By “Foil” Brian Lee

For those of you who don’t know me, I’ve been flying Flysurfer kites for about 2 years now. I started with Psycho3, then Speed2 and later Pulse2. I ordered Psycho4 (P4 here after) 10M as soon as I heard that it was available in US. It was risky since there weren’t that many reviews out there and I wasn’t sure whether I would like it or not. Knowing Flysurfer quality, however, I thought it’s worth to give it a shot.

It turned out that it was a good investment There are many improvements on Psycho4 compared to previous Flysurfer models and let me start with my favorite.

New bar system. They call it Infinity Bar. I love it! It has two chicken loop lines with a separator in the bar and a swiveling chicken loop. With previous Psycho3, I experienced annoying twist of chicken loop line after many one way tricks. With Infinity bar system, all it takes to untwist chicken loop lines is to pull the bar quickly (or snap action) toward chicken loop. It works like a charm and now I don’t have to worry about twisted chicken loop line any more. I love this feature so much, I installed Infinity bar on all my other Flysurfer kites.

Another innovation is projected area change in canopy. When you depower, not only it changes angle of attack, it also changes projected area. It makes the kite “C” shape when it’s depowered. It provides two advantages. First, it provides more depower. This feature definitely saved me many runs back to the beach, looking for smaller size kites. Second, it turns fast even when depowered. Here is the video from Flysurfer:

http://www.flysurfer.com/Gallery/v/videos/Triple_Depower_480_270_512kbps.wmv.html

P4 bridle lines are now shorter and sleeved. Flysurfer first introduced shorter bridle lines in Pulse2 model but P4 is the first one to use sleeved lines (just like Ozone Frenzy bridle). Sleeved lines make the bridle stiffer, thus less bridle line tangles.

P4 doesn’t have ring lines any more. (Let me try to explain) In Psycho3, there are three lines (part of the bridle) that go through rings, thus ring lines. They help changing angle of attack of canopy but at the same time, they wear out and require replacement once in a while. In Psycho4, there are no ring lines -> less maintenance. I’ve done some ring lines changes before and it wasn’t fun so this is a great feature for me

The last but not least is a new chicken loop. Previous chicken loop makes it almost impossible to reassemble them in water. It was like old Ozone Frenzy model chicken loop. New chicken loop makes it easy to reassemble even in water. It is similar to North Iron Heart, just click in.

Ok, now flying characteristics……….it flies well
I am not good enough to say it turns like this or flies like that. All I can say is that I like the way it flies and that’s why I fly it
I mean, I wanted a kite that has more depower and turns faster and P4 delivers exactly that. Oh, did I mention that it relaunches just fine in water?

Currently, I have P4 10M and 12M among other Flysurfer kites and previously owned P4 15M.

Too busy riding to take pictures so here is a stock picture:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function digg_this_button() in /hermes/bosweb/web074/b742/nf.eastkb/public_html/eastkb.com/blog/wp-content/themes/mimbo2.2/single.php on line 15