Not true. I've had the 17m C2 in about 25kt and no buckling at all. Maybe your friend underinflates.The Cloud leading edge buckles when overpowered. A friend has a quiver and complaines about it.
Not true. I've had the 17m C2 in about 25kt and no buckling at all. Maybe your friend underinflates.The Cloud leading edge buckles when overpowered. A friend has a quiver and complaines about it.
I ride with my BRM Cloud firmly inflated...but not really high. The BRM Clouds have a substantially smaller diameter leading edge than all my other kites. The stress on a cylinder under pressure is called "hoop stress"...like the hoops on a barrel. So the stress on the hoop and the stress on the wall of a leading edge, and the stress on a seam of a leading edge at any given pressure are all a function of diameter. Decrease the diameter, markedly decrease the stress...ie. decrease the tension on the seams. The formula can be found here:knot_moving wrote:Rode the Airrush strutless the other day in the gulf. Was enough wind to ride my turbine but the current was carrying me downwind and I was doing a bunch of walking. Airrush was obviously much lighter in weight & was more efficient - meaning as I started riding it picked up speed and moved fwd and I was easily staying upwind. Also turned much much faster than turbine.
It liked to be very sheeted out & I had all the speed and pressure I wanted - substantially more than when I was on my turbine.
Dealer did say that its top end was not as good as the turbine's & I can believe that is true. I will also be interested to see about the reliability of the strutless designs in general. They seem to require quite a bit higher bladder pressure than strutted lightwind designs, I wonder if that will affect their reliability over the years?
--Anyway all in all, for very light days it was a fun kite
i'd love to hear more about that experience. my c1 becomes a handful at around 17lobodomar wrote:I've had the 17m C2 in about 25kt
Like Herbert, I also found out that the high-end of the C2 is higher than other kites I have flown. To achieve it, a bar with long depower travel is necessary. But it's kind of a survival high-end, since with all that luffing the kite becomes a pig to turn due to increased drag. Upwind also becomes highly compromised, but still doable with the right fins/outline. I haven't flown the C1 to compare.darippah wrote:i'd love to hear more about that experience. my c1 becomes a handful at around 17lobodomar wrote:I've had the 17m C2 in about 25kt
I do enjoy that amidst all the emotional posting there is real high quality info on this forum as well! The smaller leading edge diameters on the newer generation light wind kites bodes well for all apparently! Also gives me encouragement to really "pump it up!" when using my smaller kites.herbert wrote:I ride with my BRM Cloud firmly inflated...but not really high. The BRM Clouds have a substantially smaller diameter leading edge than all my other kites. The stress on a cylinder under pressure is called "hoop stress"...like the hoops on a barrel. So the stress on the hoop and the stress on the wall of a leading edge, and the stress on a seam of a leading edge at any given pressure are all a function of diameter. Decrease the diameter, markedly decrease the stress...ie. decrease the tension on the seams. The formula can be found here:knot_moving wrote:Rode the Airrush strutless the other day in the gulf. ... They seem to require quite a bit higher bladder pressure than strutted lightwind designs, I wonder if that will affect their reliability over the years?
--Anyway all in all, for very light days it was a fun kite
http://www.engineersedge.com/material_s ... stress.htm
So, narrowing the leading edge so radically as in the Clouds does create advantages and raise challenges. The flying bridle each side has some 7 attachment points to keep the shape.
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