KiteATB.co.uk

Manufacturer:

Flysurfer

Model:

Pulse

Sizes:

10M

Type Of Kite:

Closed cell bridled depower foil (water re-launchable)

Introduction:

The basic reason for me getting this kite was mainly because of the hype. I didn’t need another kite as I had 4 that covered every wind range that I would venture out in but the concept of the so called “Full depower” and gust munching ability of a kite that was unlike any other attracted me. So after a bit of digging I managed to get an ex-demo along with a new speed system chucked in for free.

Packaging, Style + Construction:

On unpacking the delight the postman had sent me I was first presented with the new flysurfer bag which was highly disappointing! The only thing that had changed was the colour and an additional extra pocket. The bag is one of the main things that I dislike about this brand. They are uncomfortable and impractical. The bag has a pocket on each of the sides of the bag and a small key pocket on the front flap. There is a full length zip that expands the bag out to make it easier to get your kite away and a set of net vents that are really too small to do anything ample. There are a few bits of webbing that allow you to attach your snowboard/kiteboard to your back. Your board then slips into a nose pouch to stop it from falling down.  This is fine but the problem comes when you place the bag on your back.

Lugging this bag around is damn uncomfortable. You can feel everything that’s in your bag sticking into your back whilst the straps cut into your shoulders. Not good for those long hikes.

The worst thing is if you store the bag away. The zips on the bag react with the atmosphere and produce a white powder that stops the zip from working. I am so glad they didn’t use the same zip on the kite as well.

Now for the kite itself.
The kite is very well made. Beautifully designed with all the stitching internally so the stitches don’t get caught against debris on the ground. The bridle points are reinforced and the whole kite looks bomb proof.

This is a water re-launchable foil so it has no cell openings except for 2 one way cells that allow air in but limits its escape. This makes the foil apparently float on water. I think flysurfer were having a joke with the air intakes as there a big warning signs on them with a caution notice. It’s as If they can intake in so much air that small children can be sucked up. I was a bit disappointed that the air inflation handles have disappeared as on previous flysurfers series this used to make pre-inflation a breeze.

If you trap air in a kite then you need a way of getting it out when you pack down. This is when you notice the deflation zip. It’s huge, the biggest one I’ve seen and placed the full width of the kite directly in the middle. Deflating the kite is easy. Open the zip and fold the kite in two with the wing zips into the wind and air gets pushed out.

The kite looks bomb proof and care has been taken in each step of the canopy making.

I feel that flysurfer instead of taking a step forward have taken a step back in the material selection for this kite. It feels heavy, quite soft and waxy but very strong. It is a totally different material that is used compared to the psycho 2 and doesn’t seem to hold in the air as well when you have landed the kite. I know my P2 stays inflated until you walk over and undo the zips. The pulse on the other hand looses quite a bit of inflation just sitting there. To me, I can’t see how this material would be beneficial on water. Also when this foil gets wet and is landed on the sand the sand sticks to it like glue. This happened the second time I flew the kite and it just wouldn’t take off. There seems to be no proofing on the material. My P2 which is almost 3 years old doesn’t have this problem and seems much lighter.

The bridles as with all flysurfers look like they are prone to tangling. And defiantly are. During the whole time I have been with flysurfers I have had more tangles during setup than what I have with other kites. The main reason is that the bridles and speed system lines are so soft. There’s no stiffness to them to stop them from tangling up. The problem is resolved by the correct packing technique of the kite, lines and bar after use but sometimes you may be in a hurry to get out of the rain, or if you are out in high winds and it’s too awkward to pack up. This is when tangles can occur.

With the pulse there is a steering mutation setting for the bar pressure. This works really well, the lightest setting allows the kite to be control by your little finger. The hardest really works the arm muscles and of cause you have a series of inbetween settings.

Bar
The usual beautiful bar the flysurfers come with. Colour coded so you know when you have the bar upside down and usual trimmer. From the original flysurfer bars the pulse bar has been simplified. The cross brake handle has gone and has been replaced by two handles that the back lines connect to. Believe it or not, they are called “oh sh*t handles”. These handles can be used in many ways. To land the kite by pulling on both like a normal foil, to use as an alternative safety, or to flag out the kite during a landing so there is zero pull. A kite with plenty of safety features, I’m starting to like.

Lines
Older flysurfers had the lovely 3 line system which was simple to untwist and untangle. The pulse is a bit different. It has the traditional 4 lines and an extra one what is called a “full depower” line which is a 5th line that suppose to work as a safety that folds the kite back on itself. Nice idea…. Shame it doesn’t work in high winds.

You also get a detachable leash, which confused me as all other flysurfers I have flown the leash is permanently connected. There must be a reason so I had a look at the manual and found that the leash can attach to one of the oh sh*t handles for activating the alternative safety or it can be attached to the chicken loop to use as a suicide leash for advance users who perform handle passes at high altitudes.

The lines connect to the bar via traditional larks heads but the lines are unsleeved and become tatty very soon but don’t loose their strength. Connection at the kite end is done via metal connectors called “easy line connectors” which are a really good idea, until you loose one. The loss of a connected would mean you would have to loop connect the lines. A simple figure of 8 larks head attachment point would have been much better. This would also allow the lines to be sleeved.

The kite is defiantly packed full of features along with a number of flaws. Now time to see if it stands up to the hype with the so called incredible depower that some people have also marked as “total depower”. I was already a bit disappointed as I now found that the “full depower” tag was just a safety line feature and had nothing to do with depowering the kite in the air so it can still be flown.

Setup and Flying:

When you get the kite the bar is connected to the lines and packed correctly so no problems with tangles. The day was a gusty 25mph, not the best day to fly a new kite in but I am experienced with flysurfers so I wasn’t too worried.

I unrolled the kite and zipped up the huge deflation zip. I sanded the edge and laid out the lines. Attached the safety to the 5th line clip and set the trimmer to full depower. I walked back to the kite to get some inflation in the kite via the air intakes. Grabbed the cell openings and held the LE into the wind. The kite inflated very quickly. I gave the kite enough inflation to leave a nice bubble of air along the LE and left launching to do the rest.

I walked back to the kite and attached the safety to my harness and then clipped into the chicken loop. I decided to go for a direct downwind launch to see how much it would pull.

I did the usual technique that I use with flysurfers and that is to take one step back to raise the LE slightly off the ground and into the wind and held it there to get a bit more inflation before fully committing to the launch. I was amazed as the kite sucked in all the air it needed for almost full inflation. I have never seen a closed cell kite inflate as easily as this one.

I then went for the launch. The kite went straight up through the power zone and took in the last bit of air it needed to inflate. I never scudded! I hardly felt the kite go up. I made a few pass of the kite and let out the depower strap so it was fully powered. It was creating little scudds when the bar was out but not much. I then passed the kite through the window with the bar in and found where all the power was! This kite has so much depower it’s just silly and it turned so quickly but very smoothly.

I got on my board and had a couple of runs and just laughed like a girl at how easy this kite was. I tried to go as fast as I could and as quick as I could. The kite accelerated fast but not too fast to be a problem, working the kite was a piece of cake, no stalling, luffing or any instability. The turns were quick and constant power throughout. The kite felt like you could really chuck it about and with all that depower it wasn’t going to spank me when things went wrong.

I was flying in 25mph and felt I could easily take on more. The depower is extreme but it is not “total” depower. I would think this is impossible for any kite.

The ground handling of the kite ranges from poor to extremely good due to the many ways of landing the kite.

The worst way is landing in high winds is with the “full depower” 5th line. The idea is that the bar is released and travels partly up the 5th line which results in the kite folding back on itself and comes down, eventually. Almost five minutes I had to wait for the kite to come down. It was like flying a big one liner pita bread. It would fall on the ground then lift up again then flip over and back up again. In the end I wheeled the kite in via the line.

The best way to land in high winds is to hold onto both “oh sh*t” handles and land the kite like any depowerable foil by pulling on the brake lines. Now from here you have three options. Place a stake through the handles and the kite will stay there. Hook the handles on the side of the bar to keep the brake tension on, or unhook and release one handle whilst keeping hold of the other. This will flag the kite out like a Peter Lynn Arc with zero pull.

The stability scores top marks in gusty weather but only when a small mod is done to the pully lines. This is a very annoying thing with the pulse. The pulse on it’s own without the mod will work fine in clean winds but get it in the turbulent stuff then it’s a right handful. The mod s easily done and involves adjusting length between the pully and the figure of 8 knots by a set amount. This is repeated for each of the pullies and takes 2 minutes but has to be changed back for lighter winds as the backstall is increased. This has turned out a pain and I have set about doing what flysurfer should of done in the first place (and which they did with all their other pre-pulse kites) and that is to make up a WAC line for each of the pullys with a number of knots so you can just move to a knot for the wind conditions. It’s easy enough to loosen the figure of 8 knot and move it but sometimes I fly in very cold and wet conditions and the last thing I want to do is faff about trying to loosen a knot to move it a set amount.

An outstanding feature with the kite is the ability to reset the kite back to factory trim. This means any stretching or shrinking in the bridles can be removed and the kite will be in pre-mod perfect trim (yes, the bridles will shrink from the heat produced by the pully if they get jammed with sand). This is done by what is know as a mixer test and is fully explained in the manual. But it does involve moving the same figure of 8 knot that you have introduced the mod with. This means the mixer test is completed then the knots changed again for the mod and everything rechecked.

Jumping:

This came to me as a bit of a shock as the previous day I was flying arcs. Normally for me to get good height on an arc I have to commit and really yank in the bar. I made the mistake of doing this with the pulse. I sent it back fast and then slammed in the bar and immediately threw the bar out as I thought the kite had just ripped my torso from my legs. I seriously shot up at break neck speed! Throwing out the bar spilt all the power from the kite and I cam down quite fast. Bar back in and I hovered! This is a whole new ball game.

The second try I had it sorted. Sent the kite back less aggressively and pulled in the bar not as far and the kite pooped me off the ground. I kept the bar in, redirected and floated gracefully back down.

This kite can lift and the pop is amazing (pop = acceleration and ease of lift). The best kite I have flown for the job but keep that bar in otherwise you coming down hard and fast because you can “dump” all the power out of the sail. Maybe there is a downside to having all that depower.

Final Summary:

All in all a lovely piece of kit that replaces the wind range on 3 of my 4 kites. Lifty, floaty (with correct technique), super quick turns, amazing depower and good stability even without the mod (far better stability that is getting on to being quite close to an Peter Lynn arc with the mod) but seriously falls down on the finishing.

Making the mod a WAC setting like the bar pressure settings would be a good start. Getting rid of the metal line connectors and sleeving the lines and connecting via larks heading to a conventional knot would be another. Changing the chicken loop as it has a habit of popping off the harness in low winds would be beneficial. The final bit would be to use the same material as the psycho 2 and to redesign the bag.

Flysurfer have made a kite that would seriously test other kites but lack of detail holds it back in beating them. We could solve the majority of these for ourselves but why should we when we have just shelled out on a kite that is similar in price to a second hand car?

To me it is a step forward in technology but a step back in quality.

Reviewer:

DaZZa-S