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Re: Zeeko ultimate bar no clamcleat no depower straps?

Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2012 3:44 pm
by ChristoffM
Cool! I love your double ball idea Tom. And one could make it below the bar, above the bar, or even both without taking up too much space I think?

I also did a setup on my bar. Hope to test it fully his weekend.

Re: Zeeko ultimate bar no clamcleat no depower straps?

Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2012 8:39 pm
by tomatkins
I guess you could say: "a man's got to have balls...to tinker with a perfectly good Zeeko system"...ha, ha...for me, two balls is is enough. :D

Here is what you will find, when you start to use your set-up:

At the moment when you would want to make the power line longer to increase the kite power, you will, of course, be underpowered, and therefore, it is an easy and natural thing to pull in the bar...soooo, while you have the bar pulled in, it is very easy to reach above the bar and grab the depower-line. The line takes very little force, even when it is wet, to be pulled down, to acomplish the powering up of the kite...thanks to Faklord, we know why this is (the system is unstable and has a tendency, if disturbed, to elongate). So, there is really no need for another set of balls...less clutter...however, I have found that marking black stripes on that line, makes it easy to quickly identify the one line, to be pulled on.

Re: Zeeko ultimate bar no clamcleat no depower straps?

Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2012 8:49 pm
by Starsky
So put the one adjuster (balls) on the side that you want to pull to depower (shorten the system)

Repower is easy, and done with the marked rope itself. Use the purchase of the handle to pull when needing the extra help to depower the kite.

Re: Zeeko ultimate bar no clamcleat no depower straps?

Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2012 9:13 pm
by faklord
OK I'm back on it....

A couple more thoughts (possible improvements?):

a) The whole system can be turned upside down. This has a number of pros & cons:

Pros:
Less force required to depower.
Maximises overall depower. Ie the middle ring moves away from the kiter as depower is applied, giving Max bar throw at max depower – I think this is probably the safer option?

Cons:
More lines through the bar. Though, this isn’t a problem if you using an eyebolt modified bar & use something like Tomatkin’s ingenious prussic ball to provide a floating ‘label’ for the lines. (put it on the line that goes to the top ring -> pull to depower, push to power up.)


b) If one of the rings is replaced with a shackle, the main line can be made with spliced loops at the ends – much neater & easier as in-field replacement.

Re: Zeeko ultimate bar no clamcleat no depower straps?

Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2012 10:36 pm
by tomatkins
faklord wrote:OK I'm back on it....

A couple more thoughts (possible improvements?):

a) The whole system can be turned upside down. This has a number of pros & cons:

Pros:
Less force required to depower.
Maximises overall depower. Ie the middle ring moves away from the kiter as depower is applied, giving Max bar throw at max depower – I think this is probably the safer option?

Cons:
More lines through the bar. Though, this isn’t a problem if you using an eyebolt modified bar & use something like Tomatkin’s ingenious prussic ball to provide a floating ‘label’ for the lines. (put it on the line that goes to the top ring -> pull to depower, push to power up.)


b) If one of the rings is replaced with a shackle, the main line can be made with spliced loops at the ends – much neater & easier as in-field replacement.
Excellent idea, and suggestions to test out. My first thought, after drawing the "upside-down" idea, was that: As the kiter powers up the kite, the middle ring will move down towards the bar, and this would limit the 'throw' of the bar...unless the middle ring can pass through the bar hole. This situation could be avoided by making the rope a lot longer, so that the middle ring never, in practical use, gets drawn down to the point, where it would encounter the bar hole.

I think, to avoid the wear on the powerline, that the "I" bolt ring is a good idea, except for the fact that the kiter could not "split-finger" grip the bar. I like to put the "I" bolt on top of the bar as shown in the picture, where I am making a new bar for my "swimming drift launch" set-up (I will start a new thead on this: "Drift launch; the good, bad and ugly").

The picture shows the use of a "T" nut to hold the "I" bolt in place. I sawed the bolt off even with the bottom of the "T" nut, afterwards. This avoids having a big nut protrude on the other side of the bar and still allows one to disassemble the device, if needed.

Re: Zeeko ultimate bar no clamcleat no depower straps?

Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2012 11:16 pm
by harviento
Does the safety line on the Zeeko bar flag to one line or both front lines?

Re: Zeeko ultimate bar no clamcleat no depower straps?

Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2012 1:47 am
by tautologies
This is awesome. Like a community designed bar. Wonder who will build and bring something like that to market.

Re: Zeeko ultimate bar no clamcleat no depower straps?

Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2012 7:45 am
by ZigZag
@ Tomatkins: I noticed your eye bolt has a gap in it that might catch or chafe on your depower line. I used a welded stainless steel ring bolt on one bar I modified. The other bar used a stainless steel eye nut and a piece of threaded bar that I cut off a stainless steel set screw.
Stainless steel eye nut.gif
Stainless steel eye nut.gif (10.52 KiB) Viewed 2064 times
The threaded bar was epoxied into a hole drilled in my kite bar. Initially I had mounted the eye nut loose on the threaded bar, so that it could rotate slightly as I turned the kite, but I found that irritating, and eventually epoxied it to the thread.

@ Faklord, you mount your ring below the bar, because you ride your bar with one hand close to the middle, fingers straddling the depower line. I presume this is because you ride unhooked. I never ride unhooked, and find I can control the kite adequately with one hand positioned to the side of the depower line.

Re: Zeeko ultimate bar no clamcleat no depower straps?

Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2012 8:20 am
by RAL INN
harviento wrote:Does the safety line on the Zeeko bar flag to one line or both front lines?
the normal Zeeko set up is to flag to one front line. but can act more like a 5th line in strong winds, which is good, the bar video shows this.

Re: Zeeko ultimate bar no clamcleat no depower straps?

Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2012 7:02 pm
by tomatkins
ZigZag wrote:@ Tomatkins: I noticed your eye bolt has a gap in it that might catch or chafe on your depower line. I used a welded stainless steel ring bolt on one bar I modified. The other bar used a stainless steel eye nut and a piece of threaded bar that I cut off a stainless steel set screw.
The attachment Stainless steel eye nut.gif is no longer available
The threaded bar was epoxied into a hole drilled in my kite bar. Initially I had mounted the eye nut loose on the threaded bar, so that it could rotate slightly as I turned the kite, but I found that irritating, and eventually epoxied it to the thread.

@ Faklord, you mount your ring below the bar, because you ride your bar with one hand close to the middle, fingers straddling the depower line. I presume this is because you ride unhooked. I never ride unhooked, and find I can control the kite adequately with one hand positioned to the side of the depower line.
ZigZag,

Thanks for noticing... I was looking for the welded type, but settled for the local hardware store's $4 I bolt, which has a line-chewing gap, which I closed up, by lashing leader line around the base of the I bolt. The lashed line also "guards" the oval hole in the bar, through which passes the recoil line for the internal bungeed spring system.

Yeah... we tinkerers "Go to war with the army we have, rather than the army, we would like"... :D