Everyone would be doing themselves a big favour to fly a parafoil kite like a Flysurfer, Ozone Frenzy, Flexi Sabre/Blade etc. Same goes for the newest release from one of the pioneer companies in power kiting, Peter Lynns, new Venom.
If people did fly other types of kites, and kept an open mind when that did, then we could all be spared a lot of the stupid pointlessly competitive posts full of misleading and totally biased nonsense that crops up here and on other forums endlessly.
Most of the kite retailers currently selling inflatable kites have very little experience with foil or "twin skin" kites, so best not to listen to stories about these types of kite unless you are speaking to people that sell and use them.
My experience with most kiters I meet is that they are very open minded, and when presented with a new type of kite they are really keen to try it, because they have become kite addicts and they actually really like to fly kites!
Similarly, my long experience in kites has led me to understand that the only people who spread false or misleading rumours about parafoil kites and twin skin kites are biased because they are either fully sponsored by an inflatable kite company, are owners or part owners of businesses selling inflatable kites, or just insecure, narrow minded people who have to follow the crowd. Lemmings is a good word that describes that type of behaviour.
Inflatable kites work very well on water, and this is the medium they were designed for, and ALL foils work well too, except some that are not designed for water will not relaunch, others designed to relaunch, are equal to or better than pump up kites, in every aspect of performance that matters to a true kite addict.
There is no ultimate kite, there are very well made kites, and there have been huge performance gains made in the last few years, and I suspect very strongly that we are about to see another leap forward with the release of kites made from new high tech materials.
It is unrealistic for people to beleive that there is some, yet to be discovered airfoil profile, that will make a huge difference to the kites we all use for traction purposes. You don't see aircraft companies releasing "new" wing profiles every year do you?
Profiles are a known quatity now, finesse, user friendliness and balance in a kite design is perhaps still being refined for some companies, but the products from the top designers are all becoming very similar.
As for unbiased opinions, do they really exist, or is that just as flawed a concept as censorship?
I think so! There is no such thing as a totally and truly unbiased opinion is there?
There was one business teaching people to kite in Sydney more than 6 years ago, it is owned by me. I did the Wipika training course (as the IKO was known then) at Smiths Lake with Darren Marshall and some others in Feb 2001. As you can imagine it was a very biased organisation back then!!! And it would appear that some biases take a long time to die out.
I have been running a kite school in Sydney for 4 years also, and have always bought the gear needed to run the school with hard earned money. We never used any one brand exclusively, and still don't, we prefer to be independent for many reasons including not wanting to appear biased, and also so that no company can tell us what to do.
Our School is fully insured, has full permits to operate from all the local authorities, and fully complies with all IKO standards.
Just wanted to add an alternative reality to this thread that appears to have done a 180.
Hope you are getting some winter wind, Sydney has been excellent over the last couple of weeks. Have fun, fly kites.
Cya and
Goodwinds
Steve McCormack
