A full set of T5 kites - part 4

After flying our new T5 Taipan Standards last week, the wind was perfect yesterday for trying out our new vented T5 Taipans. At first, the wind was around 15mph on average (though quite blustery), so out came the V1s!

As with our Standards last week, the V1s proved very responsive to input, and a pleasure to fly.

Very much the same feel on the lines as the SULs and Standards; they clearly came from the same stable!

During our lunch break, the wind started to pick up more, with gusts well over 20mph, so we decided to switch over to the V2s

Although they do feel a bit 'heavier' on the lines (for the very simple reason that they are: 394 grams vs 332 grams for the V1), again they are very easy to control and respond very well to input.

We first flew them with vent patches on, but the wind got increasingly gusty, so we took the patches off, to see what that would give us in flight characteristics.

Despite the increasingly blustery wind (we're now talking 25+mph), the V2 remained perfectly controllable, with relatively little pull on the lines.

We flew our basic Ruthless Queen routine a few times with the V2s and that worked absolutely fine.

Of course, the whole point of getting different versions of the same kite was to have the same 'feel' on the lines, independent of the wind. I hadn't fully realised how nice that feels until actually experiencing it myself, especially with the SULs, Standards, and V1s. The V2s feel a little heavier, but still require the same level of input to do the same thing. My guess is that the Cuban Zeros, as the other extremes, will also feel a bit different from the middle trio. Can't wait to find out!

Credit for those pictures showing the two kites flying together, and the one of Irma ripping off the patches: Roger Backhouse