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Breaking Spars, Very Common?


Phil in Ottawa
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Hi all,

I've had my first dual-line kite (Skydog Freebird) out maybe 6-8 times now and already I've broken three lower spreader spars.

Is this normal? Am I just very unlucky? Is it the kite, the location (hard ground vs soft beach sand), the wind conditions I'm flying in, the inexperienced operator?

I'm asking because at this rate, this kite flying thing is going to be a very expensive hobby. I've already spent more on replacement carbon fiber tubes than I did on the entire kite. The reason for that is that I did not know what to purchase so I contacted Skydog and I got a nice reply from Phil Broder. So I decided to purchase from him since he was very helpful. But he's in the US and I'm in Canada so there was the whole exchange thing (which right now is not very good for us Canucks). But that was expected and would have been fine with me. That was until I found out I also had to pay import duties on the tubes. Who knew? That almost doubled the price of the tubes! Yikes! Lesson learned I guess. From now on, buy the carbon tubes from a Canadian supplier. But even then, carbon tubes are not cheap if you break two in one session like I did today.

Also, in your opinion, are some carbon fiber tubes better and/or stronger than others? Is there a type or brand you would recommend?

Anyway, I'd love to hear your stories about breaking spars and whether or not I can expect to keep replacing them on a regular basis for the foreseeable future or not.

Thanks,

Phil

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A few years ago I was going through some tubes at an alarming pace. I believe it was the second flight with a new kite that I was trying some ground maneuvers & broke the upper leading edge at the ferrule. I was at the beach, near a kite shop, but the pultruded carbon tubes I needed for a repair were quite long. The kite shop did not have any long enough to get me back in the air. I did not have enough experience to know how to make due with shorter ones at that time. The shop was busy with shoppers & handed my kite back with the bridle unattached which caused more issues for me later. I then bought a pricey kite which was a much better one anyway. Eventually I bought an identical kite to get proper parts for the first one but then never flew either of them much after that. When you get better kites you tend to not fly the lesser ones. Later, at home in the mountains with the second kite, I broke a lower spreader in gusty winds, CRACK! Did that to several kites & broke a leading edge on a Rev I too. I had spent quite a bit on parts & shipping. A few months later, on my third or fourth order, I ordered numerous spares for most the kites I owned at that time. That did the trick. I stopped breaking them. Now I break one rarely. But if I don't I figure I'm not trying hard enough. Oh, your question, it is hard to go wrong with Sky Shark tubes. SHBKF

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The kite you have is good; I would be proud to own one. The tubes that come with commercially available kites are what the design itself calls for, and should last until worn out through abrasion, which with good maintenance and minimal abuse should be half a lifetime. The only time I broke a tube on a dual line (left lower spreader on a Prism Zephyr) was caused by spanking too hard while attempting to learn a maneuver. Didn't even contact the ground! Popped that puppy in mid air and had to run toward the kite to prevent the death spiral from breaking more tubes when it hit the ground. Put a nice hole right through the sail.

I would venture to say that with that many broken rods, you might be prone to using too much force in your control inputs, and at the wrong time during the maneuver. Too much power + bad timing is never good. What SHBKF said at the end there is that once you become more experienced, the amount of damage you cause will decrease dramatically. Remember that there is no such thing as a kite you can't break. If they were built like a brick sh*thouse, you couldn't get them off the ground! You could use stronger tubes, but that will increase the vulnerability of the other tubes, the sail itself and the hardware that holds it all together. It may also affect the performance of the kite overall. Anything you change will change performance on any kite. Playing with these variables, however, is half the fun, and definitely a learning experience.

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When I started flying, the kite shop local to me sold only New Tech kites. When I broke a part, I went into the shop and ordered the replacement part, and bought a new kite to fly while the parts came in. I ended up with 5 or 6 New Tech kites, all Dodd Gross designs. Not that there's anything wrong with his designs, I think they just weren't built to the same standards as others. Maybe I was just too hard on the kites & expected too much from them...
I also had a bunch of older kites that I bought second hand. Kites that would've cost $300 or more in the 90's, but I bought them for pennies on the dollar. Those rarely broke, though. Maybe because they flew slower, but probably because they were built with what was considered space age materials at the time. Yes, they were heavy due to being overbuilt, and required a lot of wind.
So... fix the kite you've got, and save it for those gentle good wind days. Find something on the second-hand market that's big, slow and tough and fly it on those gusty, abusive days. That worked for me, the big, old kites are noisy & fun. But certainly, avoid downtime, add some more kites to the bag !

The whole breakage issue does get better, but never fully goes away. Like Ralph said, if you order plenty of replacement parts, chances are, you won't need them. The shipping for 1 stick is usually the same as the shipping for 5 sticks. Also, find a supplier based in Canada, avoid those nasty import taxes !

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Thanks for the replies everyone.

As I thought, breakage appears to come with the territory. So I'll have to get used to it for now and hopefully become a better flyer fast to minimize how much I have to spend on replacement parts.

I did order multiple sticks (5 of them) so I have a few left. If I'm careful and try to fly in relatively lighter wind conditions, I might be able to make those last for a while.

And when I do need more tubes, I'll see if I can find Sky Shark for sale in Canada.

I might also start scanning the used articles for sale sites for kites to see if I can pick up one or two for cheap.

Thanks for the advice and encouragement.

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Great shop, but unfortunately probably won't be of much help to the OP. It is in Vancouver, WA, USA, not Canada. There's got to be kite shops with replacement parts in Canada though. Hopefully you find one should you need it.

Out of curiosity, I looked up the Skydog Freebird and happened to see specs at the first link I clicked. It says, 6mm carbon, which I believe usually means pultruded tubes. SkyShark are wrapped carbon tubes - excellent tubes, but often more expensive and may not be "right" in your case. I think it's a good idea to replace with the same sticks as the original, unless you are intentionally experimenting for a reason. Weight, stiffness, etc. can all matter in a kite.

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There are two Rev shops out of Alberta. I've got spars from The Kite Guy in AIrdrie - good to deal with.

http://www.kiteguys.ca/

There is also a shop out of Lethbrige. http://www.canadiankitecompany.com/

Both are on the net if you search. Alberta has no PST either.

These shops sell other kites and supplies as well - not Rev exclusive.

Kelly

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Great shop, but unfortunately probably won't be of much help to the OP. It is in Vancouver, WA, USA, not Canada. There's got to be kite shops with replacement parts in Canada though. Hopefully you find one should you need it.

Out of curiosity, I looked up the Skydog Freebird and happened to see specs at the first link I clicked. It says, 6mm carbon, which I believe usually means pultruded tubes. SkyShark are wrapped carbon tubes - excellent tubes, but often more expensive and may not be "right" in your case. I think it's a good idea to replace with the same sticks as the original, unless you are intentionally experimenting for a reason. Weight, stiffness, etc. can all matter in a kite.

Thanks for the advice about the SkyShark tubes. The ones I bought are pultruded tubes so they match the original ones that came with the Freebird.

There are two Rev shops out of Alberta. I've got spars from The Kite Guy in AIrdrie - good to deal with.

http://www.kiteguys.ca/

There is also a shop out of Lethbrige. http://www.canadiankitecompany.com/

Both are on the net if you search. Alberta has no PST either.

These shops sell other kites and supplies as well - not Rev exclusive.

Kelly

Thanks for the links. I purchased a line set from the second one you mention, Great Canadian Kite Company. I've been in touch with them about the carbon tubes and they do carry them. So I'll probably be purchasing from them in the future.

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breaking a spar should be viewed like falling when downhill skiing,... you're not pushing yourself hard enough to the edge if you never fail.

I still break sticks, (started Revs in '93, hooked bad since '96), 3 or 4 spars every year, I'm kind of proud of those accomplishments. Usually by throwing it into some "suddenly too close" object leading edge first.

the other day I broke a Diamond travel frame stick in flight on the Zen, but I was violently flipping that big ole sail inside out too (flick-flak) and suddenly a sonic boom fell upon us <LOL!> I had five replacement sticks with me, but each one has a ferrel and I needed the one w/o,.. naturally!

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  • 9 months later...

I remember in about 1998 about the time I started out, that I broke some lower spreaders around the centre-T. The spreaders were all standard 6mm pultruded carbon fibre tubes. The two kites I had (HQ Jam Session and Maestrale) lacked the inner reinforcement plugs by design. So when practicing/testing really hard snap stalls, both the type where the two left/right pulls come really close and the type where they are spaced almost a second (which can make a cracking sound with a wet sail b.t.w.), one lower spreader snapped. That is what I call a snap stall (no, not really). Well, after I got the advice to glue a 5cm long 4mm carbon tube inside the lower spreader closest to the centre-T. I never had the problem again. Another related observation: all kites with pultruded carbon fibre lower spreaders I bought during this millennium have had a lower spreader centre-T inner reinforcement, even the two new retro kites, HQ Tramontana and Obsession, whose corresponding original versions were from the nineties. 

Recommendation: if the reinforcement isn't there for some reason (when replacing a spar e.g.) add it!

On 9/15/2015 at 1:22 AM, makatakam said:

I would venture to say that with that many broken rods, you might be prone to using too much force in your control inputs, and at the wrong time during the maneuver. Too much power + bad timing is never good.

What if you sometimes want to give the flight a rapid flickering stroboscopic appearance in non-low wind conditions (kite spanking some would call it), e.g. to make a sequence from components like rapidly skywriting a small square as possible, heavy snap stall, an aggressive landing where the kite bonces...? OK, I might achieve somewhat similar result with less input, but then the feeling differs. Another reason for being heavier on the lines is that it is one way to see what you can provoke the kite into. But OK, I agree normally you fly ... normal, but my opinion is that you sometimes can vary it with a more "heavy stroboscopic" flight.

However, habits from kite spanking can have its drawbacks, for about a year ago I broke two lower leading edges on my brand new (yes really) Prism Illusion  when doing what felt like not too rough landings on one of it's wingtips. Yes I know this is a major offense and that I'll probably never will never forgiven in this forum :-) , but I got my punishment, now I only got one spare lower leading edge left. This spare part is a non standard part and the kite is discontinued...

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