sweetriffs said...
Wouldn't say mags belong to the past waveslave otherwise there'd be nothing on the shelf at local newsagent.
Saffer, how can there be too many variables? Same day, same beach, each rider has an hour on each kite. How can that be flawed? You could say the same for sport bike reviews. 'oh, but there was a bit of rain when I rode that bike and you had just sun.' Bull****.
Simple, the wind can vary on any given day. I've been out at a kitespot where the first hour was clean wind and the next two were gusty.
Your choice of kite is impacted by what you ride now. If you are used to a fast kite, anything slower will seem sluggish, if you're used to a slow kite, anything faster will seem twitchy.
Then, the consideration of build and construction. Kite seems great, but seam fails after 2 months. Picked up in a one hour kite test? Nope. Cabrinha had a bad year where leading edges failed, the kite was rated by many mags as a great one because they didn't pick it up during tests.
Next example, familiarity of equipment. If you're used to cabrinha, the bar seems natural. If you're used to a cleat, using a cleat is easy, if you're not, its terrible. As one example, last test I saw, they complained about the Rebel depower rope being too far away for short armed people. Most people who have the kite know you can adjust it the distance of the depower rope from the rider in about 20 seconds. They marked it as a negative and marked down the kite's points. 5 riders didn't pick that up?? Example of how you need to get to know a kite before making comments which often can't be picked up in an hour. Other kites they also did the same thing, didn't pick up simple things on the kite and marked them as negative when in reality they didn't know the equipment.
