Making lines shorter

[atomic-chomik]

Hey Bigflyer, I'm not being sarcastic when i ask this, but when would .5 meter shorter lines make a kite unflyable? Myself, i have q line on a few bars and have had many different one lengths and only below...18m(?) has it ever been an issue.

[Bushflyr]

The OP stated he snapped one line. I thought you were saying .5m shorter on one line, not all of them. All lines being equal .5m is nothing. Oops.

[foilholio]

Most lines can be spliced, some are very difficult bordering on impossible and some are very easy. If you grab a small piece of line and push it together to open the weave, and if it opens into a big hollow section it will be easy to splice, smaller the hollow section the harder, if it doesn't look hollow it will be very difficult to impossible to splice.

To even lines I found it best to connect the lines together as one so you can restretch them with the same force, like your full body weight. This helps remove uneven shrink, restretching them individually usually produces uneven results. To then check if the lines are even you need to make a device with a pulley, something to hold the pulley like some quadrupled rope with a big knot and a small piece of rope through the pulley with knots on each end. Connect the one end of each lines to the knots on the small rope thru the pulley and the other ends to something solid and even. Pull both lines tight from the pulley end and the load will be balanced thru the pulley. If the lines are even they will match up. If they are not, while tensioning the lines thru the pulley make pen mark at the same spot on both lines. You can use that to relevel the lines at home or on your bar if you can adjust them on that or you could cut and resplice the lines on the spot and use the pulley to check them again.

[t3rse]

.5 meter difference between the front and rear lines (with the rears being shorter) will make it unflyable, to clarify.

I think I would add a .5 meter extension to the rear lines in your case, if you just can't replace the whole set, but I do agree with others that you should just replace them all. They really aren't that expensive, and sometimes you can find new-old stock bars with brand new lines for less than the cost of new lines alone.

[edt]

it really depends on how the line was cut. If it was snapped in a powered kiteloop and crash or by just being old there's a good chance all the lines were weakened. but if the line was cut because you got that line cut by say crashing your kite and the line got caught on a broken bottle, or maybe you left a knot in your center lines and it snapped there, almost certain all the lines are still good, just fix that cut line.