Today I finally had a chance to test out my new kite. On Thursday i went down and pumped up the 14m on the beach but there wasn’t much wind. I managed to launch it with some help and by running upwind at the same time, and once in the air it actually had some power but we’ll see another day what it actually can do. Today the wind was around 18-21knots (according to the reports from fawkner beacon out in port Phillip bay) and I pumped up my 10m to see how it would perform. Unfortunately today was also the coldest day of the year so far with around 7′C, and the fact that it was raining didn’t really help.
After some small problems self launching the kite I got it up and was quite surprised by the amount of power in it, once on the water I could go upwind pretty much as well as the only other guy out there who was riding a 12m crossbow which is exactly the kite I’ve been using up until now. I could also get some descent air so the performance seems to be almost up there with my 2m larger crossbow. I think I didn’t have enough pressure in the leading edge though, so I had the kite turn crash and turn into an eight on the water but I got it up in the air again after a little while. The leading edge is quite a bit thinner than the crossbow so it’s probably pretty important to get enough pressure in it.
I’m not too excited about the valves on the struts though, they work very well when you pump it up by completely stop any air from leaking out during pumping but to let the air out a pin needs to be inserted into them, and as the pin should not be left in there it’s hard to get all the air out and pack the kite down to as small as it could be but I might come up with a trick to solve this.
Over all I’m pretty happy, but VERY cold after not even an hour on the water.