Thank you very much for taking the time to review out paper and accepting is as is.

Response: Thank you very much for taking the time to review our paper and accepting is as is.

Specific comments

- In the test, how to implement the incremental change of power setting $u_p$? I also didn’t follow how the change of steering input was implemented, by changing $\alpha_{bar}$ or what?

Response: We realize that an important detail in the test schematic in Figure 2 was missing (two line segments connecting the control bar with the pivot unit on the test bench) and that the accompanying description of the steering actuation from pilot to kite was unclear. We updated the schematic and clarified the text. 

To summarize: the pilot uses live video of the kite on a display in the towing vehicle and a conventional three-line control bar (customary in kite sports) to generate the steering commands. These steering commands are converted by servo motors into digital signals, which are transmitted to the test bench. On the test bench, the signals are used to actuate the two steering lines, recreating the manual line actuation of the pilot in the towing vehicle. The steering and power lines of the kite connect to the pivot unit via a second control bar. This control bar has the same geometry as the bar that the pilot uses. The actuation on the test bench and in the towing vehicle are mechanically separated, only communicating via digital data transfer. This complete mechanical separation allows for replacing the manually generated steering commands from the pilot by an autopilot system. Below, you will find CAD renderings of the pivot head on the test bench (left) and the pilot interface in the towing vehicle (right).

Images from: Elfert, C.: Methodische Untersuchung des dynamischen Verhaltens seilgebundener, hochflexibler Tragflächen auf Basis automatisierter Flugmanöver, Ph.D. thesis, Technische Universität Berlin, https://doi.org/10.14279/depositonce-11848, 2021

- Some section titles could be expanded to show more of the main work/contribution of the associated section; for example, Section 3 covers the two different sensing systems, and Section 4 includes the control algorithm.

Response: Good point. We adjusted the subsection titles in Section 3 to:

3.2 Measuring kite position, velocity and orientation

3.3 Measuring relative flow velocity at the kite

- Since a large number of experimental data have been collected under controlled operations, for the future work, it may be possible to include the power setting parameter explicitly into the model for the steering gain and the deadtime.

Response: Good point. Including the power setting explicitly in the model for the steering gain and the deadtime should be straightforward with a purely data-driven approach (surrogate model). Accounting for the underlying physics (mechanistic model) will be more challenging because changing the power setting of a flying C-shaped kite leads to a rather complex aerostructural response of the tensile membrane structure. While the pitch of the wing is changing, the wing is also deforming. This deformation depends on the geometry of the wing and the bridle line system. In a parallel study (Poland & Schmehl: "Modelling Aero-Structural Deformation of Flexible Membrane Kites". Energies, 2023. https://doi.org/10.3390/en16145264), we developed a simple mechanistic model to describe the induced geometry change of a C-shaped kite when depowering. This could be a starting point for a mechanistic model.

Thank you very much for taking the time to review out paper and accepting is as is.