Seasmik did make a LEI that fully sheeted out. I have one. But it was not a
sled it was basically a LEI single skin foil. It used a bridle to flatten the
kite and prevent it from forming an arc as a sled does. this is what
allowed it to fully depower. A 2 line or 4 line sled shape cannot achieve 100%
depower unless the front lines can move from the wing tips to a point closer to
the center. I experimented with this once with some
limited success a few years ago. I think it may have potential.

The biggest problem with the Seasmik design - from my experience was that there
was too little bar movement to go from no power to full power and too much bar
pressure when at full power. I had some ideas for
correcting this but did not want to spend the money to fool with it. I only
bought the Seasmik I have because I got a great deal on a closeout. It was the
biggesst they had at the time and not big enough for me. I
do like the kite on lwheels and snow though. It is great to be able to depower
totally and on the fly. You are right that a leash is unecesarry with this kite
Hung. You can sheet out and fully depower on front lines
only and/or you can stall it and back it to the ground, It is absolutely the
most fully controllable kite I have ever flown. the only other that comes close
is the Revolution.

Steve
Carson City, Nevada, USA


9/16/2003 4:41:25 PM, "hungvuatnetcomdotca" <hungvu2000@...> wrote:

>Stefano,
>
>Didn't Seasmik made some good size kite (11.5 m2 or so probably the
>same range as a 15 LEI)?
>
>With some simple integrated bridle system, we may be able to make a
>fully sheet out LEI...
>
>The other advantage of a fully sheet out kite is that if you can sheet
>out 100% then you don't need a safety leash as your front lines IS the
>safety leash (full time too).
>
>Hung.
>
>--- In kitesurf@yahoogroups.com, "Stefano Rosso" <stefano.rosso@a...>
>wrote:
>> === good point Hung Vu. When I was in Cabo Verde (Cape Verde) I tried
>> the ADVANCE kite which was similar to the SEASMIK which was similar to
>> some other French company as well.. It was a LEI kite with a half bridle
>> that could be sheeted out like a sail.. Basically you could sheet it out
>> 100%... Those kites never seemed to make it in the market because they
>> didn't scale well when you made them big. The biggest was a 6 m kite -
>> equivalent to a naish 9.0. Problem was you couldn't make them stiff
>> enough if you made them bigger...
>>
>> I tried the advance kite - it was the 5.0 and it was pretty windy and
>> gusty - ideal conditions for that kite... And it flew ok and could be
>> depowered almost fully (I don't think you want total depower or the kite
>> will fall).. But ... I didn't really like the style with which it
>> flew... If you werent real good at dealing with the depower (fine tuning
>> all the time) you tended to loose power very easily... Of course I only
>> flew it twice and any kite you need some time to get adjusted to but the
>> market didn't respond to these kites either... Maybe we will get back to
>> them in the future ?
>>
>> ====
>>
>>
>> I had this talk with a number of expert kite designers in the past (kite
>> designers with more than 15 years experiences, not 1 to 5 years
>> experience kite designers) and ask them why don't they give kite flyers
>> full control of the kite (i.e., be able to sheet out the kite 100% like
>> in sailing - for those who DON'T KNOW, this is when we can depower the
>> kite %100 - and those who want to depower the kite 300%, please talk to
>> Stefano ;-).
>>
>> The answers I got back that they don't trust kite flyers and afraid that
>> kite flyers would stall the kite and blame the designer for a bad
>> design.
>>
>> So this trend seems to be persistence until today (the young designers
>> probably don't even know why it is designed this way),
>> kiteflyers/kitesurfers can only control the kite to a certain point
>> because kite designers don't trust our ability to keep the kite in the
>> air.
>>
>> The kitesurfing/kitesnowboarding/kiteskiing company that can give 100%
>> control of the kite (or at least a larger percentage of it) may likely
>> create a new trend that may change our sport drastically.
>>
>> Hung.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
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>
>
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>
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