Stumbled across this gem...

I started kiting 4 years ago so the gear in this flick is not familiar to me. What was interesting is to see is how far the gear (in particular, bars and safety setups) has changed.

Would be good to hear some of the "old boys/girls reminisce" and what features.

Even the "stars" of the doco don't feature nowadays. Mind you this was apparently filmed in 2004.

Anyway...enjoy

That frontroll hand drag thing at 53:55 is awesome,

If you look closely at how a lot of them have their leashes rigged, they are riding in "Suicide" mode, leash clipped above the chicken loop on the centre line. Many of their kites did not have a release on the chicken loop. There are kiters using windsurf harness loops.
When there were only 2 line kites, thats what we used, windsurf harness lines, to take the load off your arms, problem was there was no release and people got nailed using them.
Then 4 line kites came along and the crew in Hawaii reckoned you were a chicken if you used one of the new 4 line kites because they had a tiny amount of depower, and you needed to hook into the, you guessed it, chicken loop. That name has stuck ever since.

Looks fairly new school. Didn't see a single wrist based safety leash in the video

Top hats rig, although the kite had 4 lines, he was riding it with the front lines connected to a pulley which had a short adjuster strap the pulley was rigged to a rope connected to the bar ends, that harness loop he was using was connected to the bar and (had a built in swivel), not the front lines. Pretty sure he still rides something like this pulley bar.
Paul Menta was a true pioneer of the passion for kiteboarding and pretty sure he is still kiting. Lots of other pioneers in this video, saw Cameron Dietrich looking very young. Jason Slezak who now designs for Liquid Force also looking like a grommet. Laurel Eastman who is still heavily involved in womens kiteboarding. Damien Leroy looks like he was 16. Andy Hurdmann was a legend back then and rode for Best, his rig was also like Top Hats, manual front line adjuster and hooked in with no release to a loop attached to the bar. Around 8.35 and on for about a minute you can see how dodgy the gear was, definitely no chicken loops with releases and I saw a Cab ReCon(sider) I think too, and other totally dodgy safety system. The video must have been made around 2003/04.
Scott Harwood in a quick pic riding an early hyrdofoil at 15.17 love the wooosh jet engine sound effect so tech for back then.