Lines Knots

Australian Kitesurf Academy Huntington Beach guide to Lines and Knots

You need a good 4 line control bar to fly safely

Getting a Knot Out of Your Flying Line
If you have a knot in your line, an old rock climbing tip to take knots out of webbing was to whack the knot up against a rock, or tree, to get it to loosen a bit. You can use this on an old line with a knot in it by lightly tapping the knot with a hammer. The knot will eventually come out, but there may be damage to the line. You can use soap and water to help the situation. That damage may, or may not, have been caused by the hammer. There's a question as to whether the line will be further weakened by trying to take out a knot that is extremely macked under load. Its probably better to just leave it and not damage the line fibers. Otherwise, get a new line set.

If the knot is near the end (and it usually is), just cut the lines even to remove the knot and kitesurf with 26m lines instead of 30s. If a line breaks in 30 degree weather with 33 degree water, you're screwed. Spend the money and keep your lines healthy!

How to tie Q-line and a Larks-head
1) Fold the line about 8-10ý. You want room to make some knots with the line and have enoug

h left over to be able to comfortably loop it over your leader knots on the kite.

2) Take the double-line and tie and overhand knot in the double-line with an overhand knot as a back-up on the single left over line. You want about a half inch to an inch of left over line.

3) To loop the larks head over another knotted leader line, spread and fold over the end loop of the big loop in the line you just made.

4) There should be two loops now, so just fold these back together to make one double-loop at the end of the line that you can adjust larger or smaller. This is the loop you feed the leader line knot through thats on the kite

The knot will hold under tension. The more tension, the more grip the larks head will produce.

Do You Need Longer Lines?
The downside to longer lines is less height on jumps, slow kite movement, more spaghetti potential in tangles and if its light so you need longer lines there may be no way to relaunch your kite if you drop it in the drink. The longer the lines, the more drag they create in the wind which keeps the kite further from the edge. This is a problem both in light and stronger winds. Longer lines also create extra weight, which could be a problem in light wind, making the kite drop more easily in lulls. On the other hand, you have the kite higher in the air due to longer lines, so you have a longer falling height to possibly "rescue" the kite if it drops from the air. Both of these problems would show as slack in the lines, so as long as your lines are tight, there shouldn't be too much of a problem. The long lines do make the kite sit back further in the window, however this may actually be an advantage in certain circumstances...more steady pull. Long lines tend to be slacker, as well, due to drag and weight (the lines bend in the air) and from experience this makes kite steering slower (more of a delay from input to output).

The advantage to longer lines is the kite sits higher so you theoretically capture higher winds further above the ground. You also get a much longer powerstroke when you're initially getting going.

Does Moving My Rear Line Attachments Forward Affect My Kite's Depower Performance?
The answer is yes. You get greater depower with the same amount of bar movement. Depowering ability is controlled by two factors.

The most important factor is the front line attachment position relative to the trailing edge. The further forward this position
the more you your kite will depower when the rear lines are completely slack without stalling the kite.

The second factor is your line setup. To actually acheive the full maximum depower that your front line attachment positions facilitate you have to be able to completely slacken the rear lines. If you have a free-bar or an adjuster strap that will allow slack rear lines then you are only limited by your arms reach. If you can comfortably sheet out far enough to make your rear lines slack then you have acheived full depower and changing the rear line attachement points will not give you any more depowering.

If, however, you have a adjuster strap which limits sheeting out such that you can not make the rear lines completely slack - or you have a shorter reach which makes it uncomfortable to acheive this, then moving the rear line attachments forward may help. What it does is create a shorter lever arm and so less linear movement of the bar is required to acheive the same angular rotation on the kite (the kite depowers by pivoting around the front line attachement points). See the figure below for a graphical illustration of the kite's AOA change with respect to the same bar movement.

There are trade offs to shortening a lever arm. Most noticable is that it then requires more force to hold the kite at a particular (non-depowered) trim and so you will feel more rear line tension while riding (some riders prefer this as it gives more feedback and it can allow your kite to respond to gusts more readily). The other trade off is that if the rear line attachemnt points are moved forward enough then it may make it impossible to stall the kite down for landing and/or difficult to slow it fast enough if it starts to shoot through the power zone when launching.