mattthieu wrote:
About thé Peak 9 : tried it. Dont like it at all. No depower what so ever. No way to properly jump on that thing, flaps around if no fully powered. Oh, and again no light wind kite......12 to something sweet spot with no water abilitys is no light wind kite..... Any other 9 meter foil will.do.quite awake.on.fast snow.....
Tried to.run.along a guy ok peak 6m. With a 8 inflate. Guy full ( power hehe ) I was running past him.1 third trimed.....not impressive at all...
Peak is a nice toy, easy plug and play entry in the kiting universe but, do yourself a favor and buy a speed 4. Thats impressive. If you get a wind gut on the peak, call your mama.....
Well...that's interesting! I have been flying the 6m and 9m Peak for the last 3+ weeks - -probably at least 18 sessions, probably have ridden everything from 7 kts to over 30 kts. I am a little confused when you say the kite has no depower, because I think the kites have pretty good depower for a foil. I have flown lots of inflatable over the past 13 years in everything up to 40kts and I would say the Peaks have good depower in comparison. I think the biggest thing I had to get used to was the fact that the Peaks have a lot more power than I intitially thought they would. It's sort of amazing to be flying a 9m Peak when my friend is flying a 17m inflatable..and we usually fly the same size kites on the water.
I will say that when overpowered the wingtips flap, and although not really causing any problem I don't like the flapping, so that is the signal to simply go to a smaller kite. The nice thing about the Peaks is that I can carry a 6m (or 9m)on my back and change kites in about 5 minutes if I would otherwise be a few miles away from my other gear. It is all so EASY!!!!
So, trying not to get too off topic here, I think there are obviously different impressions from the Peak. I can only say this - on just about any day for snowkiting, if someone put a 9m Peak and a top quality 12m inflatable on the table and said pick one...I would defo grab the Peak. If a 12m Speed3 was thrown into that choice I'd probably still go for the Peak because it turns so much faster and is almost as powerful. I have a long background with inflatables, so the soft-ride/spogy feel of a Speed is sometimes unappealing to me.
I agree, the Peak may not have the same gliding/jumping ability (and not really designed for that) but for back country and general snowkiting I feel like it's hard to beat it. It' will be interesting to try it on the water with waves...I have a funny feeling the PEak might be really nice in the waves. We shall see.
I have not even thought about using my inflatables in the last 3 weeks...and I love my Core kites! The only time I have thought about using my 5m Core (probably good from 25-40kts) instead of the 6m Peak was when it was blowing well over 30 kts.