eppo said..BWalnut said..eppo said..
How collapsible are these battens given your technique when the para is full of wind even with all the A lines pulled in and the following slack take up of the rest of these lines ?
Once you've drawn the A lines in to de-power the PR it's quite easy to collapse the battens together. Riders who use the larger sizes have reported to me that the 4-A's collapse works best to start, then the battens come together from there. I use the 3m and smaller, 6 A collapse, stroke the central lines in, then snatch the battens together. Pretty mindless after practicing in your house for about 50 rounds.
Yeh was trying it on a 4.3m today and pulling the front 4 works best . infact on the water it's quite hard to pull all 6. Did a 25km DW and chickened out and went back to my normal method . need to practise it more lol.
Agreed. On the 3m you can collapse with all the A lines, but on the 4.3, if there is ANY power in the wing it really doesn't work and you need to pull the center 4. Gathering the battens is no problem on land, but due to the slippery fabric, when I gather the battens on foil it always gets much sloppier than I'd like. Even if its 80%, the redeploy seems to work fine.
I'm liking my 9" shortened lines on the 4.3. I did the temporary shortening method and the rigging looks janky, but I'm still happy with how it flies and it does make the stow easier. I may eventually bite the bullet and permanently shorten them.