lederhosen wrote: ↑Sun Nov 01, 2020 6:00 pm
There are bunch of diffent open cell snowkites on the market. While i understand the performance advantage of a high aspect kite or the versatility of a hyperlink, i am not sure what a low aspect open cell can do that a single skin kite can not do better.
Is it because some people expect a new version of a kite they liked or are there any real advantages of low aspect open cell kites?
IMO "Better" is the keyword here. What defines "better" is relative to what your wants or needs are in the kite. I would agree that in many ways there are very few advantages or disadvantages when comparing low AR open cells to single skins. We sell both and when a customer chooses one over the other it is usually based on what the kite was intended for and flight quality.
For example a customer may choose to go with an Ozone Blizzard or Access V7 over the Ozone Explore due to the superior flight quality that those kites have to offer. Qualities like smoothness, inherent gust handling, resistance to deformation in sudden wind shifts, REride safety etc.. . While another customer would choose a single skin for the power per size, its lightweight and light wind performance, it's durability, and generally lower cost and stunt kite like handling.
When we first started selling the Peak 1, it was a much more defined difference. But now the flight quality and design of single skins is much better and as such, they are really becoming more accepted. A huge advantage of the single skins IMO is the lightwind ability of the bigger sizes. Light wind is the most expensive wind condition to gear for and kites like the Explore and the Peak give you lightwind day savers at a much lower cost than say an R1 or Sonic. 12m is a big seller for us as a result.