If you do, please let others know!:
Thank you!
The season is over. And what a season it was! Amazing wind and a great bunch of people that i am honoured to have shared the good times with. Thank you Airstylers Family!!!
So the wife and I are off back to the UK for summer – kiting in thick wetsuits – ugh!! At least the wind should be good. Armed with a brand new 7m and 9m prime i aim to get some pics of me jumping piers too!! (or maybe not…)
See you again in November!!
wind average – 11-18kts all SE
The end is nigh!!
Usually the end of may is the end of our season, so good wind is just a blessing. Fortunately we were blessed quite a lot! At least half the month was kiteable, with quite a few 18-20kt days.
It was eerily quiet in pranburi, not many tourists chose to come to thailand this month. We did our best to remain a place of calm, acceptance and friendliness. After all a kite is a good thing whatever colour it is…
TrackbackI’ve been following blade kites for a while now and they’ve been consistently good, but this year they’re something really special. Momi, who designs for Epic and Nobile also, designed the whole range and I have to say it’s the best range from a manufacturer I’ve ever tried. If you ride hard, unhooked and throw a lot of tricks there’s a kite for you, if you take it easy and just blast fast there’s a kite for you. If you’re heavy, light, short or tall, there’s a kite for you. That’s quite an achievement Mr Momi!!
Fast and light, the prime is designed for tricks. Shaped more like a C kite, the high aspect canopy with 5 struts turns on the outside edge for power through the turns. The bridle means it works on 4 lines but launches as easily as if it had a 5th line.
Col – As soon as you launch you feel the power – and that becomes addictive! You get smooth pull in a straight line and through the turns also. Unhooked it’s beautifully balanced and easy to steer while in the air – it gave me the best unhooked raleys i’ve ever done. It’s fun to go in a straight line but it’s a lot more fun in tricks!
Manu – It’s smooth! And powerful – it can hold my 80kg fully powered in 15kts. It flys very fast and i love just blasting along.
Gum – It flys very fast and turns very quick – i like to move it a lot. When jumping it just waits at 12 o’clock and when i want to come down i turn it – i like that also! I think this kite will improve my kitesurfing a lot.
Conclusion
Not for the faint hearted! It’s a full on tricks machine that will fly as hard as you fly. If you’re bored with cruising along – this could be the kite for you. It’ll put some heart back into your kiting!
Delta shaped but not too deep on the profile, the vertigo is made to fly fast and turn easily. It’s very light to pick up and light in the air with 3 carefully placed struts. The one pump system pumps it up really quickly and the clips are cleverly sewn on to the struts so it’s easy to check they’re on. Medium low aspect ratio and turning about the center of the kite means it’s smooth and really easy to fly.
Maria – Very responsive and fast turning. The power comes on very smoothly and is easy to control. I love the 9 and the 7, the 7 I’ve used in 16kts! I think my ideal kite quiver would be 7m, 9m and 10m. I’ll never need more than 10m and that’s fantastic as i hate big kites!
Marith – My favourite so far – I loved the 9m! It’s really smooth and has plenty of power.
Gum – The feeling is very good – very smooth. It turns fast so it’s easy to control. If you are good you can turn quick and boom!! the power is strong! If compared with age, the vertigo is about 21. The vegas is a teenager and cabrinha 30+. I like 21!!
Col – Being quite light I have a problem in stronger gusty wind, so i like a kite that can depower easily but i don’t want it to be slow. This kite is really fast and super easy to control so I can have fun but when it all pulls too much I can easily let out. The 10m has me going in 11kts and pulls well, the 9m is an awsome kite – quick in loops and easy for jumping. The 7m gets me out in 18+kts and is a lot of fun in loops! The power difference between the sizes is what you’d expect – the 9 is 2m more powerful than the 7, the 10 is 1m more powerful than the 9. I can’t wait to try the 12 and 14!
Ruth – It’s very easy to fly isn’t it? The sort of kite you can just sit back and relax. I may get one in addition to my Cabrinhas – it’s just so easy!
Conclusion
A really special kite this one – easy to fly, fast, great low end, easy to set up. Good for cruising along, good for tricks. It does it all! Unless you’re over 80kg – then maybe you’ll like the full-on power of the Trigger.
A deeper profile and medium low aspect ratio gives this kite lots of power on tap. It still turns smoothly and easily but when you pull the bar in it pulls hard!! 3 well placed struts and one pump make it easy to get set up and out. It turns not at the edge, nor the center, but somewhere in between, making it a really easy park and go type kite.
Charles – Seems a very powerful kite for a 10m! I prefer it to the 10m Vertigo – both are very smooth but personally I like the extra power. Riding a surfboard on waves I expect to have to work the kite a little up and down but it just didn’t move! A very very easy kite to use.
Andrew – Lot more power than my vegas, quick turning, very smooth. Less of a bull than the cabrinha, but quicker so you can get the same power.
Rob – Being nearly 100kg I need a kite with power, so I took the 14m and was pleasantly surprised! It’s very smooth and easy to ride, pulls well through the turns and very quick in the jumps. That caught me out a few times as I’m more used to the slower Cabrinhas. Ouch!!
Col – What an easy kite to fly! Dive it, park it, and go fast! Personally I like a lighter kite that I can work up and down but I reckon the bigger guys will appreciate the easy power on tap. For me I can’t use bigger than 10m, but hey there’s nothing wrong with having my biggest kite a 10m!
Marith – Turns well but not quite as quick as the vegas, nice and powerful, but i prefer the vertigo – it just seems smoother for me.
Gum – Very powerful!! I like to go upwind very far – it’s very easy. I didn’t try jumping yet. Colin says it’s very good – good!!!
Ruth – I loved it from the start!! I was having so much fun! And then i got tired so i had to come in. It pulls you hard, so you have to be in control. For an easier ride I’ll go with the Vertigo I think.
Conclusion
If you like full on power, or you are taller or heavier than average, you’ll like the Trigger. And if jumping is your thing – this is the easiest kite in the range to jump high. Massive hangtime, massive float, but if you need to turn quick to get control it, it’s there. Nice!!
Disclaimer – We stock blade kites – so don’t believe everything we say – come and test them out for yourself!
Trackbackwind average – 14-20kts all SE
Our best month yet! The wind was awsome, the beach big, the water warm and the school busy busy busy!
With a full stock of brand new Blade Kites, we had many testing days and it was great to get everyone’s opinion.
They are by the far the easiest kites I have used to teach with – so many success stories this month I can’t even name them all!! All I will say is – everyone who came here a beginner left knowing how to jump… It’s a really really easy spot to learn new tricks!
Trackbackwind average – 15-20kts mostly SE a few strange days of NE
Competition month this month!
The PKRA – Professional Kiteboard Riders Association came to Hua Hin for the first competition of 2010. It was a fantastic setting, great competition, and lots of fun. It’s truly amazing to see professional kiteboarders throwing tricks right in front of you.
And then the KTA – Kiteboard Tour Asia came to our very own Pranburi! Hosted by the Evason, the final party was world class. The standard in Asia is getting pretty high now, with the local riders getting some excellent scores.
We hosted our first ever masterclass – “Intermediate Tricks with Intermediate Col!” Why ‘intermediate col’? Check out the new Progression Intermediate DVD due to be released very soon. I am officially intermediate!!
Sorry to all in the class, but I had to post this for everyone else’s enjoyment…
Trackbackwind average – 14-18kts all SE
Wow what a month! perfect blue skies and perfect SE thermal winds. Starts around midday, gets really good around 3, comes down after sunset. Last year was not great in feb but this year it’s totally different!
Everybody’s sore, needing days off from all the kiting. but we can’t stop!
A lot of success stories this month, including 10 year old Hugo:
And the girls Pat, and Ammo:
The boys look on…
Trackbackwind average – 12-16kts sometimes NE sometimes SE
A strange month compared to last year – we had some good strong North Easterlies at the end of December but then for some crazy reason we got 10 days of South Easterly over christmas and new year. Weird! Then back to the normal N.Easterly for a bit, then straight into S.Easterly by the end of Jan.
Difficult to plan the lessons, but we got had some excellent students and all coped very well.
The Christmas and New year’s parties were great – fire out the back of the shop, guitars, good food. just what we like!
Trackbackriding 10am-2pm 14-17kts sunny
He’s up! And he’s down… And he’s up! And he’s down… Well that’s the way it goes when you’re learning. Andrew has great kite control and bags and bags of determination so he’ll get it pretty soon.
Another happy kiter!
Trackbackriding 9am-3pm 14-20kts sunny
Another busy day on the water – 2 of us today. But we’ll be busy tomorrow – it’s the weekend. We’ll have a crowd of at least 6!
TrackbackWhere did all the blue skies go?!?!
October is a rainy month all over Thailand but still I don’t like it!
There is one silver lining though – it reminds me of home…
Trackback
