kwmf

I'm sure my girlfriend will be okay with waiting a little longer before being awarded her kite

My girlfriend needs a Zen to go with mine and purple is the one she would choose ....

For street flying I have gone down to 5 feet .... but that's very much a specialist type of flying and length. In terms of flying on wind power along I don't think I've gone shorter than 20 feet.

Well that depends on your definition of light .... I can certainly fly in lower wind than I used to, I can gain height and glide away for field recovery. My Zen make it easier for me than my 1.5 B series with race rods. I fly okay indoors, but thats very controlled and my street needs plenty work. I'm better than I used to be, but no expert

I think most Rev people just use the Rev forum

That pretty much sums it up ... My own personal choice was to aquire race rod for my 1.5s and the Zen (with race rods and a 2 wrap center to do an iQuad style frame) to make my life more enjoyable as I develop these skills. I also got myself an indoor Rev which I fly solely indoors which is helping to develop my no wind and street skills as well. Was all this needed .... absolutely not. I did it because it would make my life easier and therefore more enjoyable as I develop these skills over time. I'd rather be in the air flying than running and grumpy.

I weighed my stuff some time back and this is how it breaks down ... Indoor Rev - full sail and all 5 (race) rods 153g 1.5 B-series - full sail and complete race rod frame 170g 1.5 SLE - full sail and race rod frame 195g Zen - stock zen and frame 249g Rev 1.5 Spars Race Rods - 13g 2 wrap - 16g 3 wrap - 20g 4 wrap - 23g SLE 3 wrap - 32g Rev 1 Spars Zen - 19g Race Rods - 15g Standard ferrule 5g Now I didn't weigh every spar and every B series against each other to determine what variance there may be, but that's what I got when I did the exercise. I also didn't bother to weigh the vented since the wind required for the vented makes weight an irrelevant question.

The mid-vent is the only 1.5 configuration I don't own and the colors are perfect for my girlfriend as well. I trust everyone will do the honorable thing and drop out so that they can complete the transformation of TWO candidates to the dark side.

Hands down the single most useful thread on leaders after you accept the "tops longer" statement. My new (third) set of leaders will give me a differential range of 4.5 to 8.5 inches in 0.5 inch increments. My previous 2 attempts will only give me 0.75 and 1 inch resolution with me having to be 1 or 2 knots out from maximum to get near a 6+ inch differential. I untied 1 knot on the one set and will likely tie the bottoms closer to bring it more in line with what it should be. The other set is so bad its now my sissy leaders for teaching new people if they can't handle tops out - there's nothing I can do to make them long enough and have adjustments

For me, it feel a lot better with my bottom 3 fingers on the foam - but I have smaller hands and non kite related training that has the grip focus there. My index finger is is the 'non active' finger instead of the little finger. This is with standard B series handles with the foam as they come from the factory.

Hi there I've generally found the numbers useless or confusing other than "my leaders are so long" and "tops longer than bottoms" so I've tried to cross reference that with what I see in videos and pictures since I've had no read reference as to what the 'normal' differential is. I must add that the 6 inch differential was on new leaders on my full vent. I'm guessing I should be able to go a bit further on a full sail. My top leaders in this case are about 9 1/4 inches from the last knot to the handle clip and the bottom is only 1 1/8 inch. I understand the tuning theory but had no markers or points of reference to assess where I was. Its well and good explaining the theory, but without markers I've just been guessing ... And without anyone with a good setup for a reference, I'm in the dark. I like your flight characteristic reference as well, I'm going to give that a go next time out. I have found that I fly better with the bottom 3 fingers forming the grip and the index finger loose as opposed to the other way around. This may be in part due to the fact that I have smaller hands than average so for my thumb to rest where I want it my hand goes higher. It could also likely be due to other training I have in a completely different area that has the bulk of the grip and grip strength on those fingers. Whatever the case, I feel I fly much better that way and technically I can still apply the 3 finger differential pressure technique. Steven

So if my top lines are about 5 7/8" further out than my brakes, that would sound about right? If I go any further out then flying becomes tough ... just wondering where I fit in with regards to the 'norm'

Surely the selfless, honerable, gentlemanly thing to do would be to let me have it so that my girlfriend and I can fly at the same time instead of having to take turns on my one ;-)