Why don't he have small slots running along the kite, perpendicular the the wind flow?
These would help to prevent the wind separating from the back of the kite, allowing us to pull the bar in more without worrying about back stalling, and when it did back stall it would be a more gradual change.







Thoughts??

Ocean Rodeo and Flysurfer do them but I think the consensus is,my heyre not worth the effort.

Any specific kites? I want to check them out.

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flyingcab said..
Any specific kites? I want to check them out.

Um, Speed series from FSer, pre-2014 Flite and Razor from OR. I'm selling a 17.5m Flite that has the "flaps" and the forward swept wing tip... although I might keep it :D

yeah or stopped doing it on there razors now. basicly it was a little mesh flap with a bita cloth covering it so it could open and close when required.

long and short answer flycab is patents.

i know theres a paragliding company that has inflatable little sticky outy bits on there wingtips to i think disipate the vortices.... not 100% on that havent seen any of them in kiteing ...unless thats what those naish mesh windows do on the wingtips...

^^im pretty sure the mesh on naish kites is just to let water out for easier relaunch.

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noodelsrominov said..
^^im pretty sure the mesh on naish kites is just to let water out for easier relaunch.

ahhhhhhh genius! thanks

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noodelsrominov said..
^^im pretty sure the mesh on naish kites is just to let water out for easier relaunch.

Yes. "Anti-stiction" zone or something they're called.

kozzie -- yes, I've seen that wing tip thing here on PPGs.

re. Patents -- if it were the dog's plums, theyd just pay the licnesing fee; that were not seeing them everywhere suggests otherwise. OR dropped the slots because "new kite design" made them unnecessary....

BTW the LE slots and TE flaps in the pictures up there perform two different tasks. The Boost and Chronic from FS again have a simple flaps system which intrigues me too...

Can't see how that could be patented.
Aircraft have been using the system for years for take off and landing.

The real reason for not much interest is that they are designed to increase lift at the expense of efficiency.
And kites are all about making the most use of limited resource.

I suspect that the speeds we go would not yield any noticable benefit to LE slots.

Also kites performance are very weight dependant. More so that planes. So a slight weight increase will yield a potentially significant reduction in performance. Adding le slots will increase weight and reduce performance. The net result may be any performance increase is offset by a performance decrease induced by increased weight.

I think in many respects "keep it simple, stupid" works for kite designs.

But hey what do i know? I'm no aerodynmics expert.

Kites turn by stalling one tip. So faster turning means more stalling.
so using slats, slots, flaps etc. to increase AoA and lower stalling speed costs in turning speed and reactivity of a kite.

I'm pretty sure the slits that were used on OR kites were to exhaust air during a gust, in order to increase the upper wind range.

The OR slots (and I'm pretty sure the FS Jet Flaps) only come into play at high AoA, to suck air over the canopy and prevent it from going turbulent as long as possible... they don't cost anything until the limits.

I just found this from 2008 - Flysurfer 3d explanation of Jet Flaps " Creating a kite with less backstall, more lift and better stability throughout the wind range "

It seems to be more possible with foil kites as they already have the double skinned structure with the interconnecting webs and so on - so it would be easier to manipulate the structure to take advantage of this.