First up – it’s well put together as we’ve come to expect from the US made Prisms. It’s pretty conventional apart from the aluminium centre-T which is really there to facilitate the optional-but-you-are-going-to-buy-it weight kit. If anything it shows it’s age a little in having 2mm carbon fibre “glides” over the US connector (a groove is cut in them to secure the rods) rather than a cover built from the LE fabric and the standoff connectors having blobs of plastic protruding where most now favour the smooth sail back.
As I find the standard colour schemes (white + pale grey + colour splodge of your choice) to be dull I went with a predominantly black kite, with dark blue in the tail and the non-delete mylar “swoosh” in each wing. For me it’s a lot better. YMMV.
I’ll just get one personal quibble out of the way now. This kite is almost stereotypically French in design. In fact it couldn’t get more French if it was driving a Renault Clio, smoking a Gauloise and listening to Johnny Hallyday. It is almost a pastiche of the style. And no matter how good the kite is, I think it’s a shame that a company/designer who used to have such a distinct and individual design language has chosen to join in with the cacophany of moi aussi, especially for the company flagship.
Glad to have got that out in the open.
All of the flying was done with the kite on the marks and on the middle of the three bridle settings. I left the weight kit at home to avoid any temptation to fiddle immediately. I was tempted though, quite quickly.
It became pretty clear quite early on why Team Cutting Edge chose this kite for competition – it’s a competition kite. If you’re looking for a kite that is going to go out of it’s way to help in making you look good, look elsewhere. The QPro does what it’s told to do. Nothing more, nothing less. If you take a laid back, slap-it-and-see approach to your flying you are probably going to hate this. It needs deliberation and intent to make it get stuff done. A half-arsed approach leads to a half-arsed result. And it does not look good that way.
This kite is not going to hand out multiple rotations per pop anytime soon. This is hardly a competition requirement and is simply not present. You get to keep control of your kite throughout the moves, not simply make an input and step back to enjoy the show.
Precision is good, not because it locks onto a line in the manner of a classical Precision kite, but because if you tell it to fly in a straight line – it does. Tell it to snap 90� – it does. But get sloppy and it looks sloppy. Are you beginning to detect a trend here ?
There’s no need for me to reel off a list of tricks now is there ? It does the business to the extent of the flyer’s ability. But anyone using this kite in competition who doesn’t include at least one sky-to-floor Cascade needs their head seeing to.
Problems ? Issues ?
I’ve read reviews that claim it’s a “Yoyo machine”. Not without the weights it isn’t. In fact it takes a lot of effort to get them done.
Putting it down flat for Flat Spins isn’t the work of a moment either.
I managed to yank the female spreader clean out of the centre-T once with a snap turn. I can do without that, personally.
I got plenty of minor line and bridle snags (and this is without the multiple secondary yoyo stops). At one point it felt like the right hand line had shortened by about 4″. The kite kept on flying, gave a quick boing noise and straightened itself out. No idea what it caught itself on but it got irritating pretty quickly.
I took out two potential rivals for a little side-by-side comparison – the Mantis and the Fury .85. The Mantis is more obviously a recreational kite, far more eager to help you out, faster and easier to Yoyo (weighted as standard), less exacting. The Fury .85 is quicker, more snappy and spiky, less restrained and easier to lose during tricks (does that make any sense ?).
The Mantis for messing about.
The Fury .85 for Trick Out/Thang/Party.
The QPro for STACK/IRBC.
What else ? Minimum wind speed is quoted as being 2mph. No-one who should be flying this kite would consider flying it in 2mph. It will take to the air with effort but the major component of your flying will be The Plummet. 4mph I could accept.
I like the kite as it is. It’s quite serious and I can’t see anyone flying the unweighted QPro for laughs, unless they have a particularly droll sense of humour. It’s not really meant for that. It’s almost a piece of sporting equipment – very much focussed on doing a job rather than making you go “wow ! Look at that !”. If you enjoy a more technical, methodical way of flying then it could be for you. If you don’t… well there’s about a million kites out there just for you.
Yet more time taken flying the QPro.
On the subject of Yoyo’s – it’s not like they aren’t possible, they are. But they simply won’t be rushed past a certain point and once the wind gets up you simply cannot make enough ground to keep slack in order to complete the move. I think it’s because unweighted the kite swoops around in such a wide arc, rather than rotating about a point.
The kite does feel very together without the weights. Everything’s nicely balanced and predictable. I got the 540s going much better than yesterday by bringing the kill and pop (more of a stop actually) into one move rather than separating them.
I did bring the weights with me this time.
Firstly the weight kit’s design – not good. At all. It initially seems quite clever but it’s really not. You’ve got the armature (so named because length of mild steel threaded rod with a bent bit at the end sounds less techy) and a choice of 20g., 40g. or 60g. weights to screw on either end and you can slide it back and forth to suit.
So…. who uses 40g. (let alone 60g.) of weight regularly on their kite ? And do you frequently micro adjust the position of the weight ? Do you cry to the heavens “if only there was some way to move the weight by 2mm. If only !!!!!” ?. Well I don’t. It’s a poor solution to the problem, being different for being different’s sake. If I had the chance again I’d buy the Blue Moon system and a hacksaw to shorten the spine.
I tried the 20g. set as low down as possible to begin with. Although it “cured” the reticent Yoyos it adversely affected most of the other aspects, only slightly but it’s pretty damn good without the weights so you notice the difference. Frankly 20g. was too much for me.
I tried the others for a bit of a laugh. I now have two small paperweights.
BTW once rolled up the kite remains very good indeed. Just make sure the lines have locked themselves in to the stoppers and you can fly and trick in the wrap and chose your moment to emerge again. I got a nice Yoyo 540 to Lewis combo. going quite often.
I suspect that the weighting is something of an afterthought (which may explain its optional status). The kite feels much more well rounded without it. Whilst it loses out in one aspect (rolling up) it gains everywhere else. If I do decide to put some weight on the kite:-
a) it’ll be less than 20g.
b) it won’t be using the official weighting kit
c) I may need to spend more time on the fine tuning of the bridle (which might stop me doing it altogether)
I’ve also tried all of the standard adjustments to the bridle, varying the amount of dynamic effect. I didn’t see an enormous difference.
In conclusion, I think it’d be wise to simply Leave The Kite Alone until I’ve got much more time on it. Fiddling with it is unlikely to make an overall improvement until I know it better. Whilst I like rolled up moves I think I can work around the issue without resorting to slapping lump o’ lead all over the kite.
