bake

I just bought a Blast yesterday and although on both my SLE and EXP have the rods on top of the sail, it looked in the pictures on Revs site that maybe the rods should go on the bottom of this model... it seemed to fly ok with the rods on top but looks like it will have more of an airfoil shape if they are placed on bottom. Unable to watch the cd that came with the kite as I am on the road with just a net book.

My SLE has a flutter that starts at the shallowest portion of the V (closest to the leading edge) in the trailing edge at speed, from there the faster I fly it the more the flutter moves down the panel to the bottom of the V. This only happens on the left wing.

So far I have tried tightening up the bungees but the flutter persists, next may be to run a small line in the trailing edge to try and stop it (this used to work on hang gliders) Perhaps this is from being my first Rev and hitting the ground too many times stretching the sail?

How do you judge proper tension on the bungees? I see them as the only way to tune the sail?

Today I am a little bitter, my son had been flying my SLE so I thought it would be best to buy him a EXP to learn on. Because he has been with me so much flying my kite I let him set his up for the first time.

Right out of the bag the lines were not the same length, nothing I couldn't deal with in the field so I got them close. The kite flew poorly so I looked it over closer and one flying line on the bridle was tied to it's brake line. Weird.... but I fixed that too.

Now he had it flying in a pretty good wind but not over the kites limits and a outbord leading edge spar snapped.... I looked it over and swapped out with a top spar, 2 minutes later it snapped.

So I take out the leading edge spars and notice a ferrel was not glued in properly from the factory and had slipped inboard in.... leaving only 1/4" for the outboard rod to grip. No wonder they were breaking. Don't these things go through quality control? Now I have to buy 2 rods to get him flying and I am not convinced the bridle is done right. What a dissapointing experience.