I learnt to kite on flexifoil bullets... Then get. Inflatable LE? And suggest Daymer Bay, N Cornwall... Not sure what Bude has to offer?

Lesson essential for safety habits. Also find others to keep an eye and offer advice....

CharliesDad said...
In my opinion, don't waste your money on the trainer kite and put your cash into purchasing your LEI kite. When I started someone suggested a trainer kite was a must. I then went and had my lessons which involved flying the trainer kite for 20 minutes. I was then instructed on a 12m LEI kite and had no problems at all. The best advice I can give is have lessons. Don't try and learn on your own.

Good luck! It's a lot of fun.

100% agreed, foil trainer kites are for kids. Waste of time and money for kitesurfing. They only have 2lines! Kites have 4lines. When y0u got driving lessons did you sit in a car with no pedals and swing the wheel around a few times and hit the blinkers and stuff? How long did that take to soak up? about 3min?
Just get a kite that everyone else at ur beach uses or talk about the diff brands with all the guys at the beach. Read up here. Find the best local instructor talk kite brands again and again (don't pick favourites until you've talked about heaps of brands, everyone's different) and hey presto 3 lessons later you're away.
For starters some great learner kites are Prodigy's, Catalyst's, Vectors and for some SB's. I prefer Drifters to SB's but they are a bit reactive for some newbs. If you're a tradie (ie heavy handed ) go the SB but flick it in 6 months and if your a designer or something go the Drifter or one of the others. All the other kites here will take you a long way. Lot's of guys love SB's but I think they are just boring and slow. They are however great learner kites for the first few months. In the smaller sizes they have a bit of zip in the later models but before 2012 yeh, the whole bunch = boring.
have fun

The evidence in our school is overwhelmingly positive in favour of trainee kite prep.
We offer a free trainer complete with a manual that takes students thru just about everything you can do with a trainer from launch & land to kite loops one-handed with eyes closed - and everything in between.
Its purely optional how long the students put in on the trainer before booking lesson 1.
Those who make the most of it will advance thru lessons 1.5 to 2 times faster than those who dont bother with it.

One definite advantage is the attitude it develops. From being shyte scared of not knowing what to do with this huge killer thing they cant control overhead the BIG kite is so slow they are usually dead keen to get it working with confidence.

Not saying it cant be done without. Clearly it can. But for the huge majority prepped kite skills with a trainer is a real bonus that adds huge value to paid lesson time.

puppetonastring said..

The evidence in our school is overwhelmingly positive in favour of trainee kite prep.
We offer a free trainer complete with a manual that takes students thru just about everything you can do with a trainer from launch & land to kite loops one-handed with eyes closed - and everything in between.
Its purely optional how long the students put in on the trainer before booking lesson 1.
Those who make the most of it will advance thru lessons 1.5 to 2 times faster than those who dont bother with it.

One definite advantage is the attitude it develops. From being shyte scared of not knowing what to do with this huge killer thing they cant control overhead the BIG kite is so slow they are usually dead keen to get it working with confidence.

Not saying it cant be done without. Clearly it can. But for the huge majority prepped kite skills with a trainer is a real bonus that adds huge value to paid lesson time.

I know many disagree with me, but as an experienced instructor I tend to see a few Con's for flying a trainer kite before lessons, here's why:

The majority of people buying (or borrowing) a trainer kite will want to fly it as much as possible and will do so with no real supervision or feedback.

The vast majority of people I've seen flying the trainer kite for countless hours end up:

-Diving the kite continuously and aggressively in the power zone (figure 8).
-Grabbing the bar at the extremities for faster steering
-Gripping the bar very heavily (hammer style grip) and have tense arms and forearms

Someone has to explain to me in what specific way does this help a student progress ''quicker'' in their first and second lesson?

Transposing those now automatic and subconscious habits to a ''real'' kite you get what I like to call '' bad habits'' which can (and will) be difficult to break for some students. Many of those students struggle with the idea of ''depower'' and ''sweet spot'' and since they are used to always having power in their hands/arms, they tend to want to pull the bar much further down than necessary. I don't think I need to explain the consequences of this.

Wide bar grip and the habit of moving the kite continuously tends to challenge the student to simply keep the kite stable and avoid getting dragged into the power zone.

There's no way for me to ''prove'' this, but I believe some students who overfly the trainer kite actually have a slower than normal progression in their first 1-2 lessons, due to the difficult task of breaking these bad habits previously mentioned.

If an instructor can't pick up on those habits I'd be worried about the safety of the lesson and the professionalism of the school.

yes, trainer kites are great fun and can help in learning some basics, but when overflown they actually only train advanced flying skills and powered moves which can hinder the learning of basic flying skills on a ''real'' kite, not to mention potentially endangering the student.

Essentially students are encouraged to ''fly the trainer kite hard'', to go do hundreds of those power strokes and why not some kite loops!!! But when you do your first few lessons, PLEASE do the exact opposite of that ....

I strongly believe advice such as ''fly the trainer kite as much as possible and you will progress quicker into your lessons'' is overrated and needs to be ''moderated" to some extent.

cbulota said..


The vast majority of people I've seen flying the trainer kite for countless hours end up:

-Diving the kite continuously and aggressively in the power zone (figure 8).
-Grabbing the bar at the extremities for faster steering
-Gripping the bar very heavily (hammer style grip) and have tense arms and forearms

I agree completely that unsupervised trainer kite prep can & does develop bad habits.
Thats why we provide the manual & explain that simply 'playing' with the kite wont really help at all.
The trainer kite program is all about building confidence and basic kite skills but most of all correct technique - as in developing the opposite of what you are saying above.

I never practised or have ever flown a trainer kite but to me it makes sense that learning to fly a kite that has no depower is entirely different and minimally helpful. I agree with cbulota that it would probably be negatively helpful. Maybe buying a small inflatable 4 line that is rigged and controlled the way that you need to get familiar/ confident with would be money better spent.

As someone fairly new to the sport, my trainer helped me a ton. BUT... I used a Hydra 2 420 (4.5m foil kite) that kicked like a mule when the wind was 20 kts+. Aside from doing figure 8s and kite loops, I learned body dragging on it - downwind and upwind. It saved me several hours of lessons in terms of wind theory, setup, basic kite flying mechanics, and body dragging. To this day, I am a MUCH better body dragger than anyone from my waterstart group class and I am the most confident in different conditions/new beaches - because I know I can body drag upwind close to the theoretical maximums if I have to, even in super light winds or ocean current effects. All of that was because I drilled in body dragging before I did lessons, made the lessons go much faster and much better since I knew what the kite would do when I had the bar a certain way.

Now, if we are talking a 1m trainer for a 110 kg guy, then no, you are not going to get enough benefit to warrant it - alot of beenfit comes from getting to the upwind body dragging stage, since then you can use the instructor to drill you on waterstarts and correcting anything you are mistaken on. I am not a fan of having people spend their hard earned cash on early level lessons for the simple reason it will drain their money before they get to more advanced topics - waterstarts, edging upwind, transitions, jumps, toeside - and they will simply end up using their instructor budget on something they could have easily learned on their own (thru to Body Dragging).

The main keys to making it worthwhile - getting a large enough trainer kite to body drag in moderate wind (18kts+) and pairing it with a DVD like the Progression series or one of the others so that there is a structured learning path to useful things.

I still find it mind boggling to see someone working on downwind waterstarts and then watch that person unable to body drag upwind (poorly taught at most schools). Ummm...just what are you planning on doing to get home if you cannot make it to shallows/shoreline easily?