Naish Boxer LEI Kite

So this kite i bought after trying, and failing, to combine my Beamer 3.6 and my landboard. Much searching around online left me with two choices as eventually I want to get into kitesurfing. I looked at the Best Bularoo and the Boxer but what made the deciding factor in the end was the price, being in America at the time i paid $400 for this kite, 200 quid with the exchange rate at that time which i thought was a bargain, it was second hand from realkiteboarding.com. I bought the SLE control system to go with it which was another $100.

After flying my Beamer 3.6 for about a year i felt confident enough to move into depower, a bold move and looking back I didn't know what i was getting myself into. Teaching myself i had a few tumbles, a few wrist injuries but a lot of smiles This kite is marketed as an all terrain kite with a massive wind range, Ive flown in all different types of conditions and this holds to be true. The kite is a dream to fly, loves swooping turns provided there is 13+mph of wind and powers up beautifully. I don't know whether its because of the control system or the kite but the combination makes it very easy to rake in the power or hold it steady. This makes it great for static jumps and you can swing all over the place with nice floaty landings.

Set up is fairly easy, ive not had any experience setting up other LEI's but basically you close all the valves on the struts and inflate from one point on the leading edge. Once the edge has reached a certain psi it lets its air into the struts and you keep pumping till the thing is firm. Has two knots on the brake lines at the kite end for different set ups as well as a range of different knots at the bar end for 2:1 power, 1:1 power, strong winds light winds etc etc. Haven't really fiddled around with these much i just found one i liked and stuck with it.


Mostly i use this kite for Landboarding which i am becoming increasingly better at with each session. Can't really add much here as i haven't used many other kites for boarding but it is a hell of a lot better than my beamer. I can go upwind with ease and its a lot easier to maintain tension in the lines. When i have enough space i can just lean back and cruise with the kite, it feels very stable and absorbs gusts when your moving along.

As for downsides to this kite this has to be the overfly at the zenith; as with all LEI's if you fly inland and/or in gusty conditions the kite will tend to overfly at the zenith which can be dangerous. I run backwards to try and get tension in the lines again but invariably it crashes to the ground and i cringe hoping the bladders won't burst. A few times the kite has almost landed on me which would probably hurt. To remedy this i try to only fly in constant wind conditions or avoid getting the kite too high in the sky which does the trick. A lot of the earlier problems i had with the kite got ironed out as i got better so maybe this will too.

Lastly a word about the relaunch, this was something that took a lot of getting used to, again more experience with other kites would help but at times it seems very difficult. Basically if im in winds above 15mph just yank on a line and it spins around like a crazy dog taking off at the edge of the window. Below 15mph and its a right arse ache, the kite has a few grass stains where ive run backwards getting it to spin onto the trailing edge and a take off position.

All in all I am very happy with this kite, it sets up real easy and flies like a dream. It was cheap and does all the things i want it to do. In retrospect i could have tried harder to find other kiters and have a go on other kites first but what the hell, i threw myself in at the deep end and had a great time doing it. Any questions or comments much appreciated.

One last word, I say i taught myself but after every session i was on here asking questions and reading through posts and the answers i received helped a million. Thanks to anyone who replied to my posts!

By : DanKiteMan