Jono 111 wrote:In my case, all my kitesurfing is on the back of a long haul flight - and usually alone. If you're trying to cram 3 kites and 2 boards and all your clothing into a single bag, it's a complete pain. The kites take up a material amount of extra space, they're heavier, and you can't cram them down nearly as much because of all that hardware in the kite.
Really?! Are we talking about the same couple sections of surgical rubber tubes, here? This isn't a Home Depot hardware section in your kite. Let the plastic ends take the place of the valve on each strut, and you are left with five or less 7 inch sections of rubber hose, which are entirely flexible and collapsible, a couple pieces of lightweight plastic (about the same amount that is found in a hair comb), and all in all it might weigh a couple grams. Over 3 kites, that comes out to an entirely insignificant amount of weight (probably not even as heavy as the amount of sand stuck to the kite after a session), and a volume that is almost un-measureable lost in all the yards of fabric. The way you roll the kite session to session could affect more the overall volume of the package.
In my case, the time I save pumping up is completely negated by the extra time to deflate the struts and faff around rolling the kite in a way that is sympathetic to the one pump hardware (remember how quickly you can neatly roll a many-pump, or pack down when a great big rain front is about to hit).
So what you're saying is that it is 6 to one, half a dozen to the other. Irrelevant.
Where I kitesurf is nowhere near a shop or anywhere to get supplies. I don't want any added complication when a bladder goes, other than grabbing a spare strut, chucking it in and being back on the water in 30 minutes.
Yeah, the spare strut for a one pump is just as easy to install, but with the extra hassle of rolling up a rubber band and pulling a hose off. A whole 30 seconds (with the re-installation) for a third-grader. Granted, a leading edge bladder might take up to an additional 2 minutes and 30 seconds depending on the number of struts on it.
And when I'm out there alone, I don't want to think about my entire kite deflating itself and losing my prime safety of having something to use as a raft.
That's why there are hose pinches on every one pump kite out there, and as an added bonus, all the struts end up at
exactly the same pressure that the leading edge has. Takes a lot less time than trying to balance the air pressure in your struts and fiddle a valve flap closed before the strut loses pressure.
I don't think these are illogical reasons - or make me a luddite. But perhaps you can see that different people have (I think) legitimate reasons for holding different views....
No, pretty much all those reasons are illogical with modern one-pumps, which coincidentally, is why all modern kites are one pumps, save for ones that have logical reasons for not being so, such as ultra light wind models.
Got some 06 Ravens still working great 
