Ricardo (ripsessionkites) sent me a Navigator bar recently and it arrived ten minutes before we were due to leave for the Hamamatsu beach, so I
chucked a couple of Synergy's in the car ...
A little wind this afternoon, maybe 12 knots so I had a play with the Nav & the Syn.
After weeks of LEI flying, at first I found the bar pressure heavy and the turning slow ... until I got back into Arc Mode ... soon had the Syn 19
whipping around nicely! The wind was really too light but good to test the annoying light wind habits of the arc on the Nav bar though
spent about 2 hours noodling around.
Landed the kite a la carltb method - perfect flagged landing, no twisting! Would have been an easy re-ride!
To review the Navigator ...
- well designed bar; nice attention to little details, like the recessing the line tidy bungy loops & being able to change the bar size.
- safety through the center of the chicken loop - awesome!
- the Ozone Megatron-esque safety - awesome! Although looking at the leash that has the Zero7 red hat, I'm wondering if the Zero7 bars couldn't be
modded like that ...
- double depower line, spinning head and cam cleat trim - very nice, works well and should be bullet proof, although I'm a little worried about the
result of long term stress on the spinning heads erm spinning parts - we'll see. A mile of depower.
- bar foam felt weird ... I like the rougher Zero7 foam better ... I preferred the bolder colours of the Zero7 too! The curved line through the foam
is not just a design element; it's harder than the other foam and gives you a good feeling for where you park your hands. Meh, I know what I mean
- power lines have the V some way up the lines, with the front line safety kind of like the Zero4 ... seems to work nice - the kite flattened out a
lot less in moments of low airspeed and held a stable shape much better in turns etc. Perhaps a bit more responsive to turning inputs when not moving
compared with the Zero7. Kite can still invert though, when I intentionally flew it fast past the edge of the window at about 11 o'clock (I was trying
to get the kite as out of shape as possible to see how much of a difference the bar made) ... the kite sank down and inverted to land LE down and I
depowered then walked toward the kite to flip it over - no problem. Also, just once, the kite went to the RHS of the window and stalled and the safety
line fell through the metal ring and the kite REALLY started to get out of shape ... as it was out over the breakers (beach was narrow today) I jerked
the center line to recover it. So I think it's a good thing.
- line extensions ... hmm, not sure. By that I mean, not sure if I'd notice a difference :D
- didn't like : heat shrink
nuff said!
- didn't like : the big ugly knot that's hidden under the neoprene booty that covers whatever is going on behind the cam cleat ... nasty! Spoils the
smooth lines
- didn't like : like I said, the wishy-washy colours ... FIRE TRUCK red and BOTTOMLESS PIT black please!
Great bar, looking forward to piling the hours on it ... again, massive thanks to Ricardo for the excellent service and taking care of me!
Yeah... I got a kite. Or two...
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:sniff: 
