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Born-Kite StreetStar


windstruck

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Interesting new kite concept fron the venerable Steffen Born, a single skin DP kite flown with one hand from one handle with only bridle lines. In email conversation with Steffen he let me know that good propulsion in limited (narrow) spaces was on critical design requirement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fNn3SR_vXc

From Steffen:  It`s a single skin depower kite with a one-hand control, without additional lines. Ideal for street kiting. It will be available from August in the sizes 2.0m, 4.0m and 6.0m.

I absolutely love how Steffen continues to innovate.  I'm a huge fan of his NS3s and LS2s and it appears that he has created another most interesting kite, purpose built for a unique application. 

 

 

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Ok, I can see the appeal for guys who street kite. Being able to steer one handed would be handy.

but why would you bother with depower? At most it has 100mm of depower throw, which is FA depower. But the biggest reason the depower is a waste of time is that the kite has to be flown on the bridle alone (or extremely short lines as shown in the video), so the kite spends about 0.5 seconds in the power zone as it crosses the window. Any longer lines and the steering function won't work. Plus you fly so under powered when street kiting, why do you really need depower?

id love to see someone try to hold on to that handle if they were fully powered :D 

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Thanks Steve!  @windstruck sent me kite that steffen sent him to try out.  Kite control was intuitive but still took time to get the hang of while moving.  My style of street kiting involves a lot of fluid transitions in a semi confined area so that's what I wanted to test first.  It took me a good hour to get transitions down.  The main reason is one handed control.  This is where it gets hard to explain and will vary for different riders.  I'm goofy footed (right foot first) and I transition from frontside to backside and ride toe side so my right foot is always forward.  keep in mind your thumb always needs to be pointed to the top of the bar.  This means I'm comfortably riding toe side using my right hand (I'm right handed) but when I transition there are 2 options.  continue to hold the bar in my right hand but upside down (a little awkward but doable) or switch hands and use my left.  I've never been good flying left handed so that took a lot of time to get down.  Keep in mind your switching hands during the transition.  All that is to say that when I use a normal bar on a nasa star, I would always fly toe side one handed with my strong hand and when I would transition to front side, I would be flying with both hands on the bar so I've never been forced to use my left hand solely.  I've only used it for a couple hours so far so this will probably be a minor hurdle and something that I already was getting good at by the time I left.

The relaunch and landing works flawlessly.  Really impressive.  The turning works well but does take some practice and getting used to as to be expected.  My first impression is that a standard nasa star would be much easier for a beginner but for intermediates, this kite offers a much more dynamic flying experience and most likely will have much better upwind capability.  I'll test that out when the wind direction cooperates for a couple of my long road spots.

Transitions were much more similar to flying my peak on handles as far as how the kite behaves but using just one handle for all control.  Very wild and fun kite.  It does take some skill to use but I like that.

I would like to add some 2m or 5m lines to see how that goes.  I will take a look at how easy that will be to add next time I'm out.

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