Hi all. I'm new. Come from FNQ. I have done what is apparently the responsible thing to do and that is to go out and buy a trainer kite so I can get a feel for kites before I endanger the general public by plowing through women and babies on the beach with a real kite. Also, so I can exude a responsible and professional image for the industry in general.
So I did this because I read HEAPS of articles advising me how to get into the sport. They all said 'buy a trainer kite it will be the best investment you will ever buy and you will learn quicker and save money on lessons and can use it whenever you haven't the time to go real kite surfing and learn new tricks etc, etc...
Who can argue with that?
They also universally said that until you are able to:
Fly said trainer with eyes closed, do loops and figure 8's with eyes closed through and across power window and basically pick your nose while flying and drinking a beer while cooking a BBQ on the beach you are NOT experienced enough to try a real kite. So I bought a HQ 300 pro. Nice trainer and have absolutely no issues with the trainer quality. Cost about $280.
The following is a pretty accurate log of my experience and not necessarily continuous - but without a single lesson:
Hour 1 - learn to steer like motorbike not car and how to relaunch.
Hour 2 - easily doing figure 8 cross vertical and horizontal across power window.
Hour 3 - Gave my 8 year old daughter a go. She was tossed a bit but generally enjoyed herself. I was kkidding down the beach in full power window.
Hour 4 - Eyes closed on everything in 20 knot winds. Fun but starting to get boring.
Hour 5 - drinking beers on beach with buddies and easily knocking beer cans off the sand without crashing in 20 knot winds. Fun? Hell yeah!
But did I need to BUY this trainer? Would I have saved money in lessons?
In 3 hours I could have easily mastered this trainer. The hype stated people advised we would need around 10 - 20 hours to achieve this. I'm not super human. I'm 45. My daughter is 8. I'm not saying I threw my money away but I think there's a definite hype to make money from trainers. I don't feel cheated but this is way easier than the hype spun out there...
Any views?.
yeah you can buy like el cheapo off ebay for 5 bucks. Won't pull like a 2.8m but you will get an idea of where the power is in the wind window
Valid question.....Kite surfing is more about kite flying than surfing initially. You will progress much quicker through you lessons because of the time you spent on a trainer, no question. Some shops hire trainer kites or have refund deals.
Kiting is an easy sport.
Like you said easy to learn on a trainer
Easy to learn to fly the kite
and it will be easy to get up on the board.
Wait till you get into trouble and you will see how bad things get real easy.
Some ppl just breeze through the sport and never get into trouble but when the day comes that sh!t happenes, you will need every ounce of knowledge and experience to save your arse.
Never be comfortable in your ability on safety with a kite just consider yourself luck that you can pick it up quickly.
Most who preach about learning here are doing it because too many noobs rock up to the local beach and think they know it all. Not saying youre like that but we have to assume that most learners are not water ppl.
Should've just bought an old Waroo and just flogged that for a few hours (so it doesn't matter when you crash it).
Then throw it in the bin when your done.
Then buy proper kite.
Trainer is pointless IMO.
An interesting post .I'm not sure if you need 30 hrs on the trainer but all the other stuff about learning how to fly the kite by feel in your periphery vision while you check out the babes walking up the beach is gold .I teach kiting and have done for a long time .(I would prefer that this is not interpreted as blowing my own trumpet because my time for teaching is now limitedd and I do not want or need any more students) My approach is to give a lesson on a trainer and demonstrate the skills that need to be worked on and have the student demonstrate an understanding and then they go and perfect in their own time .they don;t have to buy a trainer to do this (as I lend the kite to them the kite to do tis)but if they do buy one i am sure that most would agree that it is money well spent
Ps those that master a trainer generally go on to be good and safe kiters, those who try to cut corners ? well you read about them in the news or kite forums
(or they give up trying to put it all together with ****ty kite skills)
In a nutshell I think that the kitesurfing fraternity, like any sport, is trying to establish and market an industry. Hell, one look at how many people are getting into it shows there's money to be made. Image, gear, lessons, instructors. I seen it in the Dive industry as I was an instructor for a while. IMO there's nothing wrong with creating a legitimate industry but when it projects a notion/image/safety awareness campaign out of proportion to the facts then this is just a marketing campaign to force people to buy gear perhaps they didn't really need.
I feel guilty in a way coz I'm not trying to stop people buying trainer kites ( I learned heaps) or lessons (I'll take a few) but if we want this industry to be real we need real and honest advice and not stuff promulgated by what could be industry wannabees all over the internet.
sweetdude
yeah a lotta quid for a bit of coloured rag !!!
2-3 hours for a normal person is all thats needed 
There are some Ningkumpoops out there 
with Crap for brains and no common sense putting it mildly - so that is where a trainer kite is a good idea and 20+ hours
Now before you buy a real kite - ask people at your local and also post on here, your body weight will be the determining factor of course.. always better to lean towards the bit more power rather than not enough and sitting watching everyone blast past
trainers are awesome...,you just gotta think outside the box
imagine the hours of fun you can have watchin your eight year old and her friends supermanning themselves and dislocating body parts all over the park on weekends
and the sexy nurses you'll meet @ the hospital and @ the department of community services when they come to take your kid away...
besides, a trainer kite with shortened lines and a skateboard on a cycletrack in ten knots is mad fun
Hi guys,
We sell lots of trainer kites and I can attest that if you spend 10-15 hours flying the trainer, you will save at least a lesson in learning kiteboarding and still have the trainer kite after you have finished.
To learn to fly a trainer kite takes 5 minutes and not much more, but this is not what they are made for. They are made to practice repetition so as to develop muscle memory. The ability to fly the kite is straight forward. Flying the kite for hours trains your body and mind what it "feels" like in different areas of the wind window so that you can fly by feel and not consciously (visually).
Trainer kite flying should be unconscious like driving a manual gearbox car. When you first start, you use conscious competence, with enough practice (repetition), you develop unconscious competence. This is what experienced kiters rely on when riding. If you are wholly focused on the kite and it's control, you cannot be aware of others around you, nor the water conditions and control of the board.
When you are unable to see the whole picture (not just the kite) you are a hazard to all people both on and off the water. We do not need more of this kind of kiter at this time in the sport.
The Trainer kite is a great option and will always be a great tool to whip out when wind is too light or if trying to work out complex tricks requiring advanced kite flying skills.
You can rubbish the use of trainers, but in my 12 years in this sport I have seen hundreds of students come through the school with trainer experience and their advancement is always impressive in early stages and tend to become much better kiters in the future.
DM
I agree 100%, trainers don't teach you to power or depower,you do not have a safety to eject, you don't learn valuable lessons like depowering when the kite stall(which always seem like the wrong thing to do until you realise that it works every time).
Flying a kite is not complex, you pull on the left and it turns left,you pull right and turns right, anyone with half a brain will have it suss in 30mn.
Any modern kite is piss easy to fly across the window, the issue is that when it goes wrong and you accidently loop the kite, it gets ugly very very fast.
So although it may not seem obvious, the few hours spent flying a trainer without risking your life may still be worth a fair bit as you are training your brain to have the right reflexes.
The other option, probably more efficient is to fly a real kite on a huge beach with no obstacles nearby and get pounded a couple of times and eat a couple of kilos of sand.
That is definately my prefered option as it teaches you to respect the kite and all your mates will thank you for the entertainment.
PS:if your daughter can hold a camera, you might also make a fortune on youtube.
I had a trainer kite and ended up having only having one lesson so it definitely saved me money. But I was also practising on a beach with a full sized kite in bugger all wind with a friend so that helped too. And I have been windsurfing since the late 80's so have a reasonable understanding on wind.
I watched my girlfriend get dragged down the park facefirst kitelooping for 80m on a 3m airush trainer kite...the kite $250...the look on my face PRICELESS.
I also launched this kite off my roof rack in 18kn at Hillaries to and it was rocking my car violently before pulling 2 apparently unbendable occy hooks straight. A fast kite with no depower can get powered quikly.
About time we had another "trainer kite or no trainer kite?" free for all. IMO there are lots of opinions
A decent quality two string stunt kite, costing around $60 is perfectly adequate to learn kite skills.
After that, it's great to have in the car to fly at surfchecks, with the kids and anytime you want to feel the joy that flying a kite brings.
Sell your trainer on seabreeze Buy and Sell, if you have progressed past it and don't want it for your kids or mates. You can do a free add without photos or splash out the $14 and put some photos in. I bet it sells almost instantly and you'll get the majority of your money back to put towards some big boy toys. No dramas. No conspiracy..... the reality is without lessons or at the very least supervised help from an experienced kiter; it's foolish to begin flying on a full size kite
The one thing I will say about trainers that most new kiters don't realise is that the reason sites recommend 30 hours is to give you time to feel the kite. To put it into perspective, you learn to drive a car, you can do that pretty quickly but the government wants you to get 100 hours or more under your belt so you don't just know how to drive, you know how to drive without having to think about it.
Lets give you some examples of what this means in kiting. Classic new kiter mistake is the one where they are putting on their board and every time they look down they accidentally pull on one side of the bar and they get pulled off to the side before they can get the board on. Second example, you are getting up on the board, but now you have to look up at the kite to understand what its doing so you don't watch the water in front of you for waves, people etc.
When it comes to kiting, you should really be able to kite along without watching the kite. Although a lot of kiters look up, I'm willing to bet most of the kiters with more than 2 years under their belt could easily ride, jump and land without looking at the kite once, purely because they can feel from the bar where the kite is and what its doing. That skill isn't miraculous, it comes from understand the feel of the kite and the bar pressure.
I'm one that bought a trainer to get into the sport.
Yes you can learn to fly one in a few minutes. A couple of hours , yeah the old figure 8, the 1 to 9 oclock dive , the 11 to 5 dive and the down turn into the window.
All good but i have to agree with Mr Kitepower about letting the thing go when it gets full power and you aint ready for it (Even though it's only a 3.5).
It was realy hard to make myself let go the first time and in reality still is ( sort of against natural tendencies)
Also i will agree with saffer too. Im now walking around with the kite, albeit not entirely the same with out the harness and trying not to look at it while i take my dog "Hydra" for a walk the length of the park and back again, feeling what the wind is doing to it and how it acts. Am i thinking to much about it, maybe but hey, it's all good.
To my surprise i can actually start to feel when it isnt going where i want it too and yep i do look then to see where it's gone, but i know that will eventually stop and i wont have to look.
It's just one of those things, suits some and not others. Suits me
I agree with most the comments above about a trainer being easy to fly
watching the kite or not, might be easy and quick to pick up in 10 to 20 knots, but how much more attention is required to fly it when it starts to windy.
Can you still do the same things at 25 knots + as you would do at 15 knots.
Do you earn a little more respect at 25 knots+, for the power that your little trainer kite can generate.
These changes in wind can still feel significant on a little trainer, but when you translate those effects to a larger kite, it's wiser to have an idea of what may be expected.
Either way you are always learning something.
... tee hee, my trainer kite was an 18m Naish X2 when I started, yikes!!!! No wonder I have a thing about big kites!!
Trainers are not pointless,
I have used mine to kitesurfing (3m Air Rush Foil) in 35 knots at Brighton.. good times ahead mate.
$280 is a cheap insurance policy for not waking up in hospital unconscious after using a 10m kite in 20 knot winds, for the first time.
I never learnt on a trainer but have recommended friends that want to learn that this is the way.
Just like when learning to ride a motorbike or car, restricted vehicles for learners or p platers, help make it safer for the individual and other road users.
Learning to use a power kite is the same thing. If you have never done it before, it certainly takes a bit of learning to master the wind window, and utilising safety systems, and safe kiting.
Can you avoid using a trainer kite, when learning? Hell yeah, you can, but know the risks and use other experienced kiters judgement, on the better methods.
Sweetriffs, learning what you have learnt on the trainer kite, has probably saved you close to 6 months af aggravation, and being dragged around the beach being frustrated. This has quickened your time to get up on the water, and hopefully reduced your upwind walk of shame by a month.
Sweetriffs, i agree that blowing that much $$dosh on a trainer kite seems like a waste, but look you have started to share the stoke with your 8 year old. What a great birthday present that may make for her.
Goodluck with your next stages in kitesurfing. You certainly did do the right thing.
KR
Try flying the trainer kite when....
your are 3 metres off the ground, upside down, back to front, and scared shipless
cause thats what will happen when you jump onto a big kite.
Conspiracy? By your own admission you had Fun(Hell Yeah!) , learned heaps and you've got a kite to take home. What exactly where you hoping to gain from your bank breaking $280.
