HQ Beamer 7M

Don't buy one of these.

I was looking for a bigger kite to compliment my HQ Symphony 4.1m and was thinking after this great intro of another HQ kite. My price range was looking at the 5m but an excellent deal came along from Windseekers on the 7m Beamer and I plumped for it.

Kite is actually 6.4m and came with the big comedy zipper bag that started to fall apart from day one but for a budget kite although it had knotted bridal lines was of reasonable construction and I never had any frayed lines or stitching that came loose in the 7 months I owned this kite. I replaced the handles with the Flex ones as they were much more comfortable.

This was a big kite but I could never get it to fly at the edges of the wind window at all without it collapsing and there was no traction for the buggy. General static flying was ok but this quickly gets boring. I thought I was a crap pilot and almost gave up and sold everything. The traction was less than a bullet 5.5m of a friend that I could pop up and point exactly where I wanted to go and with no drama.

I then read on some of the Forums about problems with the 7m beamer and got Jerrys bridal plan. I then spent 6 hours changing every knot on the thing. It was better and easier to fly but the trailing edge then used to flap occasionally and never pulled like some other peoples kites of similar size flown at the same time. Eventually I sold it on Ebay and put the money towards a 2nd hand Ozone 6m LD which was much better.

This is not a dig at HQ or the Beamer which in other sizes seems an excellent purchase. Just look how we now have the Beamer II but not in 7m size, makes you wonder doesn't it?

By : Matthew Corbett