via: Dirtyhabits

I had the good fortune to try out the new Cabrinha Drifter this past week and here is my review.

Wind: averaging 18-20knots, no gusts above 22knots.

First thing I noticed, it looks like a hybrid delta shape, with some c-kite elements, namely the straight cutoffs on the wingtips.

Second noticeable element: The hardcore bar setup with loads of steel and soft comfortable rubber grip. It seems like bar design has come along some, the simple chicken loop and release system is very streamlined, albeit very complicated looking. (I didn’t release and see how it was put together)

Bar pressure was definitely at a comfortable level, I know cabrinha’s have in the past been known for some very stiff bar pressure, but this was very comfortable. The most noticeable flying element that was apparent was the stability in the air, no matter what you do with the bar or where you fly the kite, even directly through the window on a kiteloop or downloop, the kite did not luff once! Even flying straight through the window on a hard carved turn, and releasing some power through pushing the bar out sharply, there was literally zero canopy distortion whatsoever. What this means is that cabrinha have built an extraordinarily solid kite, that you have to worry less about where you fly it in order to keep the canopy in shape.

The overall power was good, but I have become accustomed to my </a href=”http://www.timharper.co.za/2010/03/f-one-bandit-3-review/”>F-One bandit 3 </a> that has some amazing grunt behind it. The power ratio from the side of the window to the center of the wind window was also fairly consistent, some kites really peak quite dramatically when you send it through the center of the wind window.

I would like to try the 7m kite in some overpowered situations to give a more solid review that would include how well the kite depowered, but I was certainly impressed.

Definitely another kite to test if you are considering asking Santa for a new kite this festive season!

For full details on the kite see the Cabrinha site here.

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexatious to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

More details on the prose here, it was originally meant for the poet’s christmas cards: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiderata

More on the performance later, but it really does look slick in the black and gold colour scheme, I can’t find an image online to post here, but I’ll attempt to get one up later. The blue and white one below will have to do for now!
The construction seems as solid as the rest of the nobile range, not as bombproof as some kites I’ve seen though, but all the right triple stitched seams and rough gaurds that you would come to expect these days.
The bar and lines are standard Nobile, but there’s no improvement needed there, the bar is comfortable with finger shaped grooves close to the center of the bar. The bag is standard too, nothing special but it was never a huge selling point for me in a kite anyway.
The only one improvement both Nobile and F-One could make is that they could include some sort of spinning shackle for the center lines, as they do tend to get twisted on themselves if I do kiteloops in only one direction for a session. Slingshot’s below the bar spinning chicken loop is definitely the way forward, I’ve got no idea why other brands don’t follow suite.

So performance wise the NHP is quite impressive, it’s very smooth through the entire window, and has a very direct feel to the kite. It turns really quickly too and the kiteloops feel very stable throughout the whole loop. Unhooked the NHP has all the drawbacks of all other bow / hybrid kites where your normal riding will see you fairly powered up, and you will need to depower before unhooking to make sure you don’t flare the wingtips. I tried this and it worked just fine, I only needed to depower around a quarter of the depower strap to counter this. When I was unhooked the kite still felt very stable and didn’t fly further back in the window like I mentioned on my F-One Bandit 3 review.

I’m trying to think of a negative or two to balance my review but the only thing that springs to mind is this: The kite fell back into the window once or twice when it was on the 14knot side of the wind range, but a quick correction saw it come back to the edge of the window, and this was generally on the beach or when I had turned into a wave / carving turn. (So it may have been my fault in the first place!)

So overall a great looking kite with all the characteristics that I look for, if you are in the Cape Town region and want to test it out yourself call Coci on 083 273 2212. There are only a few in South Africa at this stage, so if you want one I’d get on it quick.

NHP Kite 2010

USA:

NY Penn Station

http://gowalla.com/spots/623366

(380 people checked in)

http://foursquare.com/venue/19462

(11744 people checked in)

France:

Eiffel tower
http://gowalla.com/spots/21869

(67 people checked in)

http://foursquare.com/venue/185194

(303 people checked in)

South Africa:

V&A Waterfront cape town
http://gowalla.com/spots/182354

(12 people checked in)

http://foursquare.com/venue/518280

(83 people checked in)

I’ve had the bandit 3 for just under two months now, and can say that it really is a superb kite. I used to ride slingshot fuels, so the need for direct input on the bar, and quick turning speed were essential in a new kite for me. A few highlights of the kite’s performance that set it apart from anything else I’ve ever flown:

1. The pull  from the bandit 3 remains consistent throughout the entire window, the fuels have a very definite sweet spot below 12o’clock and it will slow down as it gets to the edge of the window. This means that when I jump on the new bandit 3, the upward motion is never a jerk upwards, it’s always a very smooth, floaty lift, and then it’s always a smooth float down too.

2. Turning speed, the bandit 3 that I have is a 7m, so it should be quick anyway, but this thing turns on an absolute dime, beating the 2008 fuels I own hands down.

3. Wind range, I’ve been out in 18knots and been happily riding upwind on the bandit 3, and then I’ve also been out in 35knots and been ok too, (just depower and hold on!!). The low end is seriously impressive and this kite will see me through most of the Cape Town wind that we get.

So to give a balanced review I need to mention the two things that I don’t enjoy about the bandit 3…

1. The lines are cheap and nasty – I’m not sure how long they will last, but they really do feel a lot thinner than any other’s I’ve owned.

2. I need to depower to unhook – riding comfortably when I’m on full power on the depower rope, I’ve found that I need to depower if I want to unhook, I’ve also found that when I do unhook the kite is very responsive still, so any tiny tweak sends the kite off into the water, or back to 12o’clock

Overall a fantastic kite, and it is the 3rd generation so F-One has obviously made some improvements along the way. I’ll have to send it through a wave or two to test the construction, but I’d rather not do that for the purposes of a review…

f-one_bandit_3_most_wanted

The site performance tool looks as vague as all the other webmaster tools stats, but it does have some interesting data:

For one of my US hosted sites (Dedicated hosting on 1 server) I get:
Speed rating of between 0-20 On average, pages in your site take 3.5 seconds to load (updated on Jan 31, 2010). This is slower than 58% of sites. These estimates are of low accuracy (less than 100 data points). (Homepage size is 25.14 KB)
And for comparison a Kenyan hosted site (2 servers with double the hardware specs each AND a load balancer), I get the following stats: Speed rating of between 0-50 “On average, pages in your site take 9.6 seconds to load (updated on Jan 31, 2010). This is slower than 92% of sites. These estimates are of low accuracy (less than 100 data points). (Homepage size is only 6.88 KB – built for mobile)

So the site is really slow to google’s crawlers, but do they take into account that they may be crawling a page from half way around the world? I wouldn’t mind so much if I hosted on a server down the road from Mountain View California, but because this is Africa, I’m a little concerned.

Another issue I picked up is that google’s very own page ads and analytics scripts are picked up as possible solutions to increasing the speed in your page load times, as they suggest:
Minimize DNS lookups The domains of the following URLs only serve one resource each. If possible, avoid the extra DNS lookups by serving these resources from existing domains:
http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js
http://www.google-analytics.com/ga.js
So, make your pages faster by writing your own analytics and ad server, and try to be located close to us, thanks google, very helpful.

I take my hat off to the Ushahidi team for their efforts over the last 24hours, you have done a superb job at getting the platform up and running, and by the responses coming in to the system, I know that this project will make a real difference in the relief efforts.

http://haiti.ushahidi.com/ for more details and up to the minute reports from the island itself.

As a side note, it’s the first time I’ve seen google’s ‘Latest Results’ when doing a search for haiti earthquake in their results page. http://www.google.co.za/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=haiti+earthquake

It scrolls real time search results as they are indexed by google, fairly impressive I must say!!

nobile_nhp_3D_kiteboard

nobile_nhp_3D_kiteboard_specs

More details on the nobile website:

http://www.nobilekiteboarding.com/#/board-nhp