Assembly and disassembly by KiteForge

Transcript

1. ›

   Introduction

   0:00

   In this tutorial, I will take you through the basics of assembling and disassembling your quad line kite, as well as giving you a basic introduction to the anatomy of the kite so you can identify parts and the like.

2. ›

   Unrolling the kite in the wind

   0:22

   Of course, I've already taken the kite out of the sleeve. What I'm gonna do is unroll it, utilizing the wind direction to keep the sail nice and clean instead of trying to battle the kite up in front of me or having it flop around. Once more, holding it like a flag, I've unrolled it. What I have here is the two vertical rods, then I'm going to take the nearest wing and unfold it. And what I do is I place the still folded end on the ground, slightly upwind so the wind slices past it and it's not blowing it out behind me.

3. ›

   Joining the leading edge

   0:56

   Then I'll locate the space between the two ends of rod inside the leading edge of the kite. What I'll do here is feel this much like putting a tent together or something similar. I'll hold the end of the rod here. We will push it into the sleeve as if we were setting up at camp. Then what I'm doing is I'm feeling here to make sure that the two ends of rods make contact, and then one of them slips inside the other one. We call that a ferrule or a joint which connects two leading edge rods. And then when I've connected that or slipped it in, I want to make sure that it is fully seated inside the other rod. If it's not all the way inside, it doesn't get supported thoroughly enough and can sometimes crack or break the rod.

4. ›

   Wing tip end cap and vertical rod

   1:40

   Now that I've connected that leading edge ferrule, I reach up here to the bridle and the wing tip end cap. I pull that end cap up over the tip there, making sure that this bridle, the harness connection, is not unduly twisted around the cap or underneath the bungee, anything like that. Once I've done that, I will take one of my vertical rods, and I like to put the label end of the rod at the top as a matter of ritual when I put my kites together. Once more, the end of the rod, I will put that into the T fitting here at the leading edge rod. Then I reach down here to the bottom wing tip of the kite, same as we did on the other wing tip. We grab the bridle to make sure it's free. We pull the end cap over the bottom, and, this rod indeed is outside of the bungee cover.

5. ›

   The second wing

   2:33

   So now we have one wing assembled, what I will do now is roll the kite over so the other wing is now pointed up wind. You can see that the wind is actually pressing down on the kite slightly and keeping it in place for me. Now I repeat what I did on the other wing, managing the end rod right here, finding the gap between the two ends of rod and the ferrule, sliding the ferrule all the way in, making sure I have a proper connect. Take the wing tip end cap by the bridle, making sure again there's no twist. Any time the bridle gets wrapped around an end cap or underneath a bungee, it can actually change the length of that bridle, which does affect the tuning and performance of the kite. So now for my final wing, I'll take that vertical rod with the label end up into the T fitting here. And then I will slide that directly into the bottom wing tip cap right there. And we have a fully assembled quad line kite.

6. ›

   Anatomy: rods and ferrules

   3:28

   Once more, what we just went through was the leading edge — I tend to call this the V point, or the belly. We have the vertical rods or the upright rods. Every kite of this design has five rods: a center rod and outer rods. Now the ferrule, or the joint that's glued into those rods — on the Djuice, the ferrules are actually glued on the outside wing tips, so if you break one of these, you'll need to glue a ferrule in there. On the Djinn and a lot of other quad line kites, those ferrules are on the center rod, because they tend to break the least. With crashes in the long run, most likely if you have a critical crash impact, you will break something in the leading edge. If you're flying the kite above its wind range and it exceeds its ability to hold that pressure, then in most cases a vertical rod will break mid-air.

7. ›

   Anatomy: bridle, wear strips and wing tips

   4:22

   For the other anatomy of the kite, of course we have the bridle: this is our harness, the top point connection is usually up around here, the bottom point connection there. I generally refer to the top of the bridle as the upper deck or the top deck, and the lower as the bottom deck. One of the other things to be aware of is our wear strips — the strip that goes behind the vertical rod — and leading edge mesh or ventilation, which is just an aerodynamic design feature. And then of course, we have all of the wing tips. So that is the basic introduction to assembling a quad line kite.

8. ›

   Taking off the first wing

   5:07

   Let's look at putting it away. To disassemble the kite, we're going to reverse some of what we did earlier. What I will do is go ahead and put one wing tip down in front of me on the upwind side — that helps me keep it in control on the ground. I will disconnect one of the wing tips, exposing the end rod a little bit, then push this T fitting slightly away from the wing tip. Then I can reach down and grab the center rod inside the leading edge, and pull it out, making sure I have at least a gap here between the two ends of rods, then fold that over.

9. ›

   Separating the second wing and folding

   5:47

   We'll set that down, take the other wing tip, once more controlling the end of this rod, pushing that T fitting in slightly, holding the center rod and separating those two spars, again making sure I have a sufficient gap between the two ends of rod inside the leading edge. The main reason is that when you fold it, if you don't have a big enough gap there, it can put undue pressure and torque on that leading edge material and actually punch through or shorten the life of that area. So now that we have the kite folded, I generally refer to this as a bi-fold — if I'm only putting away a kite for a short period of time or putting it in the car, this is a pretty good way to roll. I usually have one set up like this in my car throughout the year.

10. ›

    Rolling it and putting it in the sleeve

    6:34

    But let's assume we are going to roll it up: I take the vertical rod and pull it right out of that T fitting, then apply a little twist and wiggle so it drops out of the bottom tip, then repeat the same with the other spar, taking that out of the T fitting with a little shake. Then we take these two rods and roll them in so that the exposed bridle and all of this extra stuff gets rolled inside the kite. The key for me is that when I roll it, I don't want to roll it too tight, because it just compresses everything and increases the long-term wear on the sail. So we use a moderately loose roll, smoothing these out so we don't end up with an unnecessary amount of stress or wrinkles in the kite, rolling all the way up to those bottom points. For the sleeve, I like to insert and rotate in the direction of the roll so it goes in nice and smooth. That is the basic disassembly of a quad line kite. I will cover maintenance and upkeep in another tutorial.

11. ›

    Ground assembly, fast

    8:23

    For the final part I'm going to show you how we handle it laying flat on the ground. I'm not a big fan of bending over and extra work, so that's why I showed you the main method, but I'll also give you a quick clip of how we do it laying flat on the ground. Until next time, have fun. Be smart.

12. Natural movement, fast9:15