if its considered "Old Skool" to fly with blades these days then call me a dinosaur. Brilliant day with by Flexifoil Blade IV 6.5 on Aberavon Beach in
South Wales. Many Thanks to Flexifoil team rider Helen Norris for filming me and making the video.
RedSky - 10-5-2014 at 12:04 PM
Nice riding! Jumping with a bug is something I could never do. Even if I had the skills I think my lower back would really suffer.
Its only considered old school if you're flying Blade I or II. I love Blades. Many a happy decade under them.
The Blades have great lift but nothing compared to Flysurfers or other big floaty depowerables. It seems a lot of freestylers these days have swapped
their Blades for these big express elevator kites.
Thing is, when it comes to freestyle, in my humble (observation only) opinion, big floaty depowerable kites can sometimes kill the fluid motion of
freestyle, they keep you up there too long! I've noticed this with landboarding. You can end up running low on momentum and dangle like a worm on a
hook.
You have it just right. You go high but come down quick. You're not up there long enough to lose momentum. You finish the trick just as you land. I
think the ultimate kite for buggy freestyle would be an LEI. This is coming from someone who has never jumped however. What do you think?
ted123456 - 10-5-2014 at 01:44 PM
Haha even a blade Iv seems to be considered prehistoric these days. Why I don't know.
At four times the price of a blade I would expect to have greater hang time.... I'd feel cheated if it didn't. Like you said, I think these big floaty
depowers are taking away the momentum, power and fluidity of buggy freestyle though they do allow flyers to more easily and safely push themselves and
do more tricks compared to if they are on a Blade. Also everything is all slow moving and lazy with these big depowers. However the flysurfer
generation has allowed more people to try freestyle as it's relatively safer and
with the added hang time they can push more spins and try these weird things called buggy offs
An lei is cool as that has the turn of speed.
To be fair though I've only ever flown blades, even from when I started kiting, so I can only really comment on what I've seen.
In freestyle though a big depower gets you airborne sooner, but again if you had a kite three times the size on and 8.5 blade then you would hope it
would fly in lower winds......rawkite was a perfect example of this. I could hardly get off the floor but the riders on a 21m were getting nice floaty
jumps.
So long as people are free styling then that's the main thing..... They should just expect a bit of banter from me if using depower hahaha
Cheers for your kind comments. Helen will be glad you liked her video. If you land softly you don't get a bad back
and
with the added hang time they can push more spins and try these weird things called buggy offs 