The ideal kite for oldschool style?

[FLandOBX]

But being in the Microloop your rear hand can also steer forward...
And once the trick in the air is done I go quickly out of the Microloop and both hands steer the kite forward.

Which kite do you use?

My largest size kite (Liquid Force NRG) is 16 meters. I often use smaller (14, 12, 10) in higher winds. I am often rushing to get board back on my feet on the way down. I am usually getting both hands back on the bar and releasing the microloop just before I hit the water. So, bigger kite with more float?

[Toby]

If you don't do rotations the size is not really important.
With rotations it becomes very hard.

Do you see any rider at KOTA doing any crazy rotation tricks with boards offs? Only one was Aurelien last time...there is a reason for that.
You won't see any off axis tricks in that height with small kites. They will kill you.

I think all you need at this point is experience and practice and it will work out fine.

[joriws]

Wanna re-evaluate your writing after reading the story? And tell us how you would implement test in real life.

After reading that article it made me realize that the test has even more flaws than I thought. First of all, you're using a woo, which we all know is full of flaws. It's a fun little toy, but still not accurate when measuring jumps, because the woo doesn't always measure air time right. So you can kiss that point goodbye.

And 2 different riders with 2 different weights?
Come on man, I don't have to say anything about that. That alone just proves how inaccurate the tests are.

This test is based off of varying wind conditions, with varying water conditions, with varying riders, and varying rider weights, and it's based off of what a woo is telling us with varying rider experience. Do you think those riders had the best technique for jumping with every single kite?

This has been an epic fail. If you want to test jumps, I would look at doing it in an enclosed building with a pool and lots of fans, with 1 rider, NO WOO. You will get more accurate results.

It is clear that you have problem understanding normal distribution. It is combining all data samples available and make a probability prediction based on sampled points like what size of fish there are in Pasific Ocean. Magazine story already calculated average of 3 best jumps (by woo) per session to limit data samples to best looking samples per kite. You must be quite a conspiracy theorist if you say that on relative checking Woo awards more "points"=meters for foilkite. Like foil kite jumps actually 6m like LEIs do but Woo tells 9m.

Woo-meter - vs - real-SI-meters accuracy, yes there are problems. The test was estimating relative heights with Woo. Just presuming Woo's axis is close to linear. And they jumped many times according to text and then they selected best woo-reported jumps for average calculation per session published on magazine.

Then - again two men with different skill level and weight. That is even better to represent normal distribution, to answer height of jump in more generalized way. With propability of 0.5 your Sonic 15m average jump would be 9.2 woo-meters when you jump 6meters on LEI on average. And best ever predicted jump with LEI would be 10m when Sonic-15 was 12.4m.

Wind / water conditions, same story. 3 tests with different wind ranges. That is again to represent more generalized data to normal distribution. They tried to eliminate clear gust jumps. Naturally on water they jump on the same generic area (same chop or waves or). And taking only best reported jumps to calculation.

So normal distribution story is. If you get foilkite, no matter the conditions normal distribution predicts that you'll jump about 30% higher and longer(hangtime). No matter the conditions are for used kites. No matter who you are (intermediate or expert).

[kaioe]

OLD school ... Naish Aero or Naish ARX ...if you handle them you are the man

[Flyboy]

I occasionally ride with a guy using a Flysurfer Sonic. Definitely big, slow, very floaty jumps. It's logical given the extremely high aspect of the kite.

I rarely jump any more & mainly use Cabos which are fast turning, pivoting kites which have minimal hangtime, but also have a set of NRGs, which I notice FLandOBX uses. They are very powerful, slowish kites with good boost & great hang time. Why are there no 4 strut kites left in the market?

I still have my old Airblasts - I should pump one up & give it a try sometime ...

[styleito]

Why are there no 4 strut kites left in the market?

Ocean Rodeo Razor is still 4 struts.
Not necessarily a kite good for old school though.