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I thought i might add this as i have done this little mod to my deck , and thought some others out there might be interested in the results . Having ridden and been very happy with a Scrub Silver Reef for over a year now , not to mention not wanting to part with another 200 quid for a lighter board , i decided to see what can be done with the silver reef as it stands . What can be taken off to reduce weight ? Pretty much everything except the deck , and you would be hard pressed to find lighter trucks (possibly this years new trucks ) I started with the tires , those 9 inch strikers may look cool but they weigh a ton and to me felt a little overkill for a kiteboard mostly used on grass or sand . the bigger tires also had an annoying habbit of when overpowered as opposed to powersliding, they would dig in and lift you onto the two toeside wheels , now this looks cool but isnt very much fun when overpowered and doing 20mph as the face plant is inevitable . so off with the 9 inchers and on with some brand new 8 inch Primo Alphas . (ps ATB hubs are in 2 parts DO NOT try and remove the tires they way you would with a bike , either you or your hub will give in before the tire does trust me !!) The new tires significantly lowered the deck and made it much less prone to "tipping up" and much easier to slide . the ride is bumpier and slower to start , but overall more stable and more lateral grip . the main issue being the tendancy to slide when overpowered as opposed to flipping you over the front of the board . (at least you land on your A$$ if you get it wrong as opposed to your face!) Not being content with the new tires , i ordered myself some adapter bearings and the lightweight Primo Hubs , and replaced the old scrub ones . The result was a much much lighter board , i havent weighed it , but i would say the hub and tire upgrade got rig of the best part of a KG of weight . The primo hubs allow you to inflate the tires to higher pressures too and fit the smaller tires much better , this translates to more speed due to the Harder tires . and finally just as a matter of preferance i took the old scrub freeflex bindings off and replaced them with Ground Industries roots bindings (the kidney bean shaped ones like the new flexi footstraps) this was initially just a matter of looks , but the bindings have proved their worth , they are infinately more adjustable than freeflex bindings , hold your feet tighter and provide more of a feeling of contact with the board. the extra support is noticeable instantly , they just seem to grip hard all the time . No more turning your toes up hwen edging hard , no more duck feet when jumping , if anything you will complain about not being able to get out of em . All in all for under £100 the board has been transformed , it doesnt compete with the trampas out there but definately ads more longevity and enjoyment to an already great board. By : Lofty

Baught the board on ebay for a good price,£99.00 reduced from £199.00,they had a deal on at the time,brand new.So i was quite pleased. For a year i was using an exit bomber,youth size board ,it served me well but i had outgrown it .I needed a little larger board where my feet didnt catch the wheels. I was on a low budget so mbs ,kite deck,etc was out . having learned on a smaller board i knew what i was looking for......something bigger! Channel tucks suited me,nice for cruising. Long low deck was nice for low centre of gravity. Graphics were nice ,on a large laminate type of sticker the full size of the deck.It had small rubber grip pieces under the bindings ,my previous deck had full length grip tape.At the time i thought that rubber was good ,but after a while the rubber pieces started to peel off from the edges,i never had that kind of problem with grip tape.(A bit of evostick contact adhesive sorted it out) Bindings were the usual velcro fastend to rubber posts The trucks were alloy.....nice,but the king pin washers gave me problems.After about two weeks i heard this knocking noise comming from the trucks,when i got it home and had a close look ,i found that the nylon sleeve on one end had snapped and so there was play where the king pin goes through the trucks.When i phoned the supplier ,they were reasonable and offered me a new truck at half price.I didnt bother and did the job myself with some nylon tubing myself,held tight in place with a bit of hosepipe.Had no problem since!(touch wood).Ive had the board for a year now. The other minor alteration was to fit a galvanisedmetal plate on the top of the deck over the trucks,to act like a big washer for the ajustment bolts.I set the bolts for a tight truck. Ive been very happy with the board once these little problems were sorted. Its an average speed board,thats what i paid for. By : moroni-10

My mission was to find a cheap board on which to learn to landboard on. I had been static flying for about 10 months before I got this board. This is a basic and cheap board its spec is: * Freestyle deck, overall length 97cm, 89cm (laminated maple) deck. * Full coverage grip tape. * Raider 38cm (15') alloy trucks (PU cushioning suspension). * 10cm nylon wheels with 18cm (7') tyres. * ABEC-3 (608Z) bearings. * Freeflex bindings and leash. I got this of Ebay for only £10 and it still had plastic on the top of the board! So as value for money goes it can't be beat - though I believe that it was on sale in Argos for £70. But as the old adage goes you get what you pay for. This board doesn't look particularly sexy and is basic. The footstraps are only adjustable by moving which hole they are bolted on to the board (a choice of 3 on each side) so it is rather limited and I have found that for my feet it is either too tight or a bit loose - I have gone for a bit loose (as I'm still doing plenty of falling over and don't want my board to follow me as I do!). The deck has got virtually no pop - so it's not going to be the best for jumping with, and add the weight factor (as this board is a bit of a tuck shop kid) to this and you can most defiantly find better free style boards out there - but this isn't aimed at that. As far as learning to board on its fine, it feels sturdy and can take a lot of hammering - just what you want for all those crashes you going to make learning. The trucks look cheap but do the job and are on the softer side of medium - so if you're big you may find you need to change the rubber shock for stiffer one (though you will need to get Scrub ones as Exit don't seem to do spares). The whole deck is covered with grip tape which makes the board look rather bland but it enable you to ride 'feet out' if needs be when learning. Overall, this is a fine board for learning on and if you can get one really cheap like I did then go for it, otherwise if you are going to pay full price for it you would probably be better using the money as part payment towards a better board, as you will soon see the limitations of this board. By : Outdoor_Adam

Having just got into kiting, the natural progression from flying had to be for me, landboarding. So after many hours of internet use and abuse I opted for the bluearth C series tribal. Now as a first board (its advertised as intermediate to expert) it is cheap enough, I paid less than £100 for mine on ebay brand new. It duly arrived and I eagerly assembled it. The instruction manual is total pants but you don't need to be a rocket scientist to put it together. The deck is ply with the stickers applied on top off the laquer as is the rubber grip stuff where your feet go, longevity does not seem to be on the makers mind. The trucks are stainless as you would expect and have reasonable amount of turn. The wheels are standard 8 inch. when I unpacked the board an awful lot of the nuts and bolts and screws were loose. I know you are supposed to check anyway but come the factory should have at least done the wheel halfs together properly. That aside the board has a good amount of bounce (I am 14stone though) and the deck didn't seem to mind my weight. As for using it,well the first few tentative tries gave me glipse of its potential and now that I am getting more proficient it is showing its true colours. It turns well, gets up to speed quickly and absorbs bumps and speed wobbles. as for jumping I have not got that far yet but the board is quite heavy so for a fat git like me it might be a struggle,especially the landing! Overall the board is good value for money though and is good as a first board because it is quite cheap,fairly stable, turns ok and has nice large and wide deck so it is easy to hop onto whilst you concentrate on getting your kite to where it needs to be. By : david.brown1230

About 18 months ago i got this board as my first flyboard. As a beginner i looked around for a sturdy board that would allow me to learn the "delicate art" of flyboarding. In these 18 months the board has been used on average 2 times a week, and always at the beach. Most of these days i do 12 kilometer runs, more or less downwind, and take the public transport back home. During its lifetime my board encountered tons of sand, ended up immersed in salt water numerous times, and has gone over a lot of rocks (usually quite smooth rocks though) as the beach here is full of those rocky constructions to temper the waves. This review is based on 18 months of fairly heavy use, so it's not a "whee i got a new board and it looks awesome" review. The main reason for choosing this board, as many beginners do, was the low price. At under 200 euro, this board is very affordable for beginners who are not entirely sure they'll turn out to like the sport, and as such do not want to spend piles of money (yet). There are even cheaper boards, but those are generally classified as kids boards, or boards for very lightweight people. At 80kg, my weight is well above the limit of those boards, so choosing a cheaper board would likely not be a good idea. A second reason for picking this board was the small size. At just 92 centimeters it is the shortest non-kids board from Libre, and in this price range one of the shortest of all common brands. I myself am not that big, and for example a AK102 by Ground Industries felt like i was standing with my legs wide open. It just didn't feel right. A third reason to pick this board are the relatively big tires. They are 23 centimeter diameter and 6.5 centimeter wide, making them more suitable for use on the beach then the standard ground industries or basic libre tires. Anyway, the board arrived in a big box. Much to my surprise, the board had already been assembled for about 80%. The only thing left to do was to put on the wheels. The tires even come inflated, and the trucks and footstraps were already installed onto the board. This means that the board is ready for use about 10 minutes after opening the box. If you compare this to some other brands, where it can easily takes two hours to assemble everything with the tools supplied, this is definitely a plus. Tools are of course included. The deck is made from wood, some kind of multiplex. The thing looked very sturdy, but somehow i was reluctant to go stand in the middle, which is the most stressful position on the deck. When i tried eventually, nothing happened of course, but it felt like i was tempting my luck. I had the feeling that sooner or later, i would probably split the deck in a bad landing. 18 months later it still hasn't happened so maybe i'm careful, or my initial feeling was simply wrong. According to the kite shop personnel, i can break this board with my weight, and they would recommend a more expensive board. That one was too long for my taste so i went with the Sirius anyway. The deck is painted with stars and planets, hence the name Sirius, which is in fact a stars name. The paint is just "on top" of the wood, there is no protective layer. If you want to do railslides, the paint will most likely be completely gone in just a few sessions. The weight of the board comes mainly from the deck as well. Since it's 100% wood, it needs to be quite thick to be sturdy enough. No advanced composites here, so the result is quite a heavy board, even despite its short length. In return you get a way better price then a composite deck would cost you. The weight isn't an issue until you go do serious jumps, and by that time you're likely ready for something better then a beginners board anyway. The skate trucks are quite standard. Someone had given me the advice to tighten them a lot before trying the board with a kite, so that i wouldn't have to worry too much about making unwanted turns. That way i would be able to concentrate on the kite. I had forgotten all about this advice, so my first 3 meters on the board were a 90 degree heelside turn, after which the kite pulled me over and i fell face-forward into the sand. Putting the trucks very tight solved the problem just as predicted. As you get better at controlling your board and the kite at once, you can always just loosen them up again. Meanwhile i have run into the next problem, which is if you want to make a really tight turn with loose trucks, the wheels will actually touch the side of the board. I have compared a number of boards at the kite shop, and unless you get a special model, all boards have the wheels kind of close to the board. I guess if i want even tighter turns, i need a special freestyle board. After 18 months of use at the beach, the bolt to adjust the truck has produced quite some rust around it, which happened on both sides equally. The bolt however still works fine, just looks a bit used. The wheels looked solid enough, and installing them was a breeze. Washer, wheel, washer, nut. Tighten, and ready. Every wheel has a bearing at each side, which i had been told was the part most sensitive to rust. The advice to rinse them off after use in sand and salt water was definitely a good one. Despite all the rinsing every time, after about a year these things were rusty. Very very rusty. The hey-these-things-are-not-moving-anymore-kind of rusty. A quick trip to the kite shop taught me i could get a full set of 8 new bearings for 18 euro. That's 18 euro to make your board behave pretty much brandnew! We're now 6 months later, and the latest bearings are again getting quite rusty. I plan to get new bearings once again, very soon, the difference is certainly worth it. The tires have a diamond pattern, quite nice for dirt terrain, like sand. I already mentioned their fairly large size, very helpful when riding on wet sand. I have so far never replaced a tire or an inner tube, but except for a few pointy rocks, there isn't really a lot on the beach to puncture them. I do not know how well the grip on grass or sand would be, but for sand these tires are excellent. The footstraps are Libre's latest ratchet system. This sounded very nice in the shop, being able to tighten your straps with a click of the mechanism, and release by pressing the other button. Who wouldn't want that! The reality proved quite different though. First of all you never actually adjust these things. You find a nice setting the first time you go on the board, try it, maybe tweak it a bit, and then leave it alone. I have never tightened them around my shoes so that i wouldn't get out of them, because when things go bad, i don't want to be stuck and break my ankles. So basically this whole ratchet system doesn't get used that often anyway. So far it's not good, but not bad either. The bad part about the ratchet system is this: the metal pins that hold the thing together ... they get rusty. The springs inside the system somehow don't. I guess they're made of a different material. Makes me wonder why the pins weren't made from the same rust-resistant material. Anyway, the ratchet still works, i just need to pull it harder to open and hit it hard to close again. The good part about the footstraps is they are wide. They are actually wider on the standard setting then the ones of some other boards that i tried, and they were on the largest setting. At least my shoe fits into this with ease. And just as fast gets out again in case of a crash. The foodpads are just rubber mats with quite large grooves in it. Even covered in wet sand they still give a nice grip. One corner came undone a while ago, but that was nothing a pinch of superglue didn't take care of. They also show zero sign of wear, as sand-paper pads tend to do after such long use. A grab handle is missing completely, there aren't any holes pre-drilled to install one either. Probably because Libre doesn't think a beginner board needs a grab handle. Can't blame them there. This board is meant for learning to ride and learning to jump. If you want to learn to do grabs, you're not beginner-class anymore. To finish i'll say the board obviously has its limits. While the short length makes it very suitable for steep turns, it's on the heavy side for jumps, and because of its length and the skate trucks, anything over 35 kilometers an hour will get you massive speedwobble. I wouldn't recommend going over 30 without a depower kite to hang your weight on anyway. However, in return for this you get a fairly cheap board, and the opportunity to once in a while buy cheap bearings to make your board virtually brandnew again. The board gets rusty if you abuse it regularly with a mix of sand and salt water, but except for the bearings which need rinsing, the rust doesn't really influence the board a lot. For a decent price you get a very nice beginners board, which will take you from your first meters of flyboarding up to (and including) early jumps and some nice pretty fast streaks. This board is not suitable for true boardercross, high speed or insane jumping, but it can do the early steps of each category. Eventually you will probably want a better board, more focussed on whatever your style is. However, if you don't know what your style is yet, this board is the perfect tool to discover. By : Pulsar

I have been riding the scrub Photon for seven months now, both with and without a kite, and it has performed beyond my expectations. As an entry level board it is lightweight, fairly maneuverable and won't break the bank as you can pick one up for less than £100. The limited pop and absence of a grab handle are not a problem for beginners but do become tiresome as you progress and move on to more advanced tricks. It has a 90cm maple deck that is suitable for most weights, plus, it can take a large amount of punishment, I have thoroughly tested its strength and it hasn't let me down yet (that said, I have yet to land any huge jumps on it). Deck: 90cm maple Weight: 5.85kg Truck: solid 13mm skate truck Bindings: Velcro Overall it's an excellent board for beginners with good build quality and a low price tag; I would definitely recommend it to a friend. By : Dave103