Going through my REVs quickly revealed that I miss alternatives for the very low and high end of the wind scale. A high wind REV will require quite a bit of venting, meaning more work which I at the moment don’t feel comfortable with.
It also means I need more mesh fabric which I don’t have so the conclusion ended up a light wind kite. I got the icarex I need and I think I also got the appropriate rods.
But what rods to choose?
For a light wind kite, light rods are a must. They must also have the right stiffness. I started to think…
How about P90’ies for the leading edge and 2PT for the vertical spars? They should be both light and stiff enough.
I took a deep dive into my bag of spars and soon I had found three P90’ies. The 2PTs I thought of I couldn’t find, but I found two Avia skinnies I think would be just fine too.
Then I found two ferrules for the LE … and I guess I am game! ????
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I use 90P or 100P in center and 2XP or 200 in the end of LE. To the speader i juse 2PX or P200.
Thanks Anders, I’ll have that in mind! 🙂
BTW, one nice thing with the REV is that changing frame is soooo easy! Makes for experimenting 🙂
When using the P90(LE)/2PT(down spar) combo on my Rev B-series in light wind, what I notice and appreciate is the LE flex – to be able to propel the kite forward by tugging on all lines *in low wind* and not by angling the handles. My handles are already trimmed so that almost no further forward drive can be obtained by rotating them towards you. A light pull on all four lines should make the kite to do a “jelly fish like swimming cycle” also in low wind. Now the price you will pay for this flex is an inability to do really rapid side slides (up/down,left/right, diagonals…) of any direction. What will then happen is that the kite will turn (in the way the LE is curved) instead of going on a straight line in the slide. No attempts to twist the handles to counteract the turning will help, especially if the wind pick up slightly (causing the LE to curve further). I here mean the type of a bit aggressive side slide where you really drive the kite hard along the LE.
I found the (inner) ferrules matching the Sky Shark P90 difficult to get hold of. If I remember right they should be 6.1mm in diameter for a good fit. It took quite a while before I had a reason to order other stuff from the kite shop that I finally found them in (in my case delaying the use of the P90 LE by a half of a year).
I have never broken any QLK/HWK spar (except for a LE when hitting a sharp edge while balancing the kite on a wing tip with one hand while taking a photo with the other hand…). For the low wind frame (based on the absence of a spar failure history), I went for the lightest possible down spar that I easily could get hold of. It is the flex of LE that is of interest – very little force and deformation is expected on the down spars in low wind. This is how I reason – other opinions?
> I use 90P or 100P in center and 2XP or 200 in the end of LE. To the speader i juse 2PX or P200.
This is not what I would have expected (though having done no/close to no testing myself): having the most flexible spar in the centre of the LE i.e., with the stiffer spars in the wing tip positions. Thinking of a bow as used in archery – it is stiffest in the centre. What would happen if one took two fishing rods and connected them together to form a LE? I would expect the way to do it is to connect the two stiffest sides together. It should be possible to save weight, while maintaining a certain stiffness/flexibility, by having the stiffest in the centre and the most flexible as the outermost spars? On the other hand it could be so that there are other factors dominating: the down spar could put more load on the outer LE spars than on the centre spar and besides it is more sail on the outer segments of the LE than in the centre??
http://www.skyburner.com/skyshark/p-series.html
http://www.skyburner.com/skyshark/px-series.html