Yes Uber, good to meet you, and yes it was the infamous Hellfish, and it lived up to everything that Alex Shogren of Best Kites had told me about it.
The Cuben material is not like any other laminate I have ever seen. There are 2 grades of material in the kite, the leading edge, struts and the tips are all made from a heavier grade of the material. This stuff looks and feels very tough, and is not really crome, it is grey. The spectra fibres in the laminate are a random matrix, very fine and evenly spread throughout the laminate. This material is very tough and waxy to feel, the leading edge and struts were pumped as hard as our North guage pump would go, to the point where the inflated LE and struts has a high pitched ping when flicked.
The kite was brand new and not a demo from the US, as we were led to beleive it would be and it was shipped straight from the factory in China to us. I weighed the kite before I left the shop, it was approx 2.5kg, kite only, an 05 13M Poly/Dacron Yarga is approx 3.8Kg.
The material in the sail is the chrome stuff and is incredibly thin, shiny and tough. It has a crinkled look, and I think that is part of the way the material is manufactured. The spectra fibres in this material although not arranged like normal ripstop sail cloth are more uniformly layed up withing the laminate. The laminate is slightly opaque and appears grey when looking through it at a bright light, but is otherwise very reflective and shiny.
The kite has 4 line attachment points and is fitted with kook proof connectors, which matched up perfectly to the Peter Lynn 50cm 4 line bar we used to fly the kite.
All seams are taped and look like they are glued as well, the single leading edge seam is taped and also capped with another layer of reinforcing material, it looks totally bulletproof (maybe actually too!) The leading edge and struts are the thinnest I have ever seen on an inflatable kite, I estimate the leading adge diameter to be 10cm at the middle. There are 3 reinforced connection points on the leading edge tube, obviously for a 5th line and the connection of the new Pitch Fork Hellfish bridle (which we did not get with these kites). The second of the 2 x 13M kites will be shipped to the Geelong store tomorrow and will be available for demo down there after Thursday.
The wind we first launched in was approx 6/7 knots, with lulls to around 4/5 knots, the kite flew a 180 degree wind window and parked easily at the edge at a low angle, very impressive for a kite this size in this wind. The kite didn't just park it actually sat there quite stably and could be turned up from thsi position, tightly.
The kite flies quite fast, and is extremely responsive to any steering or sheeting input, and when it flew across the window had very impressive power and dragged my ass all over the beach, even managed to do small jumps.
Towards the end of this first flight the wind dropped to 4/5knots, the kite was still flying the same sized wind window and would still park at the edge, which I was very impressed with. We flew till dark, and went back to the shop which we had just shut/abandoned (sorry if anyone called) and ran out of just after the DHL guy left!!
Alex Shogren told me that these 2 kites are pre production prototypes and there will some tweaking of the design on the full production kites which he is doing final testing on now. He says that if I am blown away by these kites the final versions will be even better.
Look out for some on water reviews, I'll leave them for people who will put the kite through a more rigorous test than my body can handle.
Cya and
Goodwinds
Steve McCormack
www.kitepower.com.au
attach a wind meter with GPS to the 5th line attachement points hanging like 5 cm from the LE and post the results!
