Riders: 80kg advanced and 85kg light wind expert
Style: Freeriding, Surf, Wake, Freestyle, Race
Weather: 4-10knts
Build Quality: ?/10
Satisfaction: 10/10
Disclosure: Marve- Shop owner, Importer/ Ian Foil kite guru
Spleene has taken their time and spent over 2 years developing their X-19 design, tweaking it and designing it.
We were excited to see what it was like!
I had our kite guru Ian Bournes with me to supervise and test the kite as I have only flown a few foil kites in my time and Ian owns a Flysurfer Speed 3 himself and has been making foils for many years.
The wind was very light- no white caps anywhere.
We tried to put up a Core XR 17m LW and an Ozone Zephyr 17m. Both kites would not stay in the air.
Then we took the X19 out of the bag and you instantly recognize that the cloth material is super light. Ian reckons that the Spleene X19 is lighter than his 12m Flysurfer.
After some research I found out that the X19 weighs 3050g including full scale. The X19 is therefore almost 1 kg lighter than the Flysurfer, which should be significant in the low end performance off the kite.
The kite looks great in black with a large white X and some red bits on it - pretty much dressed in all black.
The bridals are a bit thicker and stiffer according to Ian than on the Flysurfers.
The bar is 52cm wide and very clean (small bar for such a big/wide span kite). The lines, quick release and depower system is very similar to Core/Flysurfer - I believe they are all made by the same German manufacturer. I really like the simple set up of the bar with the super slim trim line tube. The bar runs smooth as on the Spleene.
The Spleene X-19 has got a 5th line which is great to relaunch the kite and also works great as 5th line safety. Ian was pretty excited about the additional 5th line as he misses that on his Flysurfer.
The know-how in the X 19 comes from Ernst Strobl - U TURN (http://www.u-turn.de/site/)
We put the kite up in the air and when it launched through the power zone you felt the pull and power of the kite instantly even there was only a few knots.
We positioned the kite at every spot in the wind window and it would just sit there no matter what. No canopy flapping, no stalling - just super stable.
Ian recognized that there was no flapping of the tips as it happens with the Flysurfer which is sometimes an issue for his SP3.
Also no denting of the leading edge as I have seen happen heaps on the beach with the Flysurfers.
Once the kite was sent forward towards the edge the kite started pulling me over the beach.
I was ready to take the kite out in the water. I went out on a North LTD Raceboard and struggled to get up with a normal water start so tried a downloop going downwind which worked nicely.
Once I had the board speed up and the kite forward at the edge of the wind window, the X-19 created more speed and power- now the race board was going great and there was still no whitecaps anywhere. I hooked in the straps and went upwind.
I was amazed at the feel, how stable the kite was and how easy it was to fly with the bar just fully pulled in keeping good power. The kite generates heaps of apparent wind at the edge of the wind window and just wants to fly forward. There is no need to dive the kite up and down to generate more power. Simply getting speed up and park and ride. The kite never stalled and just sat forward towards the windows edge pulling nicely. I was stoked and this was the first time I have kited when there was no whitecaps on the ocean at all. It was awkward but i was starting to fell stoked 
The bar pressure is much lighter than on big Inflatables. The bar pressure just adds to the generally light flying and feeling kite.
When little gust came through you could feel the strong pull of the kite. Sometimes I felt like unhooking and throwing a railey but then realised that I had the race board under my feet.
However, the kite is pretty slow turning similar to 17m Inflatables but i guess thats the trade off such a big beast.
Ian went out on his 145cm TT and got upwind easily, he was doing little jumps with a bit of hang time. I will get to jumping the kite and trying it on a TT next time.
Conclusion:
The X-19 is the Super Light wind weapon- You can RIDE NO MATTER WHAT!
what's the upper wind range you reckon ? i have owned and flown a flysufer and the wing stalling flapping thing is most annoying.
Interesting to test this in 10-12 knots against the core xr LW 17m - which one is most fun.
i find it a bit hard to believe that x-19 was on the air powered and zephyr and core couldnt be on the air. if you talk about 5+ knots not 1 chance the zephyr dropped. It actually go back a bit on wind window and comes up again. The weight difference aint that much to justify that. (we are not talking on kiting though just a kite on air)
Now before you start i weighted my 2010 zephyr 3,6 or 3,8 kg .with his inner bag.
I like foils had a FS , changed it after an accident i have to a lei , for rescue reasons
lol my friend had one of those for low wind sizing 20m
:P
www.panoramio.com/
Funny kites but yes dangerous
If the self landing mechanism is anything like the flysurfers good luck. Just down right dangerous in powered up conditions - which would be 11-12 knots on this thing.
Hopefully spleen have sorted this and listened, unlike the flysurfer drop kicks who wouldn't listen to Ian, the only real advocate in the west. But by crikey they boost!
The flysurfer pyscho also had a '5th' line, not a mini 5th but a line that connected to the trailing middle of the trailing edge, via bridals. You either pulled like a madman of back lines, dropping kite to ground with a pull that nearly rips your teeth out of your mouth, then loop the lines through the bar and fix to board by burying the board - ian does it this way, but to me it was not safe - or release the bar and activate the 5th line... now out of the 15 times I tried 10 was spent untangling lines and bridals at home. Three times I thought all was good until i launched again the next day and found the fifth had gone through one of the lines again!
Fine if someone lands for you, but to self land was a nightmare. Now I had flown the warrior foils and even earlier versions in 2001/2002, and this was easy, throw bar away and the whole kite dropped on it's trailing edge (pulled in right all teh way along the trailing edge), no probs, attach safety to board/pole/ask small child to hold (only joking safety freaks) - as long as it doesn't work like the flysufer pyscho then fine, if it is the same think twice. I'm no slouch with foils and I was able to send mine back (Ian has good integrity).
Only telling you what i found folks... again it boosted like nothing else.
All current flysurfers can flag off a fifth line that folds the kite in half, or front line which flags out from a tip(Kites will be setup for one or the other).
Eppo it's 2011
