Deflate kites for storage or travel

[norriegga]

It just occured to me that i could switch my hose to the other side of the pump and suck the air out of my bladders, rather than push most if the air out by hand... Any chance of bladder damage by sucking the air out before rolling up a kite?

[POACHER]

Good question. I've wondered too if those vacuum pack bags would damage a kite if I really compacted them down. Every inch counts when bringing kite gear on extended trips.

I wonder if TSA would have an issue with the vacuum packed bags too? It would suck to find your kite stuff cut open and something not put back.

[nherbold]

Using the pump to suck out the air works great as long as you don't force it.

As for vacuum packing in bags; that should work just fine as well as long as there is nothing sharp or pointy sticking out. Things to look out for are those plastic end pieces to deflate struts; zippers etc. But cramming everything in on your trip by vacuuming it you will run the risk of it not fitting anymore once you have unpacked it once (unless you bring the vacuum bags/pump and go thru the entire process each time of course). In my experience space is only the problem for the boards; for kites it's the weight. Combined they can make for some ridiculous airline fees

[Starsky]

Be careflul using the deflate side fo the pump. You can easily unseat the inflate, deflate and one pump nozzles and generally contort the pladder itself inside the leading edge if you remove all the air. Not something I would recomend for day to day. Safer for your bladders to just let them stay slack but fully seated inside the kite as per deflating by pushing the air out.

Can be helpfull when packing for travel, but you want to inflate the kite slowly and reseat all parts with the kite roughly 1/3-1/2 way inflated just like you do with a brand new kite before inflating to full pressure. When a nozzle recedes into the kite its easy to get a bit of bladder herniated and pinched between the nozzle and the reinforced hole it fits through.

[darippah]

unless you bring the vacuum bags/pump and go thru the entire process each time of course

I've never used a vacuum pack bag before, but can't you just use your kite pump to "vacuum" the bag?

[Lanc]

unless you bring the vacuum bags/pump and go thru the entire process each time of course

I've never used a vacuum pack bag before, but can't you just use your kite pump to "vacuum" the bag?

My kite pump does not fit nicely over the vacbag valve. They work best with a vacuum cleaner. Its all good when you leave and have the vacuum cleaner at home but when returning you sometimes cannot find a vacuum cleaner, eg zanzibar. I think I managed with the kite pump in the end but its was not as effective and you need two people for the operation.

I never really thought of the vacuuming process damaging the kite as I was overcome by the excitement of turning a 12m kite into the size of a 6m kite. I've used the vac bags on four separate trips so far each time taking two kites in their own bags and had no problems. Vac bags are very useful but I think I'm going to avoid over vacuuming in future in case of possible damage.

[Starsky]

As far as my earlier post, I'm talking about sucking the air out of the bladder within the kite, Not vacume bagging your kites in an external bag for packing. Of course most people will do a bit of what I'm talking about in order to get their external vacume bag down to the smallest possible size.

I dont think it has a lot of potential to physically dammage a kite in short term application of the external vacume bag, but you want to use caution and check/reseat all relevant internal components of the kite by doing a by hand seating of the bladders at soft inflation before fully pumping up the kite for the first time. Cant think of much worse than blowing a hole in a bladder while pumping up for your first vacation session!

I wouldn't leave a kite vacume packed for long term storage.