Even better than the real thing- review of riffclown's #77 72" Veraton

[Sardonycus]

Sorry for the slightly click baity title. It's better than A noob's review of Veraton I guess 😜.  I asked riffclown to make this to replace my lost Rev 2, and while it is a 72" Hadzicki style wing, it's not a direct copy of the Rev 2 nor was it intended to be. I will be comparing Veraton to my Rev 2 however. 

Appearance:

This is the perspective style design similar to riffclown's #21-24 and #74. It might not be for everyone, but I really like it a lot. It's appearance in the sky is mesmerizing. Onlookers watching the kite tend to go into this trance like state. Especially if I say something like "look deeply into the kite! or "Are you feeling sleepy? YOU ARE GETTING VERY SLEEPY!!"😉.

Build Quality:

I tend to buy factory made kites with the rational that you can often buy 2 factory made kites for the price of one boutique handmade kite. I have flown such kites and it's pretty obvious why people buy them. I would put Veraton into this later category. The stitching is high quality and there's many improvements over the original Rev 2. Reinforced leading edge, T-connectors for the top vertical spars, heavily reinforced bottom area of verticals spars, triple stitched trailing edge, are among the many improvements/features.

Performance:

This kite is quite fast when the wind picks up. It definitely will go to 11. Inputs seem more direct and precise compared to the Rev 2. Inverted side slides are very easy across the the whole window. Reverse flight is there, but I need to fine tune the brakes a little. The wind has been poor at Shoreline, so this so far is only based on 1 hour flown in light to moderate wind with occasional gusts.

Tricks:

This is an axel machine. Tug too hard and you get double axels. Need more time flying to access but I'm not really that great at tricks.

My initial assessment on a limited amount of flight time is very favorable and I'm very pleased so far. I may add more information and videos when the wind picks up.

Edited October 17, 2020 by Sardonycus
wrong information

[riffclown]

@Sardonycus I'm very happy that you are happy.. Thank you for the awesome review.