hi all,,,question?i bought a tantrum 250 at windscape kite festival today in swiftcurrent,flew it for a bit,crashed twice,then the left side of the kite would fold in whenever i tried to go left,bud,from kiteguys flew it and said that a cell on the left side had blown.
question is,,,is this a common thing"brand new",,are they not made to put up with a few crashes?bud was going to give me another one,,i decided to upgrade a bit and i got the snapshot 2.5 instead,,,i havent flown it yet,,i hope this is not something that will happen again?big money for it, so i hope its made better.thanks in advance for your thoughts on this.

Snapshot 2.5 is a decent first foil for static flying.. Any twin skin foil will be subject to blowing out if you fly it into the ground. The answer to that is simply to not fly it into the ground under power. The impact with the ground first closes the baffles and the impact only adds pressure to a "now closed" baffle space. Know that if you're headed towards the ground with the kite out of control, you have to resist the urge to pull back on both lines as that will only make the ground get there faster.. Teach yourself to pull one side or the other.. It will quickly pull the kite out of the dive. Let go of a line if you have to but don't ram the kite into the ground.. I do acknowledge that that's easier said than done but PRACTICE it. Avoid the crashes by learning how they happen and practice your escape route.

Another trick is to remember your hands should be side by side. You should fly a 2 line kite like a bike instead of a car. New kiters tend to try an turn the kite by trying to "turn a steering wheel" Treat the straps a bit more like handlebars and pull one or the other while you are high up in the air.. Get used to that motion and you can start maneuvering closer to the ground.

Another option is a foil like the Peter Lynn UNIQ.. It only has a single skin and therefore no baffles to blow.. I haven't personally flown one but I'm sure a few folks that have will list pro/cons for that particular kite.

It ships as a 2 line but has the bridles ready to introduce you to 4 line flying.. All you have to do is add a second set of lines and a set of handles.

It's still a large enough kite to surprise you if you aren't careful..

you never know which crash will do a cell in...could be the first one totally not unheard of
the higher the wind the harder the crash...so best to dial in your kite control in moderate wind before going bigger

I have a 2.5 Snapshot. I started with a smaller Snapshot 1.2 which allowed me to get the feel for a foil before going larger. It was the first two line kite I bought during my kite reawakening almost three years ago. My previous experience had been with two line deltas so I had some advantages there. I had to learn how to solo launch the small kite which was not too difficult but it was the main unknown. The little kite was fast but took a fair amount of wind to fly at first. I actually learned some light wind flying techniques with the 1.2 foil. Once I got a fair amount of control I bought a 2.5, flew it once & ordered the extra lines & handles to go quad. It is a whole new world flying quad on handles. I was relearning dualie deltas at the same time. The quad 2.5 taught me reverse launches, using brakes for turns & backing the kite down from high in the window. Later, when I started flying Revolution kites, the experience was quite helpful. One hint I could give foil fliers is something I learned from Rev flying. If you are flying in light wind & the wing tip folds inward, give that side of the kite a little pop on the line & the sail should reinflate. Then take a few steps back to complete the turn & fly back more into the power part of the window. Keep your foil moving forward & the apparent wind will fill the cells. You can do stalls & reversed flying but that will come with time on the lines. Just a few thoughts from a solo hill billie kite flailer... SHBKF