Kite selection

[Dundee]

Hi guys,

I wanna know what is a good kite for light winds. I did some lessons with an ozone and lite force. The ozone took one go to get up and generally stayed up easy. The lite force couldn't stay up and was difficult to water start. The instructor swears by ozone, saying they are the mercedes of kites. But he could be biased.

I've heard North are good. But have heard they have problems with the valves coming unstuck. Easy to repair though.

Also I heard Naish is good for light winds specially the new 15m Naish Fly. Although bad Review on the octopus design. Hard to repair bladders. Also how is the 2 strut design in performance and ease of use.

Any feed back and advise will be appreciated. I live in Darwin so pretty much light winds 8-12kn sometime 12-18kn

Thank you

[JKS]

Dundee .... Hook up with the local boys who usually kite at The surf club near brinkin or near buffalo creek at the end of lee point road.

Talk to them about what's workin .... Local knowledge

From memory there were a lot of lads flying Norths

[.Joel]

Although bad Review on the octopus design. Hard to repair bladders.

Load of utter tripe usually spread by dealers whom have an agenda. Octopus system is the least repaired system in the country, they just seem to outlast the rest of the conventional valve systems. They're also no different to repair than a standard valve, they stick on just like all the others.

Also how is the 2 strut design in performance and ease of use.

Light wind inflatable kites are hitting size limits, the longer you make that leading edge the more bladder you need up there adding more weight to the front of the kite. More weight over the leading edge leads to less forgiveness, do a jump in light wind then if the kite overflys you it will come out of the sky nearly every time, this is where in super light wind Foils are far more forgiving.

I live in Darwin so pretty much light winds 8-12kn sometime 12-18kn

Darwin's 8-12 knots isn't like 8-12 knots here in Melbourne, your air isn't as dense as ours here. Each easter I head to Yeppoon kiting, and typically I'm flying a kite size up on what I would fly down here and I still feel less powered than in the southern states.

Definitely try and demo as many kites as you can, a super high aspect LEI is going to be harder to relaunch and have more weight over the leading edge. However it's going to build its power as you pickup board speed and it's going to cut upwind fantastically whilst not great down wind. A lower aspect large LEI is going to have more instant power not needing as much board speed to build it up, it's going to turn tighter and relaunch quicker, however it's not going to give you the upwind ability of a higher aspect kite.

In light winds the upwind ability plays a bigger importance, because you typically lose more room down wind building up your board speed.

Six of one, half a dozen of the others.

Personally I fly the Flysurfer Speeds which are ridiculously high aspect and the Speed3 sucks downwind, however it cuts upwind fantastically. I've also got a big old 2004 15m C kite which has at most 20% depower, it's one of those old "death machines" people rave about. However a big old C in a light wind gets you up and just grunts its way along. You won't be able to do much compared to the newer kites, but it makes a great afternoon of mowing the water.

Regards,

Joel

[Jason]

You haven't really mentioned the style of riding you want to do on this large kite?

If its freeride/freestyle/surf and skim then hands down the most fun and versatile light wind kite I have EVER used is the NAISH Fly.

For a Race board or pure hangtime you would be better off with something a little higher aspect like a Dyno or Draft. One thing with more efficient higher aspect kites is they like to be teamed up with boards which are equally as efficient to get the best bottom end power out of them.