Benson Airbow

The Airbow is one of the latest quad line kite designs. It first appeared on the kite scene in 2004 and was designed by Andy Wardley and made by Benson kites in the UK. It was intended to be a quad line kite that can do dual line slack line tricks. In particular it can do some very nice flic-flacs and yo-yos - moves that the Revolution can't do with any degree of style (if at all). In many ways the Airbow owes more to the Synergy Deca than the Revolution - although it has more accuracy than the Synergy Deca.

You can fly the Airbow either on the dedicated Switch Grip handles (which are symmetrical) or standard Revolution handles. I tend use my extended straightened Revolution handles which does alter the kites behavior a bit) and have found there isn't much between them. An important thing to be aware of is that although both the kite and the Switch Grip handles appear to be symmetrical in fact the leaders on the top lines is actually shorter than the bottoms. Get this the wrong way round and the kite doesn't fly well at all.

At the time I was intrigued about the Airbow and so made myself a copy (without actually seeing one) which I called the Airbra. Needless to say the build and performance of my Airbra isn't a patch on the Airbow itself.

Purchased: July 2009