Some kites are quite sensitive brake line adjustment which causes problems:

If the brake lines are too short (or attached close to the handles)  the following may occur:

· When the handles are staked down and the kite is unfurled at the end of the lines it may not sit up very well against the wind which then gets under the trailing edge and the kite flaps around. Sometimes it will rise up flapping around and usually pulls the stake out of the ground and you have a tangle to sort out !!

        A 3.3 Blade set up and ready to fly !!
   

· The kite is slow to rise up or won’t rise up or tends to assume a low angle in the air.

· When reversing to land the kite tends to fold up.

If the brake lines are too long (or attached a distance from the handles) the following may occur:

· The kite won’t sit on the ground at all and tries to self  launch.

· It flies up well but does not respond to brake line commands.

· It’s virtually impossible to reverse and land.

Careful adjustment of the brake lines can solve many of these problems.

Generally I set my kites up to sit up on the ground nicely without self launching and enough brake to comfortably reverse and turn.  I’ve often seen that in light wind conditions you can apply a bit more brake so that the trailing edge acts like the flaps on a plane and generates a little more lift (pull). There are differences between different kites, for example, I have found that rectangular kites with the brake lines attached directly to the trailing edge can execute easy “flat turns”  -ie: with the kite flying horizontally across the wind window apply BOTH brakes together, stop the kite, use one brake to flip the kite right over then release to power across in the other direction. The Modulus is superb for this. Skytigers with trailing edge extensions / flaps are reluctant to do this unless huge amounts of brake are applied (you usually do not have enough brake to do this).

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