edt wrote:OzBungy if you only activate the QR once every other year, .....
Basic maintenance and checks from time to time.
If you want to use the QR every time then that's fine (although it sounds a tad excessive to me.)
The original post sounded like he was releasing in situations when he wanted the kite to depower 100%, not just self landing or testing. In self landing you want the kite to land nose down.
Personally I hate it when the kite flips on it's back. I have to work the lines to flip it over on its nose.
As for reassembling the chicken loop in the water, I would only release in a survival situation. I would be more than happy to drift to shore and reset everything before kiting again. I have no hesitation in releasing to the safety. It's just that survival situations are extremely rare.
As a general rule I head in to the beach and reset for the occasional inversion where the kite has rolled through the lines.
The concept of a safety system that you can release to and reset on the fly sounds to me a touch absurd. It would be like having air bags that you can pop off whenever you feel like it.