Hi guys,

Help - can I use a core sensor bar 24m 4 lines (equal length) to a ozone chrono v2 foil kite?

As some of you know JamesPerth is bringing in the Flysurfer range to WA and he asked me to have a crack on them with the crew and give some feedback. I thought why the hell not, having not been on a foil since 2005 wanted to see what this new speed 4 is like and introduce the fellas to the dark side of foil flying :). (It was priceless, the look on their faces when we laid her out to expose all the bridles for launching).

Anyhow we had a ball on the 15m in winds from 13/14 to 16/17 in the gusts. Turned a marginal to average session into a really enjoyable one. Very stable platform and you gotta like the apparent wind pull from the harness, cranking you upwind from your mark. They all enjoyed the extra power a higher aspect foil (even the speed 4) gives you in those conditions. I can only imagine what the new race foils produce!!

Great balance between front and back lines on the 15m, with a surprising amount of accessible static grunt to load for jumps. Really consistent pull up and through the window for jumps giving some decent height to our best jumper in the crew. It's no surprise there is ample hangtime afforded by these higher aspect foils. All board offs were made extremely easy as you had so much bloody time. Even the multi rotational board offs were made easy as you still get decent feedback through the bar in the air.

And that's really where it is at. It's obviously a slow kite to turn compared to 15m leis even higher aspect ones. It's not a bus but you can't get passed all that aspect for turning speed. But I wouldn't say it's not reactive, you just need to work more with your kite and edge and the turns are very smooth and linear. If you like chucking around a kite then you won't click with this type of kite.

It's got excellent hangtime and apparent wind pull and yet and extremely stable canopy. We flew under it a few times and it recovered just fine. Brilliant kite for cruising around and throwing down some old school stuff. I tried a double forward roll downloop transition and ate some serious sh1t so I'm not convinced even a simple downloop (without an edge of a board against it) is very easy, but I'm sure after while you would manage it. Kite just didn't get around and pulled me at high speeds down wind.

The new material is bizzarre, silky smooth stuff, weird as. The funniest part of the whole exercise was trying to get air out of the damn thing at the end of the session. Opened up the flaps etc, then spent a while lying on it trying to get the air out...funny as. Of course you are meant to leave them for a while ...but we aren't the patient type.

So there we have it, I think it's great to try all types of 'wings' (well kites aren't wings really but we like to call them that) and you would do well to get in touch with James and see what they are all about. We had a ball.