Cabrinha Switchblade 01

The new Cabrinha Switchblade is back! We have always been fans of this iconic kite and this new model is the best yet (the new colours look sensational too). 2021 Cabrinha Switchblade – Surf FX

 

Hey guys Jon from Surf FX and we're having a look at one of my favorite kites, this is the Cabrinha Switchblade the new 2021 version. Pretty excited because in Australia we got these kind of on the back half of our season I suppose, we usually get them at the start so pretty stoked they finally get these back on board. Now switchblade is traditionally a big air freeride kite which makes it a nice easy kite to learn because it's gotten plenty of power right from the get-go, five-strut design keeps it quite stable in the lower winds so you do get a little bit of grunt, good kite for big guys and really it is super stable with the five-strut in high winds which is why it's so good at big, big air it's just got hang time and height and you get that from having a canopy profile that's quite smooth throughout the whole thing maximizing the efficiency and you can see that with their panel layout, how they really try to maximize the amount of shape that they can get into this surface of the kite to keep that nice and smooth so you get quite efficient design.

Now the dacron that they use on the leading edge and on the struts is a specific dacron that's been developed for the wings and kites so it's got very very good strength and stretch properties so it doesn't stretch very much in the kind of directions that they lay so you can get it super super stiff, again it's all about stiffness because it's a higher aspect kite keeping it stiff just gives a real good skeleton and structure to hang off as you dingle dangle through the air makes it more fun. So with all this talk about structure and stability and strength and stuff like that it just gives you this feeling of park and ride you can put this kite in the sky not have to fly it aggressively and you can just cruise with it and then you can just when the wind gets up you've got your top end wind range which is fantastic so yeah such a big wind range of this kite it's really awesome but then you get that big wind you can hold down a bigger size than normal and you can just send it and launch.

So this kite the Switchblade's been around for oh, easy just over 10 years. Every year there's improvements so think about this every day there's a team of people making this kite better so that's happened every day over 10 years so constantly constantly improving this design so it's very refined. Because of that it makes it one of the most famous kites in kiteboarding because you can just really, beginners can get on it and have a good time, it's quite powerful and it's going to be the kite for big air and hang time which is like most guys getting a kite boarding for big air and hang time so it works really well. Talking about this efficiency you can really see it this way so to keep that aerodynamic profile at its peak you notice it's quite a narrow leading edge you know even though other kites we have on display in here the wave kite hanging from the roof it is much smaller but has a big bigger leading edge, but that smaller leading edge gives it a slippier shape through the air and just gets you that higher efficiency.