How To Use A Kite Harness

Hello, I'm Thomas from the Kitesurf Centre. Today, I'm just going to show you a couple of tips on how to fly a kite and how to get into these brilliant sports of kite flying. I'm going to show you how to use a kite harness now.

So first of all, I'm just going to tell you the reasons why you might to use the kite harness. So if you, even in power kiting and perhaps you want to get into landboarding and you certainly could use a bigger kite, so you can hold on the pull and start to get some warming. So, you're going to use your harness, you could hark in, and it's going to take a bit of weight.

If your arms rest, you're going to be out to go for hours then. Probably the biggest reason you want to use or start wearing a kite harness is if you're going to start getting the power kite, maybe you're kitesurfing or you want to use your power kites for landboarding and buggying. In that case, the power lines of the kite are going onto the harness so you have to use a harness.

There are two types of harnesses. So, we have a waist harness like this. Basically, it's just a really fat belt, and we have a seat harness like this with the leg straps.

I'm just going to show you how to put the waist harness on. So, you just put it around your back, do up the Velcro, we've got this big hooky bit here and then the hook at the front, clip that in, make sure it's really really tight because the kite is pulling from this so you don't want it to be loose, so that's going to start to dig in to your buggy. So get it really tight, both sides, give it a good yank.

On some harnesses, you might find, if you've been kitesurfing, the straps can get a bit of sorting crusted so you might need to get them wet so that they really run nice and smoothly. In lots of harnesses now, you're also going to have this thin piece of webbing. So that goes just under the hook, there's going to be a little neck loop, pull that through, so you've got this small case of webbing, so you're going to put this into the plastic feed there, so you feed it through back on itself, and again, get it as really nice and tight.

This is holding the hook down, so then the kite's over here, so it rising up. So, especially with the waist harness, it's really important to get everything really really tight because you don't want this to be sitting under your hips. So that's our waist harness.

So, waist harness is usually used by more advanced riders because of the manoeuvrability, your legs free and you got lots of free dims to do your tricks. Some people prefer the waist harness right from the offset just because of the leg straps on the seat harness. They don't find this a comfortable set.

So, I'm going to be showing you the seat harness now. There, this is the seat harness. See, it's slightly different to the waist harness.

We've got these leg straps and it comes more underneath your bottom now. So often, beginners prefer this or as your first harness because these leg straps are holding the harness down. It can stop the harness from riding up under your chest the way waist harnesses can do.

The other thing is because you got leg straps, it can stop the harness twisting. So just to show you how to put this on, so, legs into the straps to start with. Same as the waist harness, put the Velcro across and you've got this hook, tighten that thing up, fasten up the leg straps, and then again, we've got this little piece of webbing that we can feed underneath over to the crusted feed and tighten up.

So because you got these leg straps, this stops the harness riding up and also stops it twisting. So, it's really good when you're starting out because you're going to be keeping the kite up at 12 o'clock a lot. It's going to be lifting up and so the seat harness works quite nicely.

You may not find leg straps comfortable especially if you're a boy, you might want to go for the waist harness straight away. But it's really good when looking for a harness, go to your local kite sh