Beginner

I hope you aren't trolling... but look at all the beginners information here and GET LESSONS. Having a snowboard background is good but kiteboarding is 90% kite control and 10% being able to stand on a board.

Once you have had a couple of lessons your instructor should point you in the way of a good setup to use. Don't just go out and buy stuff and try to work it out as you go along.

Basically Dont go out and buy ya kit yet cause its easy to get a kite that wont suit you and your style of riding.
Go get some lessons when the season starts (around September to October)
Theres AKS, KBP and alot more schools that can give you a package to suit your riding. And if you decide that kiteboarding isn't for you it's only gunna cost you $60+(for a beginner lesson(basic control of kite yada yada)) depending on what school you go to.
Snowboarding might give you some benefits down the line but this will be when your up on the board. Now don't try to start this sport if your looking to go to the beach once a week. When the season starts you'll want to be down the beach everyday the wind blows !!!!!!!!!. The more hard yards you put in the faster you'll progress.
Im not trying to put you off but kiteboarding requires 100% commitment.
Kiteboarding isn't all that hard but you've got to use your common sence.

cheers
liam

what town do you live in cowboywa?

not many schools operate during winter months and for good reason because the winds an unpredictable fickle son of a bitch to learn or teach in.

regarding kite purchase... better of to wait until summer, a benefit i see in buying this time of year is you can get some sweet deals because the second hand selling market is flat as most learners buy the second hand gear and that brings me back to the first point about learning in summer.

Everyone has given sound advice, definately take note of what they have said.

We are one of the only schools open All Year Round. As one person has mentioned, the wind is much more fickle in winter, and we generally have to wait for storm fronts (not the crazy ones!) to come through before we can get any lessons done. Lately there has been plenty of wind though!

Snowboarding definitely helps when you are trying to get up on the board, because it is similar in the way that you must maintain an edge in the water (or snow) otherwise you slide and fall on you ass. We always find that people with wakeboarding and snowboarding experience pick up the board skills faster than people without that experience. Saying that though, lostinlondon is pretty close to the money where he says its about 90% kite control.

Feel free to contact me at anytime if you want advice about lessons or gear.

Cheers

great idea, discourage knowledge of how a kite performs. Thats a ridiculous thing to say. How exactly is having a better understanding of how a kite behaves, and how the wind window works a bad thing. Sure a trainer turns faster, it's a smaller kite, beginners need to understand this too, moving from say a 12m to an 8m ect. Your suggestion/ comments is proposing its better to be ignorant of kite behaviour prior to using a real kite, lesson or not. Knowledge is always better/safer than ignorance

Yeah, I see so many guys that get frustrated when they aren't getting better and you ask them "How often are you getting out?" and they say, "oh, once, twice a month" and I say, "How do you expect to get better doing it twice a month? You obviously aren't into it enough".

There is that period in kiteboarding (same for, surfing, Snowboarding etc etc) I find where you keep beaning yourself and saying "why the hell am I doing this?" but you the masochist in you keeps pushing you down to the beach whenever the seabreeze comes in until one day you are fanging along wondering how you weren't able to do it in the first place.

The other case in point is I see guys being dragged along the beach on their '02 gear and they say "I used to be OK at this 5 years ago, I thought I'd just pick it up again"

When I started out I took the lessons, picked up the basics fast enough and knew I was going to love it, thats when I got the gear, but purchasing the gear isn't enough, you have to make that committment to be out whenever you can, even if it means missing out on Friday night boozing and being a social retard so you can get up early the next day and get to the beach (more relevant when I was living in London)

I agree myusernam... About an hour on the trainer is more than enough. You get the concept of how the bar steers the kite, how the wind window works, how to control putting the kite at 9, 12, 3 and most importantly if you loop the kite and have the lines twisted the bar still controls the kite the same way. But the way it behaves is totally unrealistic, turning on a dinner plate, flying horizontal from 9 to 3 and all that.

Personally I was bored of the trainer kite after that first 60 minutes of lesson. I couldn't imagine going out, buying a trainer and playing with it for hours and hours. I reckon it would have maybe put me off altogether!

After my first hour, we learnt how to rig up and launch a 5m inflatable and got to play with that in the water. It's more powerful so it gives you a better feel for what is to come and once you get that I really didn't want to go back to playing with a 2m trainer.

Edit: I'll qualify this opinion for the red thumbs out there: I am also an experienced sailor and already having an appreciation of wind angles probably helped me a lot, also, trimming a spinnaker is very similar to the processes behind flying a kitesurfing kite (not a sailing kite, which is another name for a spinnaker, esp on small boats, but I digress)

I agree on the point of getting out more, but I also gotta add that it's hard this time of year when there's f*** all wind and what wind there is can be all over the place. Even harder if you have an office job.

If you want a trainer kite thats really fun to fly see if you can get a hold of a C-quad. The are 4 line kites and have a ton of power. Just make sure u can find some old guru to show you how to set them up and pack them away cos thats a mission if u dont know what youre doing. I have a 2.2m and Im still having a good time flying that (had it for 3 years).

Some of us are listening, but the fossil in front of me at the polling booths wasn't. I saw his voting slip and the big fat 'NO' written on it.