I know what you’re saying…Clay, what hobby don’t you have. I don’t knit…I don’t…ummm…ok, well, I have a lot of hobbies. One of the hobbies I keep from my friends is kiting. No, not the plastic Baby Bat kites you used to pick up from Walgreens. I’m talking the expensive stunt kite made from ripstop nylon, graphite spars and spectra line. I’ve had a couple of stunt kits for about 15 years, but recently started reading about speed foil kites. These are rectangular, contain no spars and look a lot like rectangular parachutes.
On a recent trip to San Francisco I visited a kite store and got the bug again, but this time, I wanted a speedfoil kite. I tried buying one right there, but Jen convinced me it would be better to order it from Amazon. She was right. I saved $50. I bought a Prism Snapshot 1.4. Like the same suggests, it is 1.4 meters wide and it is a dual line kite. Holy crap this thing is a blast. It doesn’t break and it recovers from the ground. It simply wants to be in the air. It is also really quick. The problem is, I want it to pull harder (please don’t say…That’s what she said). I taught
Jake how to use it and he LOVES this kite. Not only that, he is a pro at it! He caught on right away. You can guess what happened next….I gave him the kite so I could upgrade to something bigger and badder.
I checked out the other sizes than Prism had to offer in their Snapshot line and settled on their biggest, the Prism Snapshot 2.5. I picked it up this morning at a local kite shop called Air Traffic. We have had a fairly windy weekend so I took it to the park this afternoon and was amazed by this behemoth. First of all…it is bigger…much bigger, so it pulls harder, but it a little slower to turn. I must have looked ridiculous to all of the people at the park because this kite was pulling me around like a kid pulling his mom around a Toys R Us. I finally got the hang of it and was leaning back so much at times, I was practically laying on my back.
My next step is to convert the Snapshot 2.5 to a quad line kit so that I will have breaks and I can put a kite killer on it (basically an emergency release in case you accidentally let go of the kite).
Now I am kind of anxious for the lakes to freeze over because I’m taking this sucker to Lake Calhoun and flying it while sliding across. FUN!






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