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Tube or Strip???


lomcevoc

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I'd like to order a second line set for my Rev and at the same time I would like to order a Tail for it as well (just for fun).

Can someone comment what a good length of Tail is and to use a Tube or Strip material. I've read through the posts and seen many mentions of making your own but I've seen some already made up that I would consider versus making one. Most of what I've read, 1" wide is the common size but the tubes I see for sale are usually 3" so I'm a little confused on this subject. It's going to be used on my 1.5 B and mabe even use it on my Prism Delta and possibly my Power Kite.

Thanks

Lom

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I definitely prefer 25mm(1in) wide strips. The best material is spinnaker polyester such as Icarex. Unfortunately it is difficult to acquire. I made my own. Take a look at this photo with 6 tails.

http://johnnmitchell.com/Photography/3-2003/Cervia2003/Day9/sm_20030504-040.JPG

The length of these were around 13-15 meters(roughly 45feet).

Tube tails place too much drag on a REV.

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Hot cut, you could call a melting cut in where the threads of the material are melted. I use a wedge sharpened soldering iron tip.

There are special soldering irons that use an X-acto type blade. I really don't know if this will give you a good hot cut or something closer to a cold cut.

A cold cut is performed with a sharp blade. This leaves the threads frazzley thus causing the tails sides slowly to separate which also cause tails to hang with each other or itself.

Now, ideal might be a laser cut. But who has a laser cutter available to them.

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So do you all reccomend cuttting the available purcahsed 2" wide down to 1" and if so would one assume that if you did cut it down do you cut it wide enough to allow for a folded over hemm seam on each side that should be sewn? (to prevent fraying after the width is narrowed down)

What type of thread is used to sew the different lengths of colors together, say if your making your own 50-100' tails in several different colors?

Thanks

Lom

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The tails I have are 1 inch x 40 feet long. They don't have a folded edge. They have been hot cut. The very end tip is a folded and sown edge though. They have a little pigtail that I put around the down spa or to the other pigtails I have off my endcaps for stacking. Red to match my red and grey B's. Blue and yellow for my EXP 2-Stack.

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I think 2 inch wide flat tails would be fine for a Rev if that's the width of the material you can get easily. Personally, I think 1 inch tails are a bit narrow on a Rev, but that could also be influenced by the length of the tail(s). From my limited understanding, if you hot cut, you don't have to hem, and vice versa. If someone with more experience making tails or building kites says something different, I would defer to them.

Since you mentioned just buying a ready-made tail...off the top of my head, Gomberg Kites has lots of tails (scroll down toward the middle for the transition tails and the bottom for the ribbon tails). Here's a video of iQuad flying with 48' Transition Tails by Gomberg Kites. Too bad I can't find in the specs how wide they are. Some kite shops carry Gomberg tails, so you might even be able to order lines and tail(s) together.

Kite tails are not rocket science. Lots of things work. For example, I bought two 25 yard rolls of 1.5" wide organza ribbon and attached a loop on one end of each to make tails. Now, I would not recommend this as I have since found that because organza is very sheer, it doesn't "trace" the path of the kite as well. They work, but are not as satisfying for skywriting. They would be fine on a static kite.

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