Anyone tested these kites back to back?
wind range, quality, satisfaction and perfomance would be nice
Thanks
I have...
Your looking at 3 very different kites here...
Fuel is an all out performance C kite - Huge boosts, fantastic wakestyle riding and a crisp, lively feel. Not much depower though, and less overall power, you'll need 1 or 2m bigger than a Switchblade. Great kite if you want to be unhooked for all your moves...
Nomad is a wave kite - great for down the line wave riding but for unhooked freestyle, needs to be mega powered up. It's almost tooo fast to turn for wakestyle moves - even on the slow settings. Plenty of depower and pretty easy relaunch in enough wind. Great kite if you want to do a bit of wave riding, freestyle and general freeriding...
Switchblade is a user friendly wakestyle kite - Great for just cruising, wakestyle moves and old school freestyle. Super easy relaunch, almost automatic in above 16 knots. Fair amount of bar pressure compared to the above 2 kites, and you still get that super powered feeling when you unhook. If your used to a kite that pulls hard when unhooking then you'll be fine on a Switchblade. It does work for wave riding - but a Nomad will be nicer.
Quality on all 3 is similar - with the Cabrinha bar being a touch nicer to use with its internal safety line and awesome IDS safety for 100% effective self landing. Materials used are the same, same kind of workmanship on both brands.
I've ridden a lot of kites this year - and the Nomad still ranks highest in my books - with the Ozone C4 being close behind.
Not tried this years Fuel, so cant comment but previous years were awesome kites for unhooking but lacking in wind range compared to the other kites you are looking at.
Switchblade is also a good kite if you want a stable easy to use kite with heaps of wind range.
Nomad is my favourite by far, it is a sick freeride kite which is awesome for waveriding but works pretty good for wake too, you just have to be careful not to oversteer too much.
