Has anyone flown the 2015 Naish Fly?
Doesn’t appear to be many reviews on the Fly, and It doesn’t seem to get that good of a rap from the few that are out there.
Just wondering if the 2015 Fly is a little better? I don’t want to be the guinea pig when laying down a wad of cash without a demo.
Review from Real with Robby (Obviously taking this with a grain of salt)
Im sure therebare a lot of better light wind kites available than a fly.Like you u say not many good raps on it so maybe look at the other popular proven light wind kites.
I had a nice session on the 2015/16 Fly whilst on holiday in maui a couple weeks ago. It was the same as the one in the vid. I am 105kgs intermediate rider, that day i was on a surfboard strapless, 5'10 x 20". A good lighter wind board but also my only surfboard so use it in all conditions. The wind that day I am guessing was about 12 to 15 knots maybe a little lighter, I did not check an exact wind reading for that time and I wasn't super familiar with the spot so a little harder to judge exact wind speed.
I had not flown a true light wind kite before, the biggest kite I had flown previously was a 14m so bearing that in mind these are my impressions.
Pumping up and setting up was all pretty standard it was a big kite so took a bit of extra pumping but nothing too crazy. The bridle and setup was very simple, very plug and play style. Upon launching the kite (assisted launch) the first thing that I noticed was how light weight the kite is. It is very stable and really wants to stay in the air with very little effort. I took off and was easily cruising upwind straight away. I had heard and it had been a concern of mine that the kite would not go upwind well. This wasn't really the case as it went upwind just fine, i was not pointing super high upwind and I certainly wasn't fanging upwind, just easily cruising upwind. The wind that day was pretty much perfect for the set up i had going on (board, kite,bodyweight) I was just nicely powered not too much and definitely not too little. The kite is very grunty with a lot of static pull as opposed to a kite that builds power with apparent wind like a race kite. It had a very park and ride feel and I didn't have to work the kite much at all to keep going. The turning was what I had expected for a big kite definitely not fast but not crazy slow either. The wind direction was cross onshore with waist high waves that made for some fun slashing and a couple little ramps to ollie off. The kite turned fast enough that I could down loop it and link up a couple turns on a wave (though obviously not like a smaller wave kite). The kite worked well for cruisey strapless riding. It is very floaty, stable and wants to stay in the air. I could do turns and let the lines slack a little and the kite would drift nicely and it was just all round well behaved. It also had a nice bit of pop for doing some airs. I know that the kite is supposed to be good for wake style riding but that is not something that i could comment on. I also wouldn't be able to tell you about the relaunch as I didn't drop the kite during that session it really wants to stay up there which i think is a very attractive feature in a light wind kite.
Overall i thought it is a nice, easy, stable, fun kite that will let me work on my strapless riding in light winds and maybe get a little twin tip freestyle time if I'm lucky. I cannot tell you how it stacks up against other light wind kites as i haven't flown any others.
I ended up purchasing a 2014/15 fly as i got a good deal on the superseded model and I was assured it would be roughly the same performance wise. Since my return to WA there has been almost zero wind so I haven't had a chance to get a session on it yet but will try get some more info up once I have done some time on this kite.
PS. I flew it on the 24m lines (it comes with extensions which i didn't use) and on the medium settings for bar pressure and grunt (it has three settings for both the rear lines and front lines)
The 2014 is an absolute pig to turn even for a light wind (15m) kite. Power is good, upwind good. Dunno about relaunch. Jumping was average, hard to get timing right due to slow turning...
Dunno if the 2015 is better but i was quite disappointed with the one I flew.
Sorry, just saw previous poster bought a 2014. I hope you can tune it to get better turning, maybe a wider bar?