Staceyk2

New to the forum and have been sport kiting a couple of years now. Hooked of course. I am finding I need some expert advice, which is how I stumbled across your forum. What a fun and passionate group! Yesterday I saw an ad in Craigslist for a 3 stack of Trlby kites new in an unopened package. Great price. I made the assumption (wrong) that they would be made of ripstop nylon and produced within at least the last 10 yrs. (wrong again). The older man was so sweet and he was so happy that someone wanted to buy the kite that he found cleaning out his Dad's house. I didn't have the heart to not take it because it was not what I expected. Well, I got it home and opened it up. Turns out it is from the early 80's. At that point I started to get excited and had a great time putting it together. We retaped the sails and needed to temporarily tape on the tails. Anything with adhesive was shot and even the rubber bands that hold the different components together in packaginf practically disintegrated upon contact. There were great winds tonight, so of course I had to see if it could still fly. SO FUN! I only flew it for about 5 min. because now that I know it has potential to actually still work, I needed to get some expert advice before I completely wrecked it. #1 Will polyethylene material hold up? What do you think the max wind speed is? #2 Does unused line deteriorate? Is there a reason it has handles with a lot of line, or do the more modern ones have the straps and a set amount of line? #3 Any other suggestions to keep it flying? Thanks!!!!! Stacey