Waroo vs Sonic review

[agio]

mark, thanx for the great review

[mark van haze]

ok thanks for the compliments. I try my best to give useful and as unbiased as possible reviews. Maybe someday ill get to test kites on a prof essional basis (yeah right - i wish)
Now the questions:

I think to your 11m sonic you should go for a 7 waroo. I see the 9m waroo as pretty powerful at the windrange that the 11m covers nicely already.

Regards build and shape: the sonic has more sweep, other than that very similar. Id say the material and workmanship is identical and thats not too suprising - they are from the same factory. However i think best did solve the bridle "cave-in" problem i adressed, better. They are using more attachment points than gk.

regarding alex and peter: All i can say is -very nice guys and as usual the online personalities have pretty much nothing to do with the persons in real life.

fast board: yes as mentioned, little rocker, thin rails. A concave center of the board seems to help me too.

Valves: the waroo has ball valves and only 3 struts (remember this is the 9m). Thats very comfortable and compared to the sonic that has 7 struts and no ball valves at all.... I must say, ball valves on struts should not be missing in my opinion... Size of the valves - well i didnt check that. I will later this week.

a leash is of course necessary for unhooked moves. If you let go of the bar you wont lose the kite using a leash.

Anything else i can answer?

[ed257]

Anything else i can answer?

Please describe the bar.

Thanks,

Ed

[VICTOR-Cs]

Anything else i can answer?

It's possible the sonic bar works with the waroo??

[sq225917]

no reason why not, youd need to adjust the line lengths though.

[Traxspeed]

Does the Waroo really has more bridle connection points?
On pics I found of both kites I saw the same number of connection points (4). Could be that these are pics of earlier protos.
BUT: on the Waroo they seem to be more spread on the front bladder.
The Sonic has them concentrated in the middle of the kite. This could also explain the caving under heavy loads.


How does the Waroo behave concerning the trim? Does it is as sensitive as the Sonic?

Thanks, Chris

[frederics]

For you, do the kites (sonic and waroo) depower the same?
Viewing the bridle sketch of the sonic , I think sonic is better. But the warro is flatter, then depower is easier on a flatter kite with the same bridle connection.
And finally, do these kites really safe for you when you let go the bar in the center of wind window?

[sq225917]

as safe as letting go can be,nothing is 'safe' just safer...

[OzBungy]

...
And finally, do these kites really safe for you when you let go the bar in the center of wind window?

In normal conditions all the bow kites depower adequately when you push out the bar.

The question I have been pushing is what happens in extreme situations? What we need is for someone to tow a kite behind a car or a boat and release it onto the front lines and see if the kite goes down and stays down, and have much pull is on the lines in this position, and repeat this a dozen times to see if the results are consistent. 80 kph would be a good test speed.

I suspect the answer will be that the depower is sufficient for riding in "normal" conditions but we will need to use a conventional leash for safety in extreme conditions. The hard part is that it is too easy to ride in extreme conditions on a bow kite and not realize that they are extreme.

[shartmann]

One of the only problems with the Sonic seems to be the (as far as I understand) not working stopperball.
Is it better on the Waroo?