Flown in varied inland weather conditions.

I’ve been a Store Rider with the Airbossworld Team for just over a year now.  They picked me out of a group of four to join them and since then they’ve opened The Airfield which has been my place of progression, I have gone through the Flexifoil Rage and then the Blades and now my 9.5 Sabre II which is the kite I am most comfortable with at the moment, but it’s seems I am not quite cutting it and need to get my height and style sorted.  You see I prefer to go big with my tricks, hence the inspiration to write this article.

It was a perfectly sunny day with plenty of wind at the Airbossworld Airfield, which was blowing around 20-30 throughout the day, a bit gusty but nothing too bad. My normal kite of choice was the Flexifoil Sabre II 9.5m but this was just too much for the wind today. So into the shop to raid the school stock and out comes the Naish X1 9m SLE kite. Now I’ve seen plenty of videos and pictures of SLE's but I’d never actually really had a session on one so I was quite intrigued. The X1 is described as a trainer kite so it was all looking good.

First thing that struck me when I pulled it out of the bag was wow how bright it was, with its all orange colour you certainly wouldn’t miss this kite on a beach. We got the kite pumped up in no time.  This was the first time I had ever set up a bow kite so a little help from Gary was required to make sure I wasn’t going to kill my self.  I was amazed how simple it was to set up one of these kites. I was expecting a long haul getting stressed with lines but nope we where ready to roll.

After getting to grips with the Naish safety system it was ready for launch. With help from Gary it was up sitting at the top of the wind window very nicely. The speed in which this kite turned was amazing and I couldn’t believe how fast it was turning, but I had been used to a de-power foil so it was always going to feel very fast.

After spending a few minutes just cruising on the board getting used to the kite I started throwing some jumps. The second of which the speed of the redirection caught me out, but straight back on, no damage done. After only flying the kite for around 15min I could already see that it was really helping me progress with new tricks. The combination of the ease of flying the kite and the lift I was finding my riding a whole lot easier. After a good session pulling some sweet rotations and grabs I decided to come back in and have a closer look at the kite.

With the kite safely on the floor I had a look at some of the things Naish have given this kite to help the rider.  It has many adjustments to allow the rider to adjust the turning speed of the kite and you can also adjust the bar pressure for the different style of riders. The X1 also has a tough reinforced construction to handle the demands that people will through at it.

Back out for another fly then, in the past I’ve heard people say they weren’t the biggest fan of the pully bar that Naish use but as far as I could see it worked great I didn’t have any problems with it. The kite was very easy to re-launch off of the floor simply give a tug on one of the lines and up she goes.

Although the X1 is being phased out of production towards the end of the year it is still a great kite, and this just shows that Naish are really at the top of their game with old kites still rivalling the latest offerings from other manufactures. The X1 is aimed at the school market primarily as it has been developed as a trainer kite, this is highlighted in the stability of the kite and the robustness.

All in all I was very impressed with this kite I‘d never really flew a SLE or anything similar inland for boarding but I’ll definitely be doing it again, it was great fun. A great kite for anyone wanting to learn to fly SLE’s to bows. Thanks to this kite I am now considering a SLE kite as my next purchase.

Click Here For Naish Products Page- Naish Code has now replaced the X1