Leaderboard

@Bigsnaff You should endeavor to advance your flying to the point where the kite is the limitation. At that point you start learning little differences in all the designs and can tailor your kites to fit your style AND your style to fit whatever you happen to be flying.

Both, for now you can work on the practice part. For me, the biggest help was to break it down. I could fly up, and slowly back down. Could I back down faster? Could I back down slowly with precision? That is reverse. I could fly up diagonally, and back down diagonally. Could I back down at a different speed, or more precisely? Again, that is reverse. I could do a dive stop and back up slightly to flip around. That little piece was reverse. If you can hold an inverted hover, that is reversed against gravity. Hold it steady as long as you can. When you are ready, slowly back up more. As slowly as necessary, work to increase the height of the inverted hover. That's all reverse. I could fly forward horizontal but reverse would flip, so I did it at an angle, about 30' or 60', backing up as triangles slowly. Go super slow at first. Practice those elements. Look at ways you are already reversing and do more of it. Do it slowly with more deliberate motion. Hold on as long as you can. Try to recover when it flips, then try again to hold and repeat. For tuning, as mentioned above, more brake helps. The default Rev leader lines have a lot of forward drive built in, but reverse is the opposite of forward drive. More brakes helps.

Unless the more recent ones have changed, the EXP rods are 'three wrap'. And the vertical rods *can* be used in the leading edge of the EXP. (If there is a spring it will of course have to be removed.). Also, you can mix and match with certain of the other 1.5 type Revolution kites, in my experience. BTW, there's some interesting history on Rev rods by John Mitchell here (see also his other stuff): http://johnnmitchell.com/IntSportKites/rev_history/rods.html Once you start swapping brands, I have not tried it -- but if the ferrules in the leading edge accept the 'foreign' rod I see no reason why not, assuming the rod length is similar. Have no experience with the 3Winds myself but if the leading edge length is the same and the fittings work (fit) then yes, you might be able to use the EXP LE in the UL to give you a higher wind option. Try measuring and report back! I have 2, 3 and 4 wrap rods I mix and match on my Revs according to whim and wind conditions, and plan to do so on my Freileins in due course. Of course you could also make up your own frames or partial frames with some Skyshark P-series or whatnot. I have played around with P90s and P200s this way in some rev style kites. Do a search on here for that perhaps if that is of interest. .