If you have the passion and the dough, go for the newest stuff around...waiting around for the next best thing to come ain't worth it in my opinion. At my age, I might not see the next improvement coming.

Try before you buy, and if you love it, then have it.

The kite designers will keep tinkering and making improvements, but I feel we have come 80% of the way and soon it will not matter what gear you fly..............just go out and fly. From what I have seen of the 07 kites, it looks like they are more robust in make and all have very similar features. Kite companies have come to realise the move to a dominate kite set up is here and they want to retain their customers by making more robust kites (like Slingshot and North)...sure they cost more, but last longer and you need less of them.

I could be totally wrong.

quote:

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Originally posted by marc

and the rhino seemed to have improved a lot over the year.

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?, I don't get it. Do you mean 'over the years'


Just get whatever is the best kite at the time. If you look at the rhino 06, it wasn't all that great compared to other brands offerings, like the impact and torch 2. Now clearly the fact that north are on their 5th rhino model didn't make it any better than the other brands kites.

well, for me it seems better when a brand improves its current models instead of just making new ones, unless the design was crap from the beginning.
i feel more confident about a brand because it means the model was good but needed some minor changes.
now with the bows, it is mainly trend and we saw some brand jumping on that train just for this reason.
some might be good but i think the right direction is more in the middle, mixing c and bows.
marc-a.

i froth on that

Generally, good brands continue making good kites even though it is a new model, if it were worse than there previous models the company wouldn't release it.... (hellfish)