Beginners - its good to buy used gear, dont listen to pimps

[Kite2Heaven]

Buying used is a great idea so you dont have to pay top $ for gear thats gonna take a beating... Once youve got it down - then buy what suits your style

[SalmonSlayer]

I am a firm believer in beginners buying used gear. Just make sure you know what you are buying. Seek out advice from experienced riders you trust. There are plenty of riders (including me) that wasted money on used gear they should not have purchased.

[plummet]

1 year old with minimal use is the best I recond. Its at least half price and still has most of its life left in it.

Buying a 3+ year old kite is false economy because its mostly worn out. It will rip and fail a lot sooner than a newer kite.

Learners need the most robust kite they can find as they will hammer it into the beach and water repeatidly while learning.

[Hawaiis]

Totally agree, the brand new MHL lift that I bought was a total piece of useless crap.
The used Rush Randle foilboard and Mango Carafino hydrofoil was much better and at a fraction of the new ones.

[dejavu]

Perfectly ok to buy second hand kiteboarding equipment. I purchased gear, bards, kites and so long as you are astute and get some solid advice from a mate you will be fine.

Of course like all sellers of any product it is buyer awareness. You ay for what you get.

[tautologies]

Just make sure you know what you are buying.

therein lies the rub.

Personally I think used gear is fine, but a beginner will not be able to properly discriminate a worn canopy from a crisp one. They also know less about models and how kites work, and if they meet a ...lets say motivated seller they might not get the proper advice.

In addition to generally being safer, I also think new gear will hold more of the abuse they will put on it.

As usual it is a tradeoff.

[edt]

Personally I think used gear is fine, but a beginner will not be able to properly discriminate

u said it.

there's a kiter at my launch that used old gear for the first two years, the safety would not properly flag out the kite but the kiter never knew that kites were supposed to work better than this. There was zero progression. Finally the kiter saved up to buy newer gear and the difference is immediate, wider wind range more days riding, incredible progression. Basically a wasted two years, and sure the kiter saved $1,000 or more but . . . time is money.

A lot of kiters get lucky with used gear. It all works really good. But that's just it. A new kiter has to either rely on luck or spend a long time building up their skills on identifying how each of the various models of the kites because they have absolutely no idea what is going on when they start. There is nothing wrong with that. But time is money. A lot of people give up because it just takes too much time to figure out what is wrong with their used gear.

Everyone here at kiteforum.com is a success story. But what you don't hear about are people who buy old gear, have no idea how it works, and get their butt handed to them because of a safety design that doesn't flag out the kite properly and then leave the sport forever.

I know I have seen several people come to my launch with obvious used ebay gear. Most of them fail at the sport. And you never see them again.

The ones who succeed with used gear are the only ones we hear about in this forum.

[Hawaiis]

When I started, I bought a used $300 2006 Cabrinha contra 14m to learn on. It served me well for one year. When I gotten better I invested in a brand new $2000 2012 Cabrinha Switchblade 14m. It lasted less than one year. Cabrinha had switched the bladder thickness from 0.08 to 0.06mm. The thinner bladder simply stretched. I am very happy with my 2013 Ozone Edge 17m. So buying new does not guarantee good quality. It is just as much gamble as buying used.

[Starsky]

because they have absolutely no idea what is going on when they start.

But what you don't hear about are people who buy old gear, have no idea how it works

I don't really care much about these folk, and prefer they take up another sport. We all start sometime and its our individual responsibility to study and learn how a kite works, what it means to tune it, stall it, the mechanics of flying, steering, powering, depowering, relaunching, and safetying it. What it means to trim a kite and then know enough to learn how all those things feel on our own in a field somewhere before you start doing it all while swimming.

I think its retarded that many don't tune their gear, or worse don't even really understand what that means. Used gear is a no brainer for newbies. For them to buy new on the excuse that they dont know how to make sure its all set up well is ridiculous. You get someone who knows their shit to fly it and tell you if its tuned, then you learn what that means and how to keep it that way! We should all know exactly how every aspect of our gear works, and not knowing makes you a straight up kook.

Im sure on guitar forums you don't hear much from the guys who never learned to tune theirs either, and rightly so.

[edt]

Im sure on guitar forums you don't hear much from the guys who never learned to tune theirs either, and rightly so.

a vintage guitar wont kill you because it lacks a quick release i dunno if it's a good metaphor buying a used kite is more like buying a used parachute than a used guitar, or a used climbing rope, sure you can save a lot of money on a used parachute (only used once!) but your knowledge level should really be higher than beginner, compared to that it does no harm for a new guitar player to buy a vintage tele because he likes how it looks.