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Untangling lines

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celly
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Untangling lines

Postby celly » Sun Dec 23, 2012 12:43 am

Since I am new to kiteboarding and am forced to always drift lanch the combination of the two sometimes equal line tangles. I have gotten better at being more careful with my lines but the odd time my lines will become crossed and sometimes it just gets messy. Basically my question is, is there a way to untangle your lines while out in the water? What happens, especially if it gets really messy like in the picture I have to head back to shore and redo all my lines. Is that the only option when things get this messy?
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foam-n-fibre
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Re: Untangling lines

Postby foam-n-fibre » Sun Dec 23, 2012 12:58 am

The thing to be wary of is that if the wind is strong, if you start untangling things on the water you might get our kite rolling over and launching at a bad time. BUT, if the wind is light, and especially when snow kiting since that tends to be done in lighter winds, with a 4 line kite you can pretty much always untangle when in the water, if you can stand in shallows at least.

In that picture, I'd unhook the chicken loop, but keep the leash atttached. The black end of the bar needs to be pointed toward the kite and I think passed over the centre lines and passed between the centre lines and the red end. Then you'll have your centre line wrapped around your bar and will have to roll the bar to fix the centre lines, then fix the lines at each end. Now hook back in, undo your leash and untangle it and reconnect it.

Disclaimer - I'm not 100% sure that this is right from what I'm seeing, but it's like that. There are three things you do to fix every tangle with a 4 lines kite. What I described above, spinning the bar, and passing the bar and leaders and everything between the two centre lines. If you do that, hook your leash to the "Y" of the centre lines before unhokking the C-loop. This would be harder with a longer single centre line. The trick is to recognize what to do to fix each type of problem, but it can be done.

HTH,
Peter

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Re: Untangling lines

Postby JGTR » Sun Dec 23, 2012 5:52 am

You can unhook and pass your bar through the appropriate lines and it will untangle it but working out how to do it is another matter!

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Re: Untangling lines

Postby kas911 » Sun Dec 23, 2012 9:59 am

Head back to shore. Always. You can block the leash, initiate a death loop, get your fingers cut off etc. Maybe later on you can fix it on the water

But why don't you get an assisted launch, or learn how to launch on your own?

Obviously you need to try and have tension on the lines, all the time, when doing it your way

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Re: Untangling lines

Postby JGTR » Sun Dec 23, 2012 11:43 am

kas911 wrote:Head back to shore. Always. You can block the leash, initiate a death loop, get your fingers cut off etc. Maybe later on you can fix it on the water

But why don't you get an assisted launch, or learn how to launch on your own?

Obviously you need to try and have tension on the lines, all the time, when doing it your way
This is best advice, you can usually still relaunch and fly a kite like this so you can get back to the beach but just be aware that it may not fly properly although safety should still work, if in doubt leash out and walk back

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Re: Untangling lines

Postby Westozzy » Sun Dec 23, 2012 12:49 pm

They are right. Get back to shore and do it manually with kite down.

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Re: Untangling lines

Postby JGTR » Sun Dec 23, 2012 12:55 pm

Why drift launch? You should only drift launch if you have no beach to launch on and the water is too deep to walk the kite out - otherwise tethered launch is the way to go

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Re: Untangling lines

Postby irwe » Sun Dec 23, 2012 1:22 pm

I drift launch 80% of the time from my local kite spot and don't get tangles.

This is what I do.
1. Pump up kite leading edge facing water far enough from shoreline to walk out lines.
2. Walk out lines confirm no tangles.
3. Hook in Chicken loop and safety leash
4. Walk up middle of lines
5. Grab center of kite and lift letting wind tips drag.
6. Walk back to board at shoreline (keep bar under elbow)
7. Pick up board with free hand and walk out to a safe distance. (make sure nothing will snag lines)
8. Release kite with leading edge facing you and splash water onto canopy
9. Quickly walk away from kite to minimize time there is slack in lines
10. Let go of board and launch kite**
** I don't use this technique if wind is 'nuclear'.

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Re: Untangling lines

Postby bigwave » Sun Dec 23, 2012 6:02 pm

irwe wrote:I drift launch 80% of the time from my local kite spot and don't get tangles.

This is what I do.
1. Pump up kite leading edge facing water far enough from shoreline to walk out lines.
2. Walk out lines confirm no tangles.
3. Hook in Chicken loop and safety leash
4. Walk up middle of lines
5. Grab center of kite and lift letting wind tips drag.
6. Walk back to board at shoreline (keep bar under elbow)
7. Pick up board with free hand and walk out to a safe distance. (make sure nothing will snag lines)
8. Release kite with leading edge facing you and splash water onto canopy
9. Quickly walk away from kite to minimize time there is slack in lines
10. Let go of board and launch kite**
** I don't use this technique if wind is 'nuclear'.

They are excellent points. irwe and I kite alot together and we mostly have to drift launch at most of our spots. They key point I would like to add to is #9. I always try to keep moving at all times. The only time I would stop is to release the kite. Then I would keep walking away from the kite. I feel it reduces the chance of a tangle.
Line set up on the beach is critical,do it right and double check. As Westozzy said, go back to shore and set up again. Drift launching is about 90% successful. Factors such as line tangles, debris and your kite flipping can ruin a good launch.
if its super windy try to get someone to launch you. It makes me nervous in high wind. if something goes bad you can be in trouble. This year I actually enlisted the help of a non kiter to assist me to launch due to the high wind. I gave him instruction and he followed it perfectly. To me, it was safer than a drift launch. I was in control of the whole launch,drifting there is always a small chance of an issue.

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Re: Untangling lines

Postby celly » Sun Dec 23, 2012 7:06 pm

JGTR wrote:Why drift launch? You should only drift launch if you have no beach to launch on and the water is too deep to walk the kite out - otherwise tethered launch is the way to go
I drift launch because no beach space. Not familiar with tethered launch but will look into it.


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