, unwrap it and hook it back on, meaning you don't have the safety of the leash to rely on while it's disconnected. Obliviously all of this is really sketchy and you risk damaging or loosing your kite, drifting away from the beach or potentially getting injured or worse.

It can be done, but I strongly advice against it. If you however feel like it's something you want to try, only attempt it where the water is shallow enough to stand (to prevent drifting downwind) and ask someone (without a kite) to hold the back of your harness (to further prevent drifting downwind and to hold you down in case anything goes wrong). I would never do it in deep water or on my own, that's just asking for trouble.

My advice, regardless of the spot and the situation, is to keep flying the kite with inverted lines, go slow and safe, and land the kite safely on the beach and fix the lines there.

cant agree more with curls. i have tried this method twice and have always seemed to have got the centre line wrapped around the bar which renders you safety useless and I am actually lucky it hasn't resulted in any major incidents. +1 for just flying kite inverted and sorting it out back on the beach.

Just googled it as this happened to me today twice and didnt know how to untangle them in the water and a video from Action Sports comes up, really helpful:

harry potter said..
Grab the front lines where they V. You can easily hold the kite from this position ( even fly it from one side of the window to the other ) the kite will also be depwered at this point unhook and feed the bar through ( I do this with the kite at 12 as it minimises the downwind pull and can give you extra time to feed the bar through if the kite does start moving to the windo edge ) don't forget to roll the bar after feeding it through and check the bar ends are clear.
My preference is to unhook my leash before feeding the bar through ( otherwise it just gets in the way )so for a period of time you are completely detached from the kite except for where you are holding the front lines.
You need to be quick and methodical to reduce any downwind movement.

This will only be easy and quick if you are using a kite with a low ''V'' AND if the winds are relatively light and you are a very experienced kiter. Trying this in strong winds with a high ''V'' is simply mission impossible. Any newbie trying this regardless of the wind conditions is looking for trouble.

glasstraxx said..
. +1 for just flying kite inverted and sorting it out back on the beach.

Hopefully you're not trying to fly an inverted kite (canopy inside out). Yes you can fly a kite a kite with crossed lines, I think (and hope) is what you meant to say. I've seen many try to fly inverted kites back to shore, it puts lots of stress on the kite and gets quickly out of control. Better to release the safety, flag the kite, reconnect and relaunch as per my video.


This is a newbie section and some tips on there that newbies just shouldn't be reading about...

Christian