Ozone Riot 5M

After selling the last of my beginners budget kites, I was left with a space in my quiver. Boarding in high wind? That's the FS Cool 4.0m. Boarding in med wind and eventually getting on the water? Thats my PL G2 13m. Plus I have the use of a friends Frenzy 10m fairly often. So I needed a 'fun kite', ie something on handles, plenty of lift and a doddle to fly and set up. Which led me to my third racekites second hand purchase - an Ozone Riot 5.0m (which may I add was in MINT condition - I beleive it had only been out of the bag once or twice and at an excellent price, kudos to Windsorr)

I won't bore you with exact specifications of the bag and kite, but needless to say it's an Ozone and the quality is top notch. The kite is not as high aspect as say a Blade but still has a performance look about it.

Setting Up

It's an Ozone so any numpty could set it up. Colour coded lines, numbered attachments - just the standard set-up and you're ready to go. However as this was a second hand kite, I double checked the line lengths (which were fine).

Flight

I'm happiest flying the Riot between 8 and 15mph so my experiences are based on this.

Quick tug on the handles, tickle it up the side of the window and get it above your head - seems very stable, but look out for any gusts as like the Blade, you'll be up in the air (I'm 15 stone and the gusts weren't that much stronger than the ambient wind strength!).

Flying across the window develops a good pull (similar to a Blade 4.9 but less aggressive). The conversion of pull to lift when redirecting/pendulum jumping etc is IMO as good as the Blade. A consistent 12mph will see you pull off some great jumps - even without knowing how to get the best from the Riot, I was getting (a confirmed) 8 foot of the ground.

Inland however was a different story. Like all medium to high ratio aspect kites, it suffers from nasty luff at the wind window edge and misbehaves in gusts. Show me a performance kite that doesn't though!

To Summarise

For the price I paid for this kite and can't moan about anything (and would also use this opportunity to confirm what a good service Racekites provides for the buying and selling of great kites). Not quite a Blade in terms of sheer exhiliration, but does have benefits over it Flexi friend in terms of smoothness and stability.

 

By : davekermito