So guys, the 4.5 came in the post the other day! I thought i would have a few flights to get used to it in a variation of wind ranges before i made any comments on thye Kite.

So first things first, THIS KITE CAN AND WILL KILL YOU! Dont buy this kite for your first kite! :o It can and will destroy you if you are not confident on power kites in anyway shape or form! This kite will do you some serious damage!

Its decievingly fast and lifty, if you bow tie this kite in a fairly strong wind, then recover it down low in the window, it will drag you on your face until you have let the handles go (hasnt happened to me yet but you can feel its there) Where kite killers at all times with this kite and dont take it out in high winds unless you know exacly what your doing, dont fly this kite in gusty winds ever! unless your very confident with kites or and experienced.

Ths isn a kite for noobs, i would only recommend it to intermediate flyers and above, in a low wind this kite is a sleeping looney, when the wind picks up it turns into a monster! (a fun monster) :D

So thats the disclaimer out of the way!

Now for the good stuff, The kite arrived from pansh in China very quickly and un opened by customs etc, its comes in a fairly poor bag, the handles are poor and the lines are pretty standard. On the invoice i was shocked to see that the kite itself only cost 20 dollars and the rest of the price was for shipping, is this right??

Anyway i put the FF handles and old 6 lines on the kite and took it for the first flight in hardly any wind in a field, it was calm and collected, it turned very fast and still had a tiny bit of lift, so couldnt really get any real idea what the kite was like on the first flight, the next flight was better, it was nice and fast and lifty in constant fair winds.

Third flight was today, and my word i had fun! we hit up the sea front with low constants Force 3 to 4 rising to 4 to 5 in the evening :D so we had time to practice in the lower winds first, we got the Cirrus 6 and the Ace 4.5 out and were flying and bouncing about without trouble, i was enjoying both kites. Funny thing is that i was jumping better on the ace than the cirrus, i had gotten so used to using the airbrake to jump on the Ace that i forgot what to do on the cirrus, well i was using the airbrake on the 6 and it wasnt effective, but thats something i was doing by accident after being on the Ace for so much of the day.

The winds got stronger and we packed up the six so we had a bit more room to fly, Then the Ace showed who it really was! :o Its an Angry kite indeeed and very unforgiving, luckily i had no trouble with bowties etc but my brother was having a torrid time and kept crashing and bowtieing. This kite deserves the upmost respect and you must learn its ways in low winds first!

So i was jumping it ok and i started getting that adrenaline that the Ace delivers again, its not Graceful like our 6, The ace is shouty and nuts like a little bullterrier dog, it floats like a butterfly but stings like a freaking Hornet! :o Its like Ricky hatton or Amir Khan, small but packs one heavy punch, For the most effective technique when jumping, i found that the airbrake was effective, to jump safeley though (well safer :D) One must Redirect the kite ALWAYS as soon as the kite takes you up, and be prepared to cover distance vertically and horizontallly! Its a brute and yanks you up, then drops you back down pretty much just as fast, its like landing a parachute :o But once you know what to expect from the kite then its not so bad, you must be prepared for a fast landing though, it swings your legs out and is arm wrenchinghingly painful if flown for prolonged periods of times in considerable winds. The kite can have safe and controlled jumps with a bit of float but it just doesnt seem right to do it once you know what the kite can do, its like getting out of an Automatic car and into a manual Car when going from the 6m to the 4.5 Ace.

Overall for you guys that know what your doing, and havent aqquired an Ace yet, this is super fun! I have got the Ace Bug, I have actually gone insane and started talking to the kite! Its been making me grin all day!

Thanks for reading guys If you have any questions, i will be happy to try and answer them.

Jack

Fun review, I've always liked my ace for jumping!!

Ive never tried a 5 Ace, is it much different to Jump?

Don't know, my 5 was my first jumper.

It was my go to kite for almost a year.

yes it's a wonderful early starter in low winds and yes it's also a angry little bugger when the winds get strong. lots of personality to the ace... how do you like the lousy stability at zenith?

fast kites are great to jump, eh... you didn't mention the speed of the ace over the cirrus, can be hard to tell with the diff in kite size, but reading between the lines... "one must redirect the kite ALWAYS" ...you are on top of the ace despite its added speed.

yes be really really careful of it in strong gusty winds, that is when the aces enter widow-maker territory in a pretty aggressive way.

Nice review, keep it coming! ....:wee:

Quote:

Originally posted by furbowski Don't know, my 5 was my first jumper. It was my go to kite for almost a year. yes it's a wonderful early starter in low winds and yes it's also a angry little bugger when the winds get strong. lots of personality to the ace... how do you like the lousy stability at zenith? fast kites are great to jump, eh... you didn't mention the speed of the ace over the cirrus, can be hard to tell with the diff in kite size, but reading between the lines... "one must redirect the kite ALWAYS" ...you are on top of the ace despite its added speed. yes be really really careful of it in strong gusty winds, that is when the aces enter widow-maker territory in a pretty aggressive way. Nice review, keep it coming! ....:wee:

I havent noticed the stability issue at the Zenith yet, the zenith is in the middle right at the top no? when a kite seems to want to go over your head?

Yeah Furb, the Ace is sooo much quicker than the 6, the 6 is slow and graceful and predictable but combined with grunt. The Ace on the other hand is very quick, its like comparing a big eagle to a sparrow, the best thing about it though is how i get the best of both traction and lift, i mean the 3m radsails has plenty of pull horizontally and the cirrus 6 has plenty of pull vertically, the Ace has a bit of each of the other kites rolled into one. Speed and lift.

I wont be flying this in gusty winds, luckily though at the sea front spot we only found recently, its rareley gusty as it comes straight off of the sea. The field that we used to fly in makes the wind gusty all the time pretty much, thats the field that i was tripping about when i first came here.

I cant believe how good the kite is for the money though :o Sweat shops spring to mind:puzzled:

bout 6 months ago i flew my ace 6m in very strong(about 18-22) and very gusty winds---it was fun but dangerous--i havent flown it since.........not a kite for gusty winds--glad you like the 4.5--just keep an eye on it--they can be tempermental beasts as you probably already know........

Yeah i wont be taking it to the green if the wind is considerable as its surrounded by huge trees and houses so the wind is horrible when its unclean there one second gone the next bowtying then snapping back open screw that for fun

Seafront is awesome and constant but i wont be taking this out in high winds tbh the other day was fun enough for now in Force4

Got to get me a wind meter next though

Jack, be careful.I have 2 of the smallest Aces 2.5 and 2.0 . I love to fly em in high wind. I would have never guessed that a 2.0 could fling 185 lbs like it was nothing , in 15-25 mph. In fact it is the scariest kite I got, in high wind.
I think the thing w/ the supposed cost is a lie to get past customs without you having to pay duty or taxes. I got one that said it was a" kite sample ":puzzled:

Now what do you mean by air-breaking to jump?

a friend of mine just got a 5m ace but we havent had any windy days to try anything out on really...

i am said friend :D

Welcome, said friend

to weldngod - Yes thanks for the concern, i can imagine what those lil aces are like, i flied my radsails 3 in crazy winds and it pulled immensly luckily horizontally though, i will be very careful and avoid those silly winds at all costs, next up is an anonometer so i can get to know thw wind better.

to jolt - the airbrake i have been using to cut back the kite getting ready for a pendulum jump, not whilst redirecting, it just seems more affective, on my slow 6m kite, i dont have to use the airbrake, just pull down and it swoops back across and gently takes me up and down.

by using the air brake i mean, pushing my hand forward as you would to land the kite for a quicker turn, although i wont be using this overpowered.

Quote:

Originally posted by Jack1988 by using the air brake i mean, pushing my hand forward as you would to land the kite for a quicker turn, although i wont be using this overpowered.

I couldn't quite get this...

But if it is "as you would to land the kite" I'd describe that as putting tension on the brake line, by rotating the top of my hand forwards so the bottom of that handle moves back, most often towards me.

Also... Although all kites jump differently (go from a big FB to a synergy for example, I'm having to relearn everything from launches and landings argh, it's like dropping a Texan trucker into Beijing and asking him to try controlling traffic LOL) on my FBs I have have found that brake turns are faster and less powered. The only reason I wouldn't use brakes overpowered is because the turns might be too fast for me to deal with on small kites.

And yes the little aces are just about the ultimate bees on crack when overpowered, not to mention lethal.

I learned to static jump on the Ace 5, but it shares some of the qualities of the smaller aces. Be careful. The sensitivity of the aces to their brakes makes kite killers work well on them.

lol my bad explanation, i should have said, i Flick the wrist forward and downwards, better?

yeah man its strange, specific kites jump very differently, i had to relearn on the pansh and then i had to relearn on the cirrus, all with enjoyment none the less lol. It seems that if i brake turn a bigger kite it doesnt feel as powered than if i just pulled down on the handles but with the 4.5 its exactly the opposite.

Ive found that even in considerable wind the ace is safeley landable and it doesnt drag me forward, unlike the cirrus 6, but i think its to do with the vents, on the Ace the vents are open, and on the cirrus, the vents are open with mesh and they are all the way along the kite which i would presume makes it very difficult to land because the vents never fully close up.

Yes i will always be careful if the winds are considerable.

Ive definitly got hooked to the way the ace jumps though, its faster and more boysterous than my other kite and ultimatly more fun (dangerous i know) but the other day i found myself going up about 5 or 6 ft but then covering about 10 minutes horizontally, its crazy and i was getting a buzz that i didnt get on the 6. Still got to be sensible though.

Alright makes sense, thanks guys...

one of the odd things about pansh kites is that the kites are not tweaked to fly well for their size. Many of the better kite companies will make their smaller kites a little less in AR for stability, (very nice in the smaller sizes) for example. But pansh doesn't do that, so the extra speed isn't bled off the smaller aces, and the bigger ones aren't optimized for turning speed.

So there are lots of quirks up and down the range. Also a certain random factor. There are lifty aces and fast aces, different generations of kite with different qualities but no good way to tell them apart, and finally all the kites fly a little different.

FWIW...

btw, I missed something in one of your earlier posts... I mentioned the poor stability of the ace and you came back with something about "o is that when the kite flies over your head?"... well actually good stable kites do that much less than the ace, with some it's very difficult to force, even.

You were right Furbowski, i found out just how unstable it is at the zenith today in the field with dirty gusting changing direction winds, its scary.

:wee:

wait until you get a race kite,they will go to zenith and right over you and behind you. The aces will do it ,but not as bad.
Just be careful Jack, we don't want your next post to be from a hospital bed.