Pansh Ace 5M

This Ace is one of the first batches of Aces out. So can't comment on the improved handles and lines, so will only comment on the kite itself. There has been much comparison with the Blade, I have a Blade iv 4.9 so will give some comparison where I can.

The Ace is made from quite light weight material, I have measured the thickness of it with a micrometer and it is the same thickness as my Blade!! The stitching looks to be quite good but obviously not as good as the Blade. The bridal attachment points are sown into the kite and whilst not as robust looking as my Blade they look to be good. The bridal looks to be made of quite thin line, so should be good to cut down on drag, the bridal is sown but is quite rough looking, now the bridal on my Blade is superb and here you can't really compare. There are dirt outs, I don't know if the size of them is a problem, as people have commented they are quite small and as I haven't needed to use them yet don't know how effective they are. The stuff sack is just the job for me, I always para-pack, so all my kites are in stuff sacks and any rucksacks are left in the garage gathering dust.

So how does it fly? I have flown this kite now only four times, one silly wind and three whisps of wind so not the best flight test. Our first flight we knew there wasn't really enough wind to fly this thing but a new kite, you have got to have a go. Well it flew really rather well, it seem to be such a light weight kite and as long as you keep it moving and away from the edges of the window it is ever so good. Turns quickly responds to brake turns well, reverse launches, yep really good. Next outing, about 18mph wind, I knew this is too much for me but again had to have ago. Got it up know problem, scared the life out of me and put it away again quickly. Well that day I injured myself, had an OBE flying my 3.2 Crossfire, again really knew I was pushing it but my next kite down was my 2m Legend and whilst a good kite statically not very good it a buggy, quite slow and a devil to try to get up wind. So used the wrong kite in the wrong wind and paid the price for it.

So they were my initial flights with a standard Ace. About this time Andya was playing around with his EPAT, I had plenty of spare time with my injured knee and thought to make a variation on his EPAT. Mine, I have pivoted around the B row and put 50mm extensions on the tips to keep it all inline. There is some detail in Andya's EPAT review on this. This allows me to increase the AOA or decrease the AOA without too much fuss.

So the next flight with EPAT. Neutral AOA (so as standard) seems to behave the same as my first flight findings, haven't muck anything up, good start. So increase the AOA by 2 degrees. The kite was reluctant to fly, quite a lot slower through the air, but once air born and kept moving seemed to behave itself well. I didn't really ever want more grunt out of the kite and the slowness of the kite didn't do anything for me, so moved on to decreasing the AOA by 2 degrees. Well I didn't really notice much different from the neutral position, decreased to now 4 degrees. Well the kite was much faster, have to keep your eye on it a bit more, will fly out of the edge of the window, wing tips seem to be good. Yep I like this kite I thought and played around with for an hour or so. The wind speed had now dropped to nothing, so my mate who is the part owner of the kite (I'm really cheap skate I am, as if £50 wasn't cheap enough) thought he would have a go of taking the kite around a 360. By taking the kite right round the edge of the window and running in the right direction it was possible to fly this kite completely round a 360 around yourself. Quite satisfying.

Next outing again not much wind around 4-5 mph. I was flying my blade in the least lifty AOA (how I normally fly this kite) and my mate was flying the ACE in it's least lifty mode. Well my mate found it to be a lovely kite, smooth control around the wind window, reverse take off's with ease. He tried flying it straight down in front of him (AKA Jerry) and practice brake control to stop, reverse etc. Well this kite is nice, smooth, easy to control, wonderful, faster than the neutral position Ace, but not as fast as my Blade, my blade was so quick through the window and in every way was a better kite. There wasn't enough wind for either kite to buggy in, you would think there was static flying, the Ace had more grunt than the blade, put it down to being slower but neither kite on the day could you get properly going in the buggy.

So in conclusion, this is a very nice kite, well worth £50 quid, well worth the new price tag of £100, with the better lines and improved handles. It's not a Blade iv, the Blade iv's are lovely kites but the Ace is very very good and performance wise probably more like my old blade ii but poorer quality (but still pretty good quality for the money). It would make an excellent choice of budget intermediate kite, can't really comment on it for traction yet but will let you know in due course.

By : Clarkee