I had been using a couple of larger sizes of the Charger 2 this winter and had some great sessions riding the 15. Coming in to the spring I took the 15 and 18 to both wildwood and JIBE and the performance in the buggy was as good as I had hoped and even exceeded my expectations when conditions were variable and offshore. Very stable, good kite response and power and speed. The size that I was most curious about was the new 6.5m. The size at .5 sounded like a size that might be optimized for better flight characteristics and I hoped it would prove to be as nice as the larger sizes with stability and confidence at speed.
At JIBE I pulled out the 6.5 later one afternoon just to see how it flew. I had been buggying with either a 15 or 18 that day and thought I wouldn't be able to buggy but launched it for a test fly. It felt like flying a a small nimble q foil, fast and easy to throw around yet was giving me a nice power feel in that wind and hopped in a buggy and was able to throw the kite around enough to ride. Not really a good judge of conditions where I would need to use the kite but it was fun.
Cut to today...a cold wind allowed us to get up to buggy a beach when we would normally be finished spring buggy season until the fall.
We started off with Ziggy using his original phantom 9 and Jim on a Synergy 8. I was setting up the 6.5 and Jim came back saying he could probably go a size up but he continued with the 8 synergy while I launched the 6.5 and gave chase to Jim. I couldn't catch Jim but I didn't loose ground and kept pace. Kite was working good and felt nice and stable and at that lighter wind speed I could easily throw it around to build up more power and speed.
Later in the afternoon the wind came up a bit more to 20mph, still not really high wind but a nice steady wind for a change. Ziggy had switched to use his original 6m Phantom and we rode together. The 6.5 Charger II is very stable, no bobbling, no forward surging and dropping back, no clapping or jellyfishing or dramatic tendency to swing to the zenith at speed. Ziggy and I were cruising very closely matched. There were times where one or the other would get a little more speed but the other would gradually catch up - that difference could be attributed to any number of things.
The biggest thing I noticed riding beside Ziggy with kites close together was Ziggy original Phantom 6 did have a lot more movement and flexing to it. As the wind increased it had some gusts and the Phantom 1 was starting to show some pulsing and wingtip shudder while the Charger 2 was steady and I could ride one hand on the bar no problem.
The wind was just comfortable speed for playing and cruising but the kite still delivered me a 40.5 mph on a somewhat hardpack beach.
I can't wait to get this kite out in more wind, so far it's showing great promise for a high wind arc. I want to get it on a little thinner flying line and possibly a bit shorter flying line as well.
Bottom line compared to some of the recent 6m arcs this one brings back a lot of the characteristics that brought us to love arcs in the first place.
I've got some go pro video that I'll go through to see if there is some footage worth posting
Mark

just a few clips that show the kite running stable. I didn't need to keep an eye on it for control but had to look at it once in a while so I could get it in the video. It has a fair amount of looking forward and sideways so I hope it doesn't give you a headache to watch.

That did look promising I must say. However, the 6m Phantom II flies like that if you take it out in 20 mph winds. Things get hairy with it when you NEED to take it out because you can't handle flying the 9 anymore. I'm still hoping for winds 35-40 mph that aren't all over the place to test out the 6 PII. I'd like to give one of these a run though. Looks like a chubby little kite in the sky but it was running way forward in the window both directions.

Thanks for the in depth review Mark!

you're right Bobby. I want to get it up into some higher winds. At least at the highest point of the wind that day i could still ride one hand on the bar and it tracked good and still no sign of wanting to swing fast upward. But we'll see in higher gusty winds how it performs - it may need to wait until the fall now before we can get back to beach riding.

It is "chubbier" than than the Phantoms for sure - especially when you get a kite up beside the original Phantom but also fatter than the new Phantom. I still have a Charger 1 - 6m that I've been doing some adjustments on for stability at speed but I don't have any comparison to the Phanny 2 6m.

I do like the speed on the Phanny 2s that i have but I do like the the "grunt" power on the Charger II. There are times when the wind drops a little and the phanny 2 is flying but I need to really work it to get any power on the bottom end.

I got the chance to run the 6.5 in some higher winds at a kite festival in St Honoré Québec on the weekend. The festival is held at an airport and the short taxi runway is used for buggying while the longer runways are still active. The area marked off is about 700 meters but you still need room to slow down and turn at each end so that puts you maybe around 550 to 600 meters of runway. There are usually a good number of riders out and you need to zig zag around others while also watching kites up and down but higher gusty winds left the runway open for some runs. The winds were very gusty and running at anywhere from 10 degrees to 45 degrees off perpendicular so one way was downwind and the other upwind. The gusts were around 45 to 57kmh (35 mph) with sustained probably 35kmh (22 mph). The 6.5 was overall very steady and I could ride one handed when needed and did a max run at 74.8 kmh (46.5 mph) but this is only within maybe 15 seconds before reaching the end of the runway. If there was more room to go the actual buggy speed would have been much higher, it was more about the wind conditions being higher and very gusty. The only time it felt a little hairy was when I needed to do a quick dodge downwind of a kite parked vertical and the lines got loose and the kite opened up and drifted and rotated a little. I did bobble in position a bit but I was also running at slight angles to the wind and tougher to keep a solid pressure on the kite without room to get a good run to really build speed more. No dramatic swings - it felt in control so I'm still impressed with it's performance at this next level of speed.

Now the downside - at one point while standing and not watching the kite there was a gust and a hole in the wind and the kite drifted and started to fall sideway in the dead air and then a big gust caught it as I was playing with the bar and caught a line causing the kite to spin and i ran forward getting the kite down just behind a row of vehicles and not on them. The tips must have hit harder on the spin as one rod was punched right through the new re-inforcing on the tip and even tore a small 1/8 of the webbing and the other rod almost through - damn! But a few layers of gorilla tape as a quick patch over and it was good to go. But I do need to fix up the tips and replace that cut vinyl caps (that I normally do) with a better end protection.

Mark, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this kite after another kiting season :-) Would you consider this to be a goto high-wind kite, assuming you want to launch an arc?

What's the low-end on the kite? Can you fly this reasonably as a substitute for a 8/9m arc in say 18 mph winds?

Hey Nick, well another kiting season for us up here is quite different from others with easy access to buggy. We only have a couple of good hardpack beaches to use for a number of weeks in the spring and fall but they are a distance to drive to and then they need the perfect wind direction and getting the right weather on weekends which seems to be more and more of a long shot. So between last fall and this spring we got out maybe 5 times and never had a higher wind session. We have far more winter kiting as well as a water season. I did get one session this winter on it and it was a really crazy gusty wind day. The kite was fine but conditions were hairy as hell. I gave my still almost new 6m charger 1 to a friend that I thought was ready but it proved too fast and he nailed it straight down onto ice within 30 seconds of launch, but I was finding the 6.5 easier control the reactions better, more stability (that 6m Charger 1 is still on my repair list but I also want to try modding it)
Since that short winter session, the next time I pulled it out was at JIBE on a day when I was just comfortable with the 12m phantom 2. It was underpowered but I could work it to get going and had a blast playing around rolling backwards and throwing it all over the place looping it behind me and sliding and even pulled off one full reverse deadman with it but it was using short lines. The one thing that stood out from that session was really ripping the kite around and it was moving fast and turning quick and when I really loaded it up and threw it in the down turn it overloaded the kite on the short line set (around 55 ft lines) and the kite folded in half with the high pressure tips touching and then popped open as soon as less tension. I've never had that happen flying in high winds on regular line lengths. That was quirky. The winds I was flying it in during the winter day were 45kmh with gusts to 65 km. I had been impressed with the bottom end on it thinking I wouldn't even be able to get rolling but worked it to get rolling at a decent cruising speed when it was probably just over 20 kmh (maybe 15 mph). But the better wind range would start more like 20mph and up from that. For the limited number of times I had been able to use it I was finding it my favorite kite - the folding up with short lines when super loaded was a surprise and maybe I'll find a length for a short line set length that will not pinch it - maybe 75 ft. I had a new 8m charger 2 here but passed it along to a friend before I had a chance to fly it and I usually only see him using the arcs in winter or maybe fall buggying so I want to see how that compares. Between the phantom 2 and charger 2 I prefer the charger 2 because it has more grunt when I need it and they hold air pressure better than my phantoms. I know that doesn't give you much more to go on.

Here's a link to a couple of runs on the short runway at the St Honore kite fest last year. All the other guys found the wind too gusty to ride so it was just me and one other guy with the buggy taxi using a very small kite. You run out of runway too fast needing to slow down before getting close to the restricted area, only about 15 seconds to build speed. I go back to this same festival in a week and a half.

http://vimeo.com/68699866

That's helpful Mark. Both the 8m and the 6.5m spark my interest as interesting sizes for the charger 2's. I've never had the chance to fly one, I'll have to do so sometime. I need a small kite for trips out west, and for close to home. It's a gap in my quiver I'm running into more often. I was asking about the low end because I was trying to figure out if you could jump from a 12m to a 6.5m without something inbetween. The 8m is probably a better choice for ensuring coverage, but in that case I wonder what the high end for that kite looks like. The primary purpose is to perform well in high wind; be able to go fast, but safely :-)

Do chargers 2's have a good depower range? I suppose I'm really looking for a 6m phantom 1 replacement, and it seems the p2 isn't it. Perhaps the 6.5m charger 2 fills the void better.