OceanAdventures wrote:ronnie wrote:Randahl wrote:I would be interested in reading other people's relaunch experiences.
Hopefully we will see the OceanAdventures video of the relaunch method for the C2 Cloud soon?
Thank you for your patience, never got a chance to video the review, the written will just have to do but I'm uploading the Relaunch video to youtube now. My internet is slow so it may take a while, what our youtube channel and it will appear when its done. About to go teach a lesson so ill add it to here when I'm done.
http://www.youtube.com/user/XLKitesFWB
Hey thanks for the video. My experiences have been largely the same with relaunching, however, you can make some mistakes and screw yourself, but hopefully you are smarter than me and you won't. I emailed Greg about my problem and he was good enough to give me a quick and thorough response. I hope he doesn't mind, but I think it will reflect well on his attitude toward customer service:
Thanks for your mail. I'm sorry to hear you've been in some situations where you felt you need to self rescue but I'm optimistic as you get to know the handling that the Cloud prefer that you'll find you're able to avoid difficult situations and if you do find yourself in a sticky situation you'll have the experience to know options that will still work.
Regarding rolling the kite on the its back, I think this can be almost entirely avoided. When relaunching the kite off a wingtip some kites do this so poorly that riders can have the habit of pulling hard on a side leader line. The Cloud rolls onto a wingtip so easily that if you give it the same input it will stall the kite, rolling it onto it's back. Easy solution is just to be aware that the Cloud rolls over easily and to keep two hands on the bar to only give enough steering input for the Cloud and not so much as other kites.
If the kite falls onto its back from a flying position, is this from stall / flying the kite backwards? If yes, easy solution is to check your control bar tuning to avoid. I ride with equal length front and back line when bar is fully sheeted in against the loop to full power. If the front lines are even slightly longer than backs at this position it will stall the kite. They need to be even. Or can also tune so front lines are a couple inches shorter than back line to move further from threshold of stall. Entirely a matter of personal preference and individual riding technique.
Even with these suggestions its still possible to get in a situation where the kite is on its back. The Cloud is repositioned from this the same way as kites with struts but reaching up as high as possible above the bar and pulling both front lines. Not a pull and jerk, like fly-fishing. Just pull, hold and wait. This will lift just a very little bit of the front of the canopy and can take some time for enough wind to fill to roll the kite over. I find 5 or 5 mph of wind is needed for this. If wind is below 5 mph it become very difficult or even impossible to reposition the kite off its back. But this is barely enough wind for the kite to fly anyway. With over 5 or 6 mph I've found it possible in all situations to roll the kite over onto LE again.
If you are describing this situation with lots of water caught between canopy and LE, I can see that feeling. But by holding pull on both front lines I'm optimistic you'll find she'll roll over every time.
There's also situations when the leading edge is down in the water that water can pool. In these cases I give more pull to a side leader line. This starts to lift a wingtip and slowly dumps the water from between canopy and LE. It takes a minute but works for me every time. Even when wind is below the speed needed to be able to ride.
If you are getting water on the canopy in other situations please be conscious that you're not pulling the kite toward you when the kite is down with the canopy resting on the water. Pulling to you will pull water onto the canopy slowing it from filling and opening. I let the kite drift naturally downwind, just sheet the bar in and this opens the canopy even in the lightest wind.
I hope these descriptions have touched on maybe some of your experiences. Please let me know if you think any directly apply to your question, let me know what technique you were using, what the result was, and if suggestions for different handling technique sound like something to try. My feeling is that she does need different technique but once you practice these that you'll find the Cloud is your most user-friendly kite. Please let me know your thoughts.
Thanks,
Greg
Just about everything he said, I tried and I found it worked better.
The one thing that I did do in the first couple of sessions that I'm spooked about repeating is that I got a lot of water between the leading edge and the canopy. It seems as if this kite is prone to more water retention than a strutted kite because the struts sort of segregate the canopy panels and limit the size of a water collection area. If you get too much water, it will not relaunch. That water will sit in that pocket until its physically pushed out. There could be some clever line handling I don't know about to handle it from the bar, but I had to swim to the kite and do it by hand. I don't know if little weep holes for drainage are a dumb idea, but some way of draining that water would make this kite that much better.
No one is saying this is the perfect cure-all kite. It certainly has its characteristics that you need to consider and adjust for. I have met a few die-hard anti-strutless guys on the beach, but mostly curious and intrigued people. It's not for everyone, it's not a race kite, it's not a foil kite, I haven't really been able to boost with it, though I have ridden 95% of the time with a foilboard. But I'll be damned if that thing doesn't just hang in the sky and turn on a dime. Still really glad I have it.
