Stiring up some questions: I am sure most of you can answer this one.. From less than a meter in size up to about 6 meters, what kite would you match with what wind speed? For kiting and buggying....

Depends on a lot of things, your weight, ability level, what you plan on doing with it, buggy or board, speed or freestyle, the surface you're running on. Clean or gusty winds.

At NABX, I was nicely powered on a 2m kite, normally I fly a 5m or bigger. So it's kinda hard to come up with a fixed list of options. More details will allow us to give you a more refined answer.

Also, not all kites are equal per meter of sail. A race kite will easily out power a beginner kite of the same size, but the power comes at a cost of stability and friendliness.

Good start: weight is 160lbs, ability level is beginner, plan on buggying and I would assume it would be called speed. The surface is sand,, mosty soft sand,, I have a bigfoot buggy. Winds could be either clean or gusty depending on wind direction. I have a 3meter beamer and I am getting a 1.5 pro-foil. I am looking to get a 2m maybe flexifoil. A friend of mine "Brian" let me try a 2.5 a few weeks ago in 17 to 25 mph winds and it worked well for me.

Joecat, I had two best kiting sessions in Wildwood before. One with Ozone Riot 5M (with buggy) and the other one with 10M Ozone Frenzy depower (with landboard). Ozone Riot was replaced by Haka and there is a more beginner's kite, Cult. I think you can get more out of something around 5M in your situation. - Brian

Hey Brian, I thought I was going to get out today (sunday) but the wind was way too high. It was gusting to 50mph the news said. So when I go for bigger than the 3m beamer,, you think a 5m would be good? I will consider that,,, what type of winds are we talking about with a 5m?

I am not sure of wind range for 5M. I had a bad habit of not using wind meter. The day we went out , your 3M would have been a perfect size (I was using 3.5M). 3.5M and 5M were most used kites when I went to Wildwood beach almost every weekend last year. Besides, you are riding bigfoot in soft sand, which means you need a little more pull then on hard surface. Shoot an email to Don at kiteplace dot com. He goes to Wildwood beach quite often from what I heard. Get more suggestions before you spend big $. - Brian

Well, if you've got smooth wind, the JoJo or Century style kite is awesome, but they require some skill to fly properly. Awesome kites, but not ideal for the beginner.

If you know you're going to be into some spirited running up and down a nice open beach, a midrange kite would be fine. Something like the Rage, Samauri, Brooza would be the ticket. You'll want to avoid super lifty kites like the Blade until you have awesome contol of the kite.

I'll give you the rundown of the Brooza's because I'm familiar with them and have the spec sheet in front of me. They have decent gust absorbing qualities for the lumpy winds and still move at a fair clip. In Nevada I hit 45.6mph on a 2m kite in probably around 20-25mph winds.

2m Brooza - 15mph-35mph
3m Brooza - 12mph-23mph
4m Brooza - 8mph-19mph
5.5m Brooza - 6mph-15mph
7.5m Brooza - 4mph-12mph

Quote:

Originally posted by Pablo In Nevada I hit 45.6mph on a 2m kite in probably around 20-25mph winds. 2m Brooza - 15mph-35mph 3m Brooza - 12mph-23mph 4m Brooza - 8mph-19mph 5.5m Brooza - 6mph-15mph 7.5m Brooza - 4mph-12mph

AHA,
My GPS must be set to mph from NABX ? I only hit 18.6 on Saturday. It seemed way too slow even though I didn't get any real speed up. 18.6mph makes a lot more sense. I'll have to change it back. KPH sounds so much faster :wink2:

Sorry Ken, everyone else uses MPH, so it made it easy to compare speeds.

Got my "Pro-Foil" 1.5 today. Tried it out.. Wind on my wind meter was saying about 10mph.. that was ground level and I am sure the gusts were up higher. I was in a bad area,,, not clean wind. buildings, trees, There were gusts. But anyway the kite packed a pretty good punch. Handled pretty well for as much as I could tell. It moved pretty fast as some said the small kites do. I was able to get it to spin,, unwind when it spun on its on.