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.