david ellison

Last September The Decorators were invited to fly at a festival in Berlin. It was a great festival and weekend apart from one minor detail - there was no wind! We can all exaggerate when it comes to the wind - describing it as too much or not enough and using it as the excuse for a less than stellar fly. Well I know I can! But Berlin was different, there really was no wind. Only those with Thomas Horvath's superb "synergistic" single line gliding kites were in their element. I left feeling that we hadn't really been able to contribute as much as we could have. The Decs low wind kite has always been the Rev One. Felix's preferred set up is a 4 wrap centre spar and 3 wrap in the rest of the frame. It's a good combination and gives the sail sufficient weight to keep moving in light airs above a minimum of c.2mph. Below that though, I find it drops from the sky all too readily and tends to leave Felix as the only flier still flying. Anyway the point of all this is that I've just come back from my first 20 minutes with my brand spanking new Zen - in the very manly pink and purple fade layout. The weather was pretty average for February in the UK - cold and damp! The wind was...well, according to the smoke rising vertically from the chimneys as I walked up from my house to the village cricket (correction: village kite) field...there was no wind. Even the tall tree I usually use as my "is there enough to fly" guide wasn't having any of it. I even set the (100 ft) lines out 180 degrees in the wrong direction before realising that what wind there was was coming from the east not the west. So how did the kite go? It went...and very well indeed. When I got sorted and pointing the right way it was gusting a mighty 1 mph'ish. The Zen seemed happy to play and I started out with some horizontal passes and centre window squares to get a feel for the feedback from the kite. I liked the way that the sail seemed to want to be worked. A 90 degree square corner felt best achieved in almost a dual line way - snap the inputs to stall and turn and then pull back to drive away. I guess this probably reflects the JB/iQuad flying style. It is very light compared to the Rev One setup that I'm more used to and will take some time to feel comfortable with. But the simple fact that it was flying positively in such a low "breeze" was a very positive sign. At one point a mighty gust (!) of 3mph or so came through and the kite really started to pick up. Snap turns were easy, and noisy as the new icarex reacted to the frame bending and releasing with the inputs. The leading edge curves quickly as the wind rises and made me wonder how low the practical maximum wind speed will be for this kite. It will be interesting to fly it more and get a feel for how the flight characteristics change as the wind increases. Quick turns also started to get away from me as the tendency to want to oversteer kicked in. No doubt time in the air will help to find the right balance and inputs. I suppose I was approaching it from the perspective of how a Rev One reacts and the Zen is very different. Reversing had a very different feel to it as well and will need time to feel right. So after only a short fly my conclusions are I'm happy that I went ahead and bought the Zen without having seen or flown one. I'll also be suggesting that the team thinks about taking them to Berlin if we go again. Congratulations to the design team and to Bazzer's quality kite making skills.