Choosing a Kiteboarding Trainer Kite

People often ask, “What’s the best trainer kite?” My answer is always the same, “It depends on what you are looking to do with it.” True, some trainer kites have additional features that make the flying experience a little easier; however, these additional features don’t necessarily make the kite the right choice for you.

Let’s start with the size of the kite. Trainer kites can be as small as 1.7 meters, or as big as 5 meters. These “meters” are surface meters, and every .5 meters you gain in size will give the user approximately 30% more pulling power.

To put this into perspective, let’s compare a Rush 300 (3 meter kite) to aRush 350 (3.5 meter kite). Where the Rush 300 has a wind range of 4-29mph, the Rush 350 has a wind range of 4-21mph. This means that a Rush 350 can be flown in lighter winds with the same amount of pulling power as a Rush 300 in a little stronger wind.

Do I need to get a Trainer Kite to learn how to kiteboard?

When getting into kiteboarding, there are a lot of different things to consider. These range from choosing an appropriately sized kite, selecting the right board, deciding between a seat or waist harness, oh — and putting it all together. As kitesurfing does require a sizable initial investment, it will occur to people to try to reduce the cost by skipping lessons or forgoing a trainer kite. However, kiteboarding not only has a steep learning curve, but can quickly become very dangerous to not only you, but an entire beach, if you aren’t properly trained. Furthermore, you can easily ruin your gear, and investment, by skimping on the learning process. I ruefully admit that I self-taught myself, and in the process managed to shred a kite bladder, get uncontrollably dragged down the beach by a looping kite, and struggle much longer than I would have if I had just taken a darn kite surfing lesson!

One of the first things I recommend for people considering trying the sport of kite surfing is to invest in a trainer kite. They range in price from $80 for a basic model like the HQ Symphony TR II 1.7m Trainer to $300+ for more specialized kites including the Prism Tensor 4.2 Kiteboarding Trainer / Power Kite, and in turn end up saving you time, money, and from damaged equipment.