Big air TT

[edt]

the naish monarch was not designed to be a big air board. it's made for wakestyle, and comparable to the hadlow which he thinks he wants to get away from.

Redesigned a few years ago with Kevin to reduce the rocker and make it faster. It's their big air board now. The Traverse is their wakestyle option these days.

What!! they changed it from wakestyle into a big air board and didn't change the name, lol. My bad. They should at least change the name so I can keep track of their product line. Thanks for the correction. I need to demo it now. I remember naish being at the yearly test fest and I didn't even bother to try the new monarch because I didn't know they had changed it. I guess the change happened in 2021?

However, I'm happy they redesigned it. I felt the old monarch was nearly unridable thanks to the bone shaking ride. Sounds like they did good.

[Blackened]

Maybe it wasn't with Kevin and with Ewan if it was only a couple years ago. To be honest, I don't know where it fits in their lineup. I'd much rather a Drive for big air than a monarch. I also hate quad channeling in boards, so I'm bias.

[edt]

Maybe it wasn't with Kevin and with Ewan if it was only a couple years ago. To be honest, I don't know where it fits in their lineup. I'd much rather a Drive for big air than a monarch. I also hate quad channeling in boards, so I'm bias.

feel the exact same way both about the drive which is great and channeling which I also hate.

[Saltyman]

Been their big air/freestyle board since about 2018. The first Basalt fibre model was made popular by Kevin. For wakestyle they had the dub and the stomp before the traverse.
Traverse was put in the line up after Ewan won the last ever triple S crown.
I agree with it has hard landings but means that you land with a bit of speed the flex doesn't kill it.
And it's one of the fastest boards I've ridden those channels are awesome in flat water.

The Drive and motion both boost big and are not as heavy on the landing or your knees.

I've also found that the Shinn bronq boosts big as well as the Slingshot asylum. But atm my go to board is the formula. It builds speed up so quickly and loads up super easy. For jumping in chop the bronq is my go to. But I am lucky that my local is lagoons and the occasional kicker but on cross shore wind and there is chop the bronq goes big. It's not as skatey as other boards popping to toeside is legit. And holds the edge well for toeside jumping.
The Jamie and formula are very similar boards. Maybe because they both use the textreme carbon stringer. But I love the duralight bases on Slingshot boards.
As no scratches and when you are paying for a expensive ride I like it to have a bit of a slider base.

[edt]

I've ridden the 2018,2019 and 2020 Monarch thought it was brutal for big air, huge rocker so difficult (at least for me) to build up speed for the boost, very stiff, and hard on the knees. Both the motion and drive I think are excellent big air boards. I like the drive a little bit better because it's stiffer than the motion. If the monarch is the same I won't need to demo it again but maybe they changed it a little since 2020. I've never ridden the Monarch in perfectly flat water, though so maybe that's why I didn't like it. The Jaime is my favorite board. Excellent for doing board offs. I think weight is a concern for big air because you'll want to be doing board offs and the board can't be so heavy your arm gets tired. I don't think I've ever seen more than or two Shinns. Maybe it's a euro thing.

[mati]

Thank you for all your answers and sorry for the late reply. I was trying to find a decent video. So.. here it goes.
So far to my understanding, my main problem is not edging upwind enough in the take of.. and because of that I keep too much forward speed and my kite ends up behind me instead of over me. Of course not edging enough at the pop gives me less line tension and compromises the height of the jump.
I think I am usually riding too fast, and should concentrate on having more board control, rather than developing too much speed that I can't handle properly.
But please shoot your critics and tips!

[rnelias]

Hi there!
Since last year, I am more into big air kiting. Previously I was more dedicated to wakestyle.
A few months ago, I changed my RPM quiver to Orbits and that allowed me to unlock higher jumps and loops. I have been stuck in 11 meters jumps for a while and I am pretty sure that my biggest problem is my board/edge control.
I live in Mallorca, so I usually kite in spots with some decent waves (around 3 meters when blowing 25/30 it's, but short periods in between) or choppy.
I am 178 cm tall and weigh 75 kg /165 lbs. I have been riding with a Duotone Hadlow 140 2019 for a few years and was a lovely board in flat water but I don't know if it is the most suitable board for boosting in my local conditions.
I know... Hadlow jumps 30+ meters with that board, but I am not Hadlow
I was thinking about trying a dedicated big air board, around 136/138 cm. Any model to recommend? Do you guys that would make some changes or I should keep going with my current board? Unluckily there are no demos available in my area
Thanks!

I don't have the experience in jumping, as other folks here on this forum, but could give you my perceptions/observations from someone that is also trying to pass the 10m plateau. The best places to try to jump higher, here where I live are a flat water spot and on two beaches with modest kickers (<2m) matching my better stance (regular), however, I rarely have chances to go to these spots in real good conditions . Besides what already said, I think the easiest way to have better marks, even in modest wind (18-22k), is using kickers. In flat water it's only possible to perfect pop/kite control techiniques paired to pristine conditions: winds rocking 25-35k. You already have a proper kite and the wakestyle experience in popping correctly. In my case, I need to improve my landings for higher jumps -- I'm still getting the balls to start on heliloops

Board wise, I usually keep a pair of boards for a while and resell what I don't like. Since we don't have much sellers doing demos here, it's my way to narrow what I like most. I'm 75kg and already had RRD Poison LTD (wakestyle) 138x41/Raptor LTD (big air) 136x41 and sold the Raptor. After, I've got an Atmos Carbon (big air) 136x40 but I still preferred the RRD Poison. I've recently got an Ozone Torque but have not had a chance to try it yet. Let's see if I finally like a big air specific board instead of the wakestyle one However, imho, board is not the most important aspect in jumping higher. Board's preference is too personal...

[edt]

It looks to be like you're lacking speed. kite control is good nice timing on the kicker but it looks like you are only going about 15 knots into the takeoff when you want to be going faster than 20 knots before you boost. It looks like you are edging really hard the entire time. Right before takeoff you want to bear off down wind to build up speed then finally carve upwind right before takeoff. Others can probably give better advice but that's all I see. Technique seems decent otherwise.

[nothing2seehere]

It looks to be like you're lacking speed. kite control is good nice timing on the kicker but it looks like you are only going about 15 knots into the takeoff when you want to be going faster than 20 knots before you boost. It looks like you are edging really hard the entire time. Right before takeoff you want to bear off down wind to build up speed then finally carve upwind right before takeoff. Others can probably give better advice but that's all I see. Technique seems decent otherwise.

Bearing off is a bit of a controversial technique. I'd do it to get a better path to the kicker but you want to make sure your line tension is maxed out at the time you leave the water. It varies from kite to kite but its not unusual for a kite to drop the power and back stall if you try and max out power quickly. I think the best description of what you might mean was by Evan klijn(?). He spoke about getting it so you were really powered with the trim fully in - and then bearing off slightly to try and get that same feeling of power but when your arms are fully stretched out. Is that kind of what you mean?

To me, it looks like you are continuing to pull on the back of the bar slightly after taking off which is making the kite fly behind you - rather than because you aren't carving hard enough. This is easy to do if you aren't quite balanced when you leave the water. I have a tendency to do this on one side but not the other because I only learned some tricks on one tack and it made it easier to do those tricks if the kite drifted slowly across whilst I was in the air.

[galzohar]

It's not so much bearing off (unless you're doing a preload pop, which is probably unnecessary in most cases) as it is not trying to go too much upwind. You should generate maximum speed, and there is a certain direction at which you should be heading to get that - Not too much downwind nor too much upwind. Normally this would be holding a tight edge but still going about 90 degrees to wind or even a bit more than 90 (where 0 is going against the wind).

Also keep in mind that it's more difficult to use a kicker when the wind is a bit on-shore like in the video, and requires even more speed, and also, if possible, trying to find that spot where the kicker is at an angle to the beach so that you can be more in front of it and less having it behind you.