PKD Buster

I've been flying power kites in various forms since '93 when I made friends with some guys from my Church who flew stacks of Flexifoils. I flew kites with friends during uni, but due to lack of money only ever owned one 8ft Pro Team to stack with my friends' kites. Now that I'm a teacher and get a bit of income, I have finally got round to buying a decent kite. Having read many reviews (nice one racekites.com!) [ ) Fanks!! ] of various kites I could afford (below £150) and with some very useful advice, I bought a PKD Buster 4m.

Bought it from www.bilboquet.com in France for £130 ! Bargain. Free postage, and it arrived in 3 days!

Got out yesterday to fly it for the first time and wow! Is this thing powerful! The wind was around 15mph and a little gusty. It came out the bag very nicely and was very well behaved on the ground. Just a little tug on the lines and it soared upwards to sit nicely above me. Just the slightest movement brought a HUGE pull, and a little swoop resulted in a jump of about 6ft.

No lift? Seems like quite a lot of lift to me! Not to the extent of Blades, but a nice contollable amount of lift if you do like to do the odd bit of jumping.

Happy with the way the kite was flying, I passed it over to a friend of mine with less kite experience than me. I warned him not to let go of both handles under any circumstance...at least if you're going to let go just let go of one. A little gust, he went flying and promptly let go of both handles. Doh! I spent three hours that evening sorting out the big ball of tangled lines. Never again...

Little tip - if you ever get a huge tangle, don't try and sort it out in your living room with the lines disattached from the kite. Do it outside with the lines at full stretch.

All in all, a great kite. I'm looking forward to replacing these lines, but there's no rush - they are adequate, just not brilliant. If you don't have one, get one.

By : Tom Arnold