KiteJan

This is a (relatively) cheap ultra lightweight kite made by HQ in Germany. The design is very pleasing with the appliquéd rainbow design on the back fabric. Normally I don't go for black things, but the colours against the black does look very nice. I saw one of these hung up in my local kite shop earlier in 2006 and immediately wanted to know more - it's that striking! The HQ Shadow seems capable of both precision and freestyle (given the limits imposed by low wind). It's framed in 4mm Avia spars and Dynamic T12 (whatever that is!) tapered spiral srapped lower spreaders. You get a couple of clip on YoYo stoppers (or JoJo stoppers as HQ call them) which look like they will get lost very easily, along with a heavier tail weight which is supposed to make some kinds of tricks easier (flic-flacs, rollups - anything that gets the kite onto it's back or front).

The sail is Ventex and what looks like heavier duty ripstop nylon for the leading edges - dacron is just used for the nose and reinforcement points, with some mylar here and there for extra strength. The designers of the HQ Shadow have also tried very hard to make the kite as snagless as possible - the upper leading edges are covered, and where the standoffs come through the sail have been covered in mylar to prevent line snags.

The instructions are up to HQ's usual standard - i.e. useless. The instructions in mine refer to tightening the leech line, but that doesn't match what is actually on the kite. They also don't refer to either the YoYo stoppers or the weights, apart from informing you they exist! However on the plus side you do get a plan specifying both the carbon spars type/length and the default bridle settings.

Purchased: May 2006

Details

Width	Height	Depth	Weight	Spars	Sail	Windrange
207 cm	97 cm	-	170 g	Carbon	Ventex	light
Cost
£100 new.

Good Things

• Very cheap for an ultra lightweight kite.
• Good performance in light winds.
• Pleasing sail design.
• Very trickable but with reasonable precision.
• Frame appears to be both stiff and robust.

Bad Things

• Very poor instructions.
• Could be difficult to replace the lower spreader spars.
• Seem harder to do the pitch based tricks (flic-flacs, etc.).
• A tendency to oversteer with the default bridle adjustment.
• Definitely not a zero wind kite - it does need a light breeze in order to fly.

Final Thoughts

After the first couple of flies I can say this is a very nice kite and fills a 'hole' in my kite bag, namely a low wind delta. Sure there will be better Ultra Lightweights or Super Ultra Lightweights on the market, but I don't think there are many offering this performance at this price. Watching a couple of fellow fliers who are far more experienced with dual line trick flying with the HQ Shadow impressed me - there seems to be a whole range of things this kite can do. I'm looking forward to learning.

I guess I'm going to end up loosing the YoYo stoppers and the weight - I already have lost the 'default' weight (kind of a 15cm piece of wire in the bottom of the spine carbon), but it looks easy enough to replace.

One curious thing is there is almost no information about this kite - either generally on the Internet, or on HQ's own website. Why? I guess that HQ products like this are classed too "down market" for the serious delta flier, but too expensive for the occasional flier. Seems a pity for such a nice kite......