Revolution Problems

Spars

As always anything with breakable spars can, er, break. On the Revolution EXP I have so far only damaged the spar ends by not properly assembling the leading edge (i.e. not ensuring that the outer 2 spars are fully pushed over the central spars). Having said this, these spars are still going - a bit rough around the end, but I simply exchanged them with the vertical spars & all has been well.

On the Revolution 1.5SUL I snapped a vertical spar by flying it in a too strong and gusty wind.

Don't ever, ever, stand on a spar - that's the easiest way to break it!

All of these incidents were my fault!

Sail Vent Fabric

About 6 weeks after getting the Revolution EXP I noticed that there was a large tear in that mesh fabric near the leading edge. Upon investigation I found that the entire mesh was damaged - the actual threads were cut and it was just the plastic-like coating that was holding it together.

A trip to Dave at Five Forty in Sheffield was called for - we decided that the problem was possibly due to dodgy mesh in the first place coupled with a lot of strain whilst flying in stronger winds (since normally there isn't any reinforcement between the actual sail and the leading edge in the centre of the kite). Dave repaired the kite as shown in the picture - he replaced the mesh, but also put additional reinforcement in to take some of the stress out of the mesh fabric.

The Revolution EXP was flown for a year without any further problems with the mesh, and the Custom Revolution 1.5 SLE has been flown for 18 months (at time of writing - August 2004) without any sign of this problem. Interestingly the mesh did the same thing on the Revolution 1.5 SUL - so definitely a problem with the mesh fabric on the Revolutions.