Construction.
Icarex sail with avia 6mm pultruded and P200 lower spreaders. Attractive sail design. The kite has little or no tail which lends it a very Prism like appearance.
It is put together very well with a very high attention to detail. It has a fully enclosed leading edge and the back of the sail is perfectly smooth at the standoff positions. It has two stand offs with the outer stand off having two possible positions. The yo yo stoppers are split pvc tubing which is taped to the leading edge. Very neat and also very effective.
The spine end is secured with velcro to which is sewn an elasticated pockect into which weights can be inserted. It comes with 5 and 10 grm weights.
Flight
This kite feels totally different to the newer kites out there at the moment. It has oversteer which when the outer stand off is in the inner setting is very pronounced. It dumps air very quickly on a spin and you have to be prepared to take control very smartly when this happens. Putting the outer standoffs in the outer position helps reduce the oversteer as does adding weight to the tail. A moderate wind also enevitably helps.
The kite axles and half axles well and will do double axles easily which many of the French kites find difficult. Cascades are perhaps a little slower as you have to tend the rotation more but they were straight forward. It pancakes easily and flat spins are no problem. It recovers into a fade when many kites would nose plant when weight is added to the tail and this makes jacobs ladders simple. Flic flacs are very quick and it will over rotate into a yo yo or stop in a wap do wap position. A lot about this kite is quick. You have to be a little attentive when doing lazy susans to prevent tip wraps and backspins are furiously fast. They are also very flat but they can be half a rotation further than you realise. Rising tornadoes are neat as well. I found flapjacks a little difficult as the kite needs that extra second to fall deep into a turtle and by then altitude was lost. I need to work on that a bit more. Another thing I need to practice are Mayet style yo yos with this kite. It falls easily into a yo yo but I tended to get both lines over the same leading edge more times than I would like. I think this comes back to how it falls into the turtle and perhaps wobbles which then causes the rotation to be tilted slightly. As I said, I think I need to practise my technique on that one. The kite turtles more easily with the outer stand offs in the inner setting.
Overall
This is a kite I did not immediatley warm to when I first flew it. Its a challenge to fly but with time I have found its style becoming more attractive. You have to be more precise with your technique compared to say the Surprise, .814 or say the Furio, but its a kite that has made me feel that I want to fly it more and improve my skills on it . That can't be a bad thing.
Update 13/5/04 It's too much of a challenge I've decided. Also I didn't improve any of my limited skills either.
