Hi guys, sorry if this has been asked before; I did a search but couldn't find anything.

I'm getting into kitesurfing and I am currently looking at buying my own equipment. I have found a fairly good deal on a kite but it has had two repairs done to it: one 5-cent hole in the canopy and one leading-trailing edge tear. What effect does this have on the performance of the kite? And since this implies that the kite has been pretty poorly treated, should I just be wary of potential other problems.

Cheers

Ok, I was more asking about its effect on performance though - especially the tear which goes from front to back.

Its from a shop (selling it for someone) so I'll just have to go and check it out.

Thanks

Thanks Nick, it looks it got the leading edge and went around the tube right between two struts. It does look like a fairly solid repair though. The problem is that the people selling it are ~1 hour from me so I don't really want to drive and find it's in pretty bad nick.

Performance won't be affected if it's a good repair, but it definitely drops the value. Anyone with any kite can tear a leading edge with a big smack after a mistake :'(
The ones to watch out for are the small/tiny repairs and scratches that indicates it has been in a Bush or on shells..
these lead to blown leading edges for no reason while just flying or lots of little pinhole leaks that are almost impossible to fix.
Hope that helps a bit

Kajjit said...
[br]Hi guys, sorry if this has been asked before; I did a search but couldn't find anything.

I'm getting into kitesurfing and I am currently looking at buying my own equipment. I have found a fairly good deal on a kite but it has had two repairs done to it: one 5-cent hole in the canopy and one leading-trailing edge tear. What effect does this have on the performance of the kite? And since this implies that the kite has been pretty poorly treated, should I just be wary of potential other problems.

Cheers

tore my kite to shreds & paul from cape town repaiered it and it flew better than when it was new but.... but it does affect the performance of the kite..... my current kite was torn on the right panel leading edge to trailing edge with 1 panel change completely and has a bit of a twitch in strong winds, flys like a dream, u get used to the way the kite reacts in different winds

Agreed thorn, anything done by neil you can be assured the kite is fine. If it is a repair that will affect its performance he will be the first to tell you. For many years now I have not gone anywhere else, his work is just too good to consider another option.

So in WA ask, has neil done the repair. If so, you will be fine.