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I have been planning remaking the sail for the Revolution 1.5 SUL (Super Ultra Lightweight) for some time now as its getting rather old & saggy. So I purchased some Ventex polyester fabric in order to get on & do this - with a nice blue, green, white and orange design in mind. However there was no Ventex in white and I didn't want to pay for icarex (approx. twice the price), and I ordered a very fluorescent orange which would look awful next to the blue and green! So I changed it so it was just green and blue.
Cutting and Stitching the Sail
Cutting and Stitching the Sail
Once I had cut the pieces and stitched together (using simple flat seams & glue as usual) I noticed that on one of the panel's I hadn't added the double seam allowance - needed to accommodate the leading edge. The difference was about 1cm - enough to be noticeable.
So what to do?
First thought was to trim down the rest of the leading edge to make it the same. This I didn't like as I felt a) it would be difficult to do (the leading edge is 250 cm & my table is much less), & b) would take some of the surface of the sail (but admittedly not much!). Second thought was to sew a small panel to make up the shortfall. This seemed the better (if messy) solution.
So I cut a piece of Ventex to fit - leaving a 1cm overlap with the surrounding 3 panels, & a couple of cm extra on the leading edge side (see left)- so I could trim it afterwards. Stitching this was difficult, given it was quite small, but once in place it looked good (see right).
I hoped that once I had stitched the leading edge gauze & done the double fold the extra panelette I added would be more or less invisible. Which it was. I like it when a plan comes together!
The rest of the sail construction was fine - I had found some dark blue Dacron for the leading edge itself - a bit narrow - but fine for the SUL spars (so no sticking in the thicker SLE spars then).
The Spars
The Spars
The spar fittings were made (as usual) from white PVC tubing from B&Q (a UK Diy / hardware shop) with an internal diameter of about 8mm - that 'about' is important as the external diameter of the SUL spars is also 'about' 8mm. And those two 'abouts' are not the same! I checked the fitting of all the end caps with one of the SUL spars & they all fitted perfectly-so I attached all the end caps to the sail, fitted the spars in and.....
....all but one spar didn't fit! and the spar that did fit was the one I had used to test. I wasn't impressed! So I had to take off all the end caps and carefully drilled out some plastic to make them fit.
Conclusion
Conclusion
The important question is this: How does it fly?
The short answer is 'fine' - not brilliant but not bad. As this was the first time I had used Ventex (which I found harder to work with than standard ripstop nylon) I ended up making some errors with the tension of the sewing thread which resulted in quite a baggy kite (although this could be in part due to the asymmetrical sail panel layout I had chosen). This manifest itself by having a trailing edge that can flap a little and a loss of performance in reverse flying. In comparison I also feel that the near zero wind flying isn't as good as the official sail. But it's adequate for my needs at the moment - I do intend to revisit and improve the SUL at some point but in the meantime this is fine.
Links
Links
- Revolution 1.5 SUL (Custom)
- Revolution Gallery
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