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Do Kites Fly Better with Strut Vavles Closed?

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Tiago1973
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Re: Do Kites Fly Better with Strut Vavles Closed?

Postby Tiago1973 » Tue Oct 01, 2013 9:04 am

usually just close the central strut and once i´ve started doing so the leading edge stitching seems to last longer than before

tend to tomahawk the kite here and there and as as i ride in a small/medium surf from time to time the kite is really trashed (worst as i choose not to ditch it immediatly)

maybe the stitching is better these days, maybe i don´t pump it so hard or maybe all required was a bit of a damping. who knows.. but i can really notice the difference.

performance wise the same thing. or there is no difference, or i´m just not that good

my biggest issue is having the kite well pumped in a hot day, hitting the cold water, having all that air compressed and ending up with something that is not flying so well. but this is then a different thing

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alden
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Re: Do Kites Fly Better with Strut Vavles Closed?

Postby alden » Wed Oct 02, 2013 3:12 am

Interesting comment that the connection hose diameters are too small to help the main LE during a crash. But if you consider the kite as a pneumatic circuit where the connection hoses could be considered a flow orifice, and the strut volumes could be considered pneumatic accumulators, then open valves could only help the LE by dissapating some energy. So it can only help in a crash but whether it can respond fast enough to help very much I don't know. I believe you can still pop an LE by crashing hard with valves open.

But my original question was about flying better and going up wind better, not crashing better. When I'm pointing up to get back upwind there is plenty of time for air to flow through open valves and hoses because of the steady pressure of one point of sail. Have you ever squeezed a multichamber inflatable like a kids toy, etc? What happens? The air moves out of the chamber that is experiencing force and flows into the other chambers. I'm thinking if this happens to a LEI in flight then the loaded chamber, whether LE or strut, is not able to do its intended design purpose as well, and so kite performance suffers.

Tiago1973
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Re: Do Kites Fly Better with Strut Vavles Closed?

Postby Tiago1973 » Wed Oct 02, 2013 8:23 am

sounds as if you were flying a under inflated kite

no pun intended

letsgoflyakite
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Re: Do Kites Fly Better with Strut Vavles Closed?

Postby letsgoflyakite » Thu Oct 03, 2013 3:36 pm

There was a time when struts were closed off at 6psi, then leading edge further pumped to 8 psi. Not sure why, but a lot of kiters did this.

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alden
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Re: Do Kites Fly Better with Strut Vavles Closed?

Postby alden » Wed Oct 09, 2013 2:28 am

I don't think the kite was underinflated. I always use a pump with a guage and in both cases I inflated to 7 psi. I am however dissapointed that I can't find recommended inflation pressure in the Ozone literature for 2013 Zephyr. (Ozone, where is the spec??). My other Ozone does say 8 psi and since the Zephyr is a larger kite I figured I would do a little less pressure at 7 psi. BTW since then I've been closing strut valves and have had good upwind and handling performance.


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