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I first flew a Solus at Kite Party 9. It was a prototype and I did my first on-purpose double yo-yo on it. Offered to buy it on the spot.
Months later, I have now flown Kent's custom Solus, most recently, this evening at the Friday night fly. It was also flown by Kent, Darren and Joe from Arizona who comes up on most Fridays. Winds were light ( 3-6 mph ) and smoother than average for Las Vegas.
You have seen videos by people who are much better fliers than myself. So I will just kind of bullet list the general comments made by all of us.
1 The kite feels much smaller than a 100" kite. In fact, we generally thought it felt more immediate and responsive than the smaller Widow Maker.
2 Although the tow points are quite wide, a hard pull with one hand will put the kite into a one spin stall, which is really a handy way of entering a trick in the middle of the window.
3 While straight lines are achievable, the kite really wants small inputs. I would fly other kites for figures if in a competition. For freestyle, the lines just require a bit more care for figures.
4 I could repeatedly do multiple yo-yos. The kind where you do a small pull in-between revolutions to get the next flip. I have not been able to do this as well on any other kite.
5 I claimed the best Taz Machine for the night with a surprisingly slow, textbook looking TM. This is not an easy trick for me.
6 Joe was doing his more advanced comete, crazy copter type stuff. He too felt the kite belied its size and acted much more like a 7.5 ft trickster than one a full 10 inches bigger.
7. Just remembered. When doing cascades, the one-pop cascades look the same as the two-pop cascade in that the kite flattens to a pancake position in-between the 3 and 9 o-clock positions. I haven't seen other kites flatten in the same way when doing the one-pop input.
So, if you like trick kites, but always felt they had to be somewhere around 2.1 meters to be a real trickster, be prepared for a shock. At 2.54 meters, the Solus defies conventional thinking.
Well done Sky Burner.
