1. Have fresh bungee,or at least a spare chuck around. What you thought looked ok, can turn to dust while breaking the knots loose. 2. Hemostats (Fancy needle nose tools from the Dr office) saves your sanity when your bungee is so frayed and it won't go through that tiny washer. 3. Vinyl covers for the caps? I use them on my indoor, then started using them on my parking lot Revs. Mainly for reducing the cap to spar impact load. (I recently added a silcone puck inside the cap and spar end on the Indoor Rev).
Spar stress cracks and fabric slivers have gone away. 4. "Rods on the wrong side?" - Matter of perception, One side flies better than the other. I fly rods on the front once in a while in light air. I like to screw with my abilty to adjust to changing conditions. Flies different with the skin laying flat, tip to center. pressure centers shift Put the kite back to normal configuration, I get to appreciate the quaility of workmanship all over. Imagine, the Rev may have had the rods in front 25 years ago during R& D Dang, that's a great catch on the picture. Brings back memories of our first "family" trip to Long Beach in the spring of '98. (Oh yeah, the point to this reply: I tried the rods on the both sides) "There has to be something wrong with this kite" We're off to find the kids (5 and 9 yrs) some thing to play with "on" the beach. My daughter thought looking through the windows was close enough. Here we are jumping shop to shop, the're getting cranky and don't care about the beach anymore. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a demo tape playing of the Revolution was off in the back of the shop. What's this, some secret skunk works project back here? I watched, again and again. That set the hook. At that time, I was hip deep in racing catamarans and had no idea what the world of kites was. Next day, The shop was sending me back to the beach house with a Supersonic and the instruction tape. VHS tape: great idea if you had a VCR at the rental house. Looking back on it, why couldn't one person have been on the beach, (laughed first from having that same experience), then offered a hand. I flogged at it for three days. Rods in front, rods in back, it didn't matter. I couldn't watch the instructions (Guys like me don't use instructions until your looking for the return address, or the list for spare part numbers) I was being driven insane by a wing and string. A few months later, the insanity all changed when I happened to be at LB and WSIKF was full on. That person was there to lend a ear and a hand (Penny, Elizabeth, and Jeri)
Can't wait... Indoor fun and games tomorrow (at least Saturday)
Time for my fly the flag therapy session