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[Ray]

Just so we are clear, I have been flying stunt kites for a whole week. I have a Thunderfoil 1.7 that I started with and I got a great deal on this Skydog Thunderstruck that I will go over today. I flew it for the first time on the beach in Galveston in 12+ mph winds, today. This is my experience and yours may vary. I had previously opened the kite up at home and learned to assemble it quickly and the lines appeared to be equal. Because they are just light braided nylon lines I should have stretched them or used a different set but I wanted to see what the stock set up flew like. First the less than stellar issues and there were only two and one of them has to do with my lack of stunt skills. The first downside was that as soon as the kite lifted off the left line stretched almost 2 feet leaving me with a very difficult control situation altough my arms were long enough to turn it left still. I think a light spectra set that is pre stretched would be real nice for this kite but at the price nobody is going to complain. The other I problem I had was the fact that I know next to nothing about stunt wings and had to keep setting it up to launch again because I would get the kite face down and be unable to relaunch it. Not the kites fault I am sure but practicing stalling it out on the edge of the wind window I was only able to get it to land facing me, standing up once. I need more practice.

Now the good, this is the rainbow version and is a lovely kite in the air or on the ground. All of the spars fit snugly and creat a nice rigid structure that flew wonderfully from the first liftoff. I was able to make it turn circles on its wingtip and yet it flew slow enough to give me time to react even in the faster wind we started getting after noon today. Before flying it I had visions of crashing it and breaking structure. I never crashed the kite, though I did have some stall landings that forced me to walk to the kite and set it back up for launch on a dune. Once I get the line issue worked out I am sure my stall practice will be more successful. The kite hovered nicely but with slack lines it was difficult to recover without ending up face down on the sand. It is a beginners kite so I did not expect any serious precision but I had a lot of fun flying it around and working on stalls out on the edge of the wind. Even in strong gusts the kite did not pull excessively and I could have flown it all day had I not just had a 2 hour work out with the foil kite just before.

As a beginner, this kite went together easily, flew nicely, taught me to use quality lines always!, and taught me that foil kites are serious workout kites. I had a lot of fun with it for about half an hour and I look forward to flying it with an even line set in the near future(tomorrow). I am thinking about a nice long line with some nice long rainbow tails for fun when the wind is higher. I would also caution that while I am a beginner, the foil kite gave me a lot of early experience in flight so that the Thunderstruck was not hard to understand and fly. If I had started with this kite, I might have broken something in an early crash. The stretch of the left line was serious enough that I did not want my better half to try it just yet. Her arms are not long enough to make up the length difference of the lines lengths.

Thumbs up for an affordable, fun kite for a new kiter. Maybe I should stack some?


Ray

[John Barresi]

Fair review Ray, thanks for posting it!