Hi JZ,

Sure you can!

I used to do this on cheap trainer kites in order to instruct friends/girlfriend with a bar so that they could get into kiteboarding later.

There are a few things you should know though:

lINE LENGTH
you want to make sure that your four lines are of equal length when the bar is in fully powered position (i.e. when the bar trim/cleat is fully released and the bar fully pulled in). In order to achieve this, you might have to shorten or lengthen the back-lines "pre-lines" on your bar. Test you setup: when fully powered, you kite should be at the limit of stalling, but not flying backwards!

FIX OR "DEPOWER"
On a small surface kite (less than 4m2) with little depower, I would suggest that you use a "fixed" setting (i.e. a bar without depower: without hole in the middle). By tweaking only the the trim/cleat, you will be able to influence the power ant the turning radius of your kite.

For a biger surface you should use a depower bar. Be careful with your line length and test in lower wind on your first day. Your kite has not been designed for as much depower as an LEI, you will therefore notice that your kitesurfing bar allows too much "travel", thus underpowering or backstalling your kite. I usually solve this problem with two stopper balls, one under and one over the bar. Test and tweak!

KITEKILLER
For immediate and full depower, you kite killer should be on ONE front or back line. For easy relaunch it can be set on BOTH front lines (but there ban be some residual pull... so it is not appropriate for snowkiting). Most ram-air have safety on BOTH back lines. I'd strongly advise that you keep the same safety setting that was originally on your kite.

A cool tweak is to have the attachement point for your safety leach ON the chicken loop. This gives you "tangle free" safety! It's easy to set up if you've found a bar with 5th line through the bar hole, like an old "5th element" bar from North for example.

FEELING
Whatever you do, you will not otain the same feeling/depower/control than on a ram-air kite that has been designed right from the start for a bar setup. But a kitebar allows easyer teaching and one-handed flying!

If you are already a good pilot, you will have no problem converting your kite to a bar setup. If you are a beginner, I wouldn't advise that you do it alone. One mistake can have big consequences...

Best luck with your experimentation.

Be safe!

To the slopes!