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Dustfarter wrote:Red on left is fucking stupid IMHO and makes no sense to me. I set mine up to be "Red on right". Works better for my brain.....if possible I always set my lines so that 'black is back' ( rear attachment points on kite) for pigtails or line colors too.

That is a very humble opinion indeed .. too bad you did not read edt's explanation two posts above yours. We are talking about standard. Standards are meant for interoperability and might not suit your taste a priori.

As for writting "left" on the left side, I am all for it, that would help the beginner for sure. However that would be useless for the experienced one who, as explained by Toby among others, needs to recognize and catch the left side within a flash. Hence the clearly visible color code.

So, I would now vote for a white "LEFT" written on the RED left side.

cheers

Not everyone speaks or reads English...

Red left, green right is nautical convention. Arbitrary but who cares? No need to change it... for the sake of changing it.

Flysurfer Infinity bar has got it totally right: red on the left, black on the right and a big white stripe on the back... you can see in a flash if the bar is the right way around - no need to try and read "WRONG WAY" in tiny jiggling letters or any other such silliness...

i been rinding some north kites and their bar is really well designed and manufactured - i like it a lot - except for the fact that it is nowhere near obvious enough which side is which. you got about 0.2 of a second to decide - there is no having "a closer look"!

Red of left is what many teach including me -Just think red must be in left hand. there is no time to check both ends. Trying to make a bar grip look all technical for marketing is probably to blame foir many companies.

I strip some bars and put red tennis/squash racket grip on the left side and blue on the right. best grip ever - but doesn't last long.

I often rig my bar up backwards to keep my back lines even since I do more tricks in my natural stance. Funny thing is my bar works just fine when I do this.

Port and starboard lights have been used on ships and boats since the mid 1800's. For those that don't understand the nautical basis for color coding left and right, they should learn as kite board/surf participants are considered watercraft and therefore subject to nautical rules and regulation, right of way for example.This is why some jurisdictions are enforcing the use of PFDs and carrying a whistle. As to switching your bar around to even the stress, why not, you know what you've done. For teaching? Red left, green right.
Please don't be an ignorant kiter, it just hurts the rest of us.

saildawg wrote:Port and starboard lights have been used on ships and boats since the mid 1800's. For those that don't understand the nautical basis for color coding left and right, they should learn as kite board/surf participants are considered watercraft and therefore subject to nautical rules and regulation, right of way for example.This is why some jurisdictions are enforcing the use of PFDs and carrying a whistle. As to switching your bar around to even the stress, why not, you know what you've done. For teaching? Red left, green right.
Please don't be an ignorant kiter, it just hurts the rest of us.

How will I ever know what my port or starboard is with out a color coded bar and lines? Good thing my mommy still rights left and right on my shoes. Please check your ignorance at the door before calling others ignorant.

P.S. Hard to see colors when your color blind.

bars vary a lot from person to person, everybody likes their bar their way
so make your own and let the beginners have some standardized colors

if it is too complicated to make your own just get some colored floats you like, red, green, black, blue whatever and put them on the lines at the bar end. that is mostly what you see anyway, not so much the bar and you can make them as big as you want for visibility...

Or go and get some spray paint of a type that would mimic the feel and grip characteristics of the bar itself, and go nuts. Have a field day with it.

My take on it is, a newbie needs this for the first 5 trips out. After than, given that humans generally pick up on things pretty quickly, you pretty much can learn the colors of your own bar. There really is no need to push for any universal coding, only that the two sides of the bar are recognizably different at a glance.

Tying to compare bar sides to nautical lights is just plain silly. Kiters mostly don't kite at night, the bars spin and change direction plenty, and the colored ends of the bars would not indicate the direction one was travelling any better than the giant F-ing kite in the sky would.

Flight Time wrote: a newbie needs this for the first 5 trips out. .

but what if you have two brand new bars one for one kite (maybe it's a 5 line) one for another kite, one is red on left one is red on right. It's a pain.

Why is it that people don't want there to be standards. kiters. like herding chickens.

Flight Time wrote:Tying to compare bar sides to nautical lights is just plain silly. Kiters mostly don't kite at night, the bars spin and change direction plenty, and the colored ends of the bars would not indicate the direction one was travelling any better than the giant F-ing kite in the sky would.

Not for being visible of course - that would be silly... it is a common convention though.

99% of non-kiters see no connection between the giant fucking kite in the sky and the guy underneath it.