Buying Gear & Keeping It Alive

A complete new kitesurfing setup costs about $1,800–2,200 in 2026; a careful used one costs $900–1,200 (2026), and it puts a beginner on the water just as well. The order that saves the money is lessons first, then a trainer kite, then a one-to-three-year-old kite and bar you have pumped up and inspected yourself. What follows is what the gear costs, how to pick a kite size for your weight, how to inspect a used kite before you pay, and how to keep it alive for four seasons instead of two.

This is the owner's manual the gear never comes with. Kitesurfing equipment is fragile in three or four specific places and hard to kill everywhere else, and knowing which is which is worth more than any brand loyalty. Every price in this chapter is a 2026 figure.

Should you buy kitesurfing gear before your first lesson?

No. Every kite school on earth has the same story: someone calls up having already bought a complete setup, usually the wrong kite size for their weight and their local wind, before ever holding a bar. Shops call it the classic money mistake. Here is why the deal that looked good was not one.

• You don't know your size yet. Kite size follows your weight, your home spot's wind, and whichever discipline you end up in (twintip freeride, waves, foil, big air). A 9m can be right at one beach and a 12m at the next one along the coast. The 12m is the usual first all-rounder for a 70–80 kg rider in 14–18 knots, but you only learn your number by flying school kites in your own wind.
• You can't yet judge gear. The classic trap is the $600 "full setup" (2026) that turns out to be a 2007-era C-kite, a design generation harder and less forgiving to learn on than any modern kite. You also cannot yet see the $200–300 of hidden costs (2026) inside a cheap kite: a dead bladder, a shrunken line set.
• You will crash whatever you buy. Your first water starts are a series of kite crashes, and school gear exists to absorb exactly that. A three-day beginner course costs roughly £250–350, or $300–450, in 2026, and that price includes the gear, the insurance, and the destruction of somebody else's kites.
• Lessons are a demo programme. Over a course you fly two or three kites in two or three sizes. Take notes on what you liked. Schools also sell off their fleet at the end of the season and will happily match a graduating student with a used kite.

A sensible timeline: lessons first, typically 6–12 hours of instruction with gear included, then a few rental sessions. Then buy the personal-fit items: a harness and a wetsuit. The kite, the bar and the board come last, once your sizes and your local wind are clear. Several months between the first lesson and the first purchase is normal, and instructors will tell you so.

How much does kitesurfing gear cost, new or used?

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A complete new setup costs about $1,800–2,200 in 2026 for solid mid-range gear, and $3,000–5,000 in 2026 with premium brands and exotic constructions. A careful used setup costs $900–1,200 in 2026 and gives a beginner the same time on the water. Bundled beginner packages of new gear start around $1,200–1,500 in 2026.

New gear buys you the warranty, the current safety systems, canopy cloth at full strength and a shop that answers the phone. It also buys you the steepest depreciation in the sport. Most brands release a new version of every model every year, so a kite loses value the day the next year's graphics appear: a one-year-old kite resells for about 50–60% of what it cost.

Used gear is where budgets survive. The $900–1,200 setup in 2026 is a two-year-old 9m kite with its bar, a used board, a second-hand harness and wetsuit, and often a second kite. Well-kept newer used kit runs $1,200–2,500 in 2026. Over three years, the buyer of all-new premium gear reportedly pays about five times as much per year, after resale, as the patient second-hand buyer, for the same sessions.

Ballpark prices, 2026:

How fast does a kite lose value?

Fast in year one, then slowly:

• Year 1: down to roughly 60% of retail. A $1,200 kite sells for $700 a year later (2026), mint or not.
• Years 2–4: another 5–10% a year, depending on condition.
• Year 5 and after: the value flattens near a floor of $200–350 for a flyable kite in 2026. Below that you are mostly paying for the bar.

Premium-construction kites, the Aluula and similar high-modulus frames, hold value better because used demand outstrips supply. Standard Dacron-frame kites drop fastest.

Two things follow from that curve. The sweet spot for buying is a one-to-three-year-old kite: someone else has eaten the steep part, the design is still modern, and spare bladders and bar parts are still stocked. And buying a one-year-old kite and selling it at year three costs very little, which is how a lot of riders effectively rent near-current gear for a couple of hundred dollars a year.

A third route sits between new and used: previous-year new stock, discounted 30–50% when the brands launch the new models. September and October are the hunting season for those in the northern hemisphere, with a full warranty and no wear.

What age and condition of used kite is safe to buy?

• Three to five years old at the outside, one to three ideally, from a seller you can question. As a practical rule, any kite old enough that you cannot find bar spare parts for it is too old.
• Age is a proxy, not a verdict. A three-year-old kite that lived in a closet beats a one-season kite that taught all summer in a Dakhla camp, where the season runs March to October and the sand comes off the desert. Condition beats calendar. Ask how many sessions, where it was stored, whether it has been repaired and by whom.
• Beginner-friendly matters more than model year. A stable all-rounder from two seasons ago (Duotone Evo, Cabrinha Switchblade or Moto, North Reach, Core Nexus, Naish Pivot and their equivalents) is a better first kite than a current-year wave or freestyle weapon.
• Safe to buy used with little scrutiny: boards, which are nearly indestructible and ride fine at ten years old, plus harnesses and pumps, and a wetsuit that fits and is not torn.
• Deserves full scrutiny: kites and bars. These are your life-support systems. Buy them used only after the inspection below, ideally from a shop that sells inspected pre-owned and demo gear, or from a seller who lets you pump the kite up.
• Avoid: amateur DIY-repaired kites, kites without their original bar and lines when replacements are no longer sold, anything the seller will not inflate for you, and school kites with hundreds of hours and a soft canopy sold as "lightly used."

How to inspect a used kite before you buy it

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Bring a pump. Never buy a tube kite that you, or a trusted and experienced friend, have not inflated and handled; if a seller will not let you pump it up, walk away. The full inspection takes fifteen to twenty minutes and can save you several hundred dollars in hidden repairs.

1. Pump it up hard and wait. Inflate to firm riding pressure, 6–9 psi on most kites, and leave the kite for 20–30 minutes at minimum, overnight if you can, while you inspect everything else. Any visible softening is a leaking bladder or valve, a $50–150 job per bladder in 2026 if you do it yourself and more at a loft. Squeeze each strut on its own: struts are isolated by clamps on many kites and can hide their own leaks. Spray soapy water on a suspect area and watch for bubbles.
2. Test canopy crispness. Hold the canopy up to the sun and look through it for pinholes, small tears, and old patches. Then do the crinkle test: hold the cloth near your ear and scrunch it. Healthy ripstop is crisp and crackly and rustles like a paper bag. Cloth that has gone soft and quiet has been UV-cooked and stretched, has lost coating and tensile strength, flies noticeably worse and will tear in the next big crash. Follow with the gentle stretch test: press a thumb into the canopy. Tired fabric feels stretchy and dead; healthy fabric springs back. Walk away, or price it as a beater.
3. Check the trailing edge. This is the highest-flutter zone and it wears first. Look for fuzzy, abraded stitching and fatigued cloth along its whole length.
4. Check sun fade. Compare the inside of a fold with the exposed surface. Heavy fading means heavy UV hours, whatever the seller says about "barely used."
5. Walk every seam, the leading edge and the bridles. Run each seam looking for fraying, separation or broken stitches, especially at the wingtips, the strut junctions and anywhere scuffed from beach dragging. Run each bridle line through your fingers: no fuzz, no kinks. Check that any pulleys spin freely, without corrosion, and are not ground flat.
6. Inspect valves and one-pump hoses. Sticky, gooey, brittle or lifting valves mean the glue is breaking down, usually from being stored hot; a car boot in summer will do it in one afternoon. A single peeling valve is repairable for $10–25 in parts, or $40–60 at a loft, 2026 prices. Several failing valves signal a heat-damaged kite. Check that the little one-pump hose clips are all present.
7. Interrogate the repairs. Professional loft work, meaning neat stitching and matched cloth panels, is nothing to fear: a properly repaired panel is as strong as new and barely moves the price. Duct tape, hand-sewn patches, glue blobs, a big Tear-Aid patch on the leading edge, or a repair the seller "forgot" to mention are red flags. Ask directly: has it been repaired, and where?
8. Test the bar, the most safety-critical item you will buy. Check the depower and trim line, the grey rope, for fuzzing; it is the number-one wear item. Check the centre lines where they run through the bar hole, which is a chafe point, and look for cracks in the chicken-loop plastic. Then, non-negotiable: fire the quick release and reassemble it. It must fire crisply with one push and go back together easily. If it does not, the bar is not airworthy. Sheeting should slide smoothly, with no gritty feel of sand in the trim system.
9. Audit the lines. Run each line through your fingers feeling for cuts, nicks, flat spots and knots; a knot costs a line up to half its strength. Then check lengths: anchor all four or five lines to a fixed point and walk them out under equal tension. The ends should align within 1–2 cm. Well-used lines usually shrink rather than stretch, which surprises people: as the coating wears, the salt and sand work into the weave and shorten it, and centre and steering lines shrink at different rates, which ruins bar trim. Uneven lines are often fixable by moving knots on the pigtails. Severely uneven or furry lines mean a new line set, $100–180 in 2026.
10. Ask where it lived, and look at the bag. A kite stored damp goes mouldy and delaminates; stored hot, the valves fail. "Garage, dry, in its bag" is the answer you want. The bag itself testifies. A mouldy, sand-filled bag bleached by the sun tells you how the kite was treated. Sellers who cared usually show the bag off.

Where to buy kitesurfing gear

• Local kite shops: highest price, lowest risk. Staff who know your local wind, gear you can inspect and often demo, warranty on new stock, and a relationship that pays for itself in free advice for years. Many will price-match the online retailers if you ask. Their ex-demo and ex-school gear is the beginner's best-value category: used, but maintained by professionals and honestly described.
• Online retailers: the best prices on previous-year new gear, 30–50% off in the September and October clear-outs, with no local relationship and no room for doubt about what you want.
• Second-hand markets: general marketplace apps, local kiters' social and messaging groups, auction sites and forum classifieds are where the £350 kites live in 2026. Local community groups are the best of them, because you can meet the seller, inspect the kite, and often recognise the face from your own beach.

Timing beats haggling. School fleets come up for sale when a season ends, and seasons are local: the wind season at Los Lances in Tarifa runs February to October, and Cumbuco's best months are June to December, so the fleet in one place turns over while the other is still teaching.

Each spot page in the atlas lists the schools nearby, which is the quickest way to work out whose kites are about to be replaced.

Which kite sizes to buy for your weight

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You do not need a quiver to start. You need one kite in your local money wind: the size you would use on 70% of ridable days at your home spot. Ride it for a season and let your logbook decide the next purchase. When you do expand, two kites cover roughly 85% of ridable days for most riders.

• The standard two-kite quiver is 12m plus 9m for a 75–85 kg rider, covering roughly 12 to 28 knots: the 12m for light and moderate days at 12–18 knots, the 9m for windy days at 18–28 knots and above. It is the most common two-kite combination there is.
• Under about 70 kg: shift down, to 10m plus 7m or 11m plus 8m.
• Over about 90 kg: shift up, to 13m or 14m plus 10m.
• A third kite, a 7m for the nuking days or a 15–17m light-wind machine, comes later, and only if your spot's wind statistics actually serve those conditions. The spot page carries the months and the typical wind range for exactly that decision.

Four budget tactics that work:

• Mix generations. Your most-used size deserves your newest kite. The big light-wind kite and the small storm kite can be older, because they see a fraction of the hours.
• One bar, many kites. Staying inside one brand generation often lets a single bar fly the whole quiver, which saves $400–600 (2026) per extra kite, and buying the second kite from the same model line keeps the bar feel consistent. Verify compatibility before you buy.
• Boards and harnesses barely depreciate in function. A five-year-old twintip rides 95% as well as a new one, and used boards at $150–300 in 2026 are the easiest saving in the sport. A harness should be tried on and bought for fit; used is fine if the foam is not crushed and the spreader-bar hook is not worn sharp.
• Buy in autumn, sell in spring. Prices sag when the season ends and firm up when it starts.

The sequence, then: one good recent-model kite with its bar, used, one to three years old, one used board, one used or entry-level harness. Ride a season. Add the second kite. The third earns its place only when your logbook proves the need.

Kite maintenance and what actually kills kites

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Kites rarely die from crashes, and kite cloth does not wear out from flying. Kites die from four things: UV, heat, blown sand and being packed wet. Salt sits further down the list than almost everyone expects. Get those four right and the rest is detail.

• UV is enemy number one. Sunlight degrades the ripstop coating and the stitching thread, and every minute a kite sits inflated on the beach while you chat is sunlight mileage on the canopy. Pump up right before you ride; pack down or shade the kite right afterwards. Packing up immediately after every session reportedly doubles the life of a kite. A kite left flapping and baking between sessions loses crispness a season faster than one packed promptly, and that, more than hours on the water, is what separates the four-season kite from the eight-season kite. Storage matters the same way: never store gear in sunlight.
• Heat kills valves. A car boot in summer passes 60 °C easily, which is hot enough to soften the heat-welded valve glue and delaminate bladders. Sticky, peeling valves are the signature injury of car-boot storage. Never leave a kite in a hot car or a baking garage.
• Sand is sandpaper. Sand ground into the canopy abrades coating and stitching every time the kite is rolled. Sand inside the leading edge migrates and punctures bladders when you fold. Sand in the pump hose is injected straight into the bladder and destroys the pump seals. Shake the kite out thoroughly before rolling; on coarse-sand beaches, fold wingtip to wingtip and roll toward the centre so the sand falls out rather than in. Keep the pump hose capped and tap it clear before connecting. Clean pump seals with alcohol and lubricate with silicone spray, never WD-40. And never drag a kite across the beach.
• Rinsing, the honest answer. For the kite itself, most experienced riders and school operators do not rinse after saltwater sessions, and there is a reason: salt suppresses mould, while trapped fresh water starts mildew in as little as three days. A kite rolled up damp with salt water survives. A kite rinsed with fresh water and packed wet grows mould that stains and weakens the canopy permanently. So: brush off the sand, dry it, pack it. Rinse briefly with cold fresh water only when the kite got muddy, was dragged through sandy shorebreak, or is going into storage for weeks, and then dry it completely in the shade before rolling. Bars, harness hardware and pumps are the opposite case: rinse them in fresh water after every salt session, and soak the bar in warm water now and then to dissolve salt crystals, or the springs, the swivels and the quick-release internals corrode and seize. Cycle the quick release while you rinse it, because salt and sand in the release mechanism can jam the one component that must never jam.
• Dry before storing. Always. A kite packed wet grows mould and stinks, and the trapped moisture degrades coatings and stitching. Dry in shade, and never leave a kite flapping in the sun "to dry," because flapping itself fatigues the trailing edge.
• Pack loosely, store cool and dark. Compression-stuffing a kite creates hard creases that become micro-tears. Roll along the leading edge without strangling it, use the kite's own roomy bag, keep heavy objects off it, and vary where the folds fall. For long-term storage some riders leave a whisper of air in the bladders with the valves open. At the end of the season: a final rinse of the hardware, a full dry, and indoors.
• Lines and soft parts. Do not step on lines, keep them out of the sand when rigging, and untie any knot you find, since a knot costs up to half the line's strength. Check line evenness about every 20 hours of riding. Expect to replace the depower rope and the chicken-loop line when they go fuzzy: soft parts look shabby after roughly 100 hours, and line sets are due at around 200 hours, or every two to three seasons.

How to repair a kite yourself, and when to use a loft

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Every kiter eventually does surgery on a beach towel. The standard field kit costs $30–60 in 2026: Tear-Aid Type A and TPU bladder patch tape, self-adhesive ripstop in Dacron and spinnaker weights, a spare valve or two, a spare one-pump hose clamp, alcohol wipes, soapy water in a small spray bottle, pliers.

A bladder patch you do yourself costs about $15 in 2026; the same job at a loft is $85–100 (2026). Four repairs are worth learning.

1. Find the slow leak. Inflate firm, spray soapy water along the leading edge and the struts, and watch for bubbles; it usually shows within a minute. For bladder pinholes, pull the bladder out, inflate it outside the kite, and pass it through a bathtub or spray it down.
2. Patch the bladder. Clean and dry the area with an alcohol wipe, then apply a Tear-Aid or TPU patch with at least 2 cm of overlap and rounded corners, because square corners peel. Press out every air bubble and leave it 30 minutes or more before re-inflating. Done properly this is a permanent repair.
3. Swap a bladder. Attach a leader line, girth-hitched, or use the old bladder to pull a retrieval line through, before you extract the old bladder through the wingtip or the strut opening. Otherwise you are threading a new one blind through a 10-metre tube. Remove the valve fittings through the valve openings, tape the new bladder to the line, feed it in slowly and unwrinkled, and inflate gently at first to check that nothing is twisted. Fiddly, but a 30 to 60 minute living-room job. A strut bladder costs about $25–50 in 2026; a leading-edge bladder $60–120 (2026), sold by the brands' service departments and by specialist bladder makers.
4. Reglue or replace a valve. Warm the old valve with a hair dryer to soften the adhesive, peel it off carefully, clean the site, and apply a new self-adhesive valve, pressing out every air bubble. Modern self-stick kits need no glue; a flexible adhesive such as Aquaseal also works. Let it cure as directed before you inflate hard. Cost: $10–25 per valve in 2026.

Two supporting skills round out the kit. Canopy tears: a small tear or pinhole away from a seam, up to roughly 5 cm, takes self-adhesive ripstop applied to both sides with the torn edges aligned precisely, 2 cm of overlap, corners rounded. That is a legitimate permanent fix. Lines: mostly, do not.

A frayed or broken flying line is a replacement, not a repair, and knotting it back together costs up to half its strength. What you can do is re-trim: replace worn pigtails, which are cheap and exist precisely to absorb lark's-head wear, and equalise shrunken lines by moving knots.

Go to a professional loft when a tear is longer than about 10–15 cm, crosses a seam, or involves the leading edge or the strut Dacron, which is structural; when panels need replacing rather than patching; when stitching has failed over a long section; when a bridle attachment point is damaged; when bladder damage sits at the valve neck; or when a home repair keeps failing and the kite is carrying several ageing patches.

Loft repairs are sewn with matched cloth, restore full strength and cost $30–150 in 2026. A canopy tear under about 12 cm is roughly an hour of loft labour; a large leading-edge job is three to four hours. A repair costing $50–150 in 2026 routinely adds seasons to a kite still worth $800 (2026).

Pre-season kite check, and the 60-second pre-session scan

After winter storage, before the first session of the year, give everything twenty minutes. It is the cheapest swim prevention there is.

1. Inflate the kite at home and leave it. Full riding pressure, an hour at minimum, overnight if you can. Far better to find the slow leak in your living room than at the beach.
2. Walk the canopy and the seams. Sun-check the whole canopy for pinholes, run every seam, pay attention to the trailing-edge stitching, check the bridles end to end and confirm that the pulleys spin.
3. Press every valve. Winter storage lifts tired glue. Any lifting edge gets re-glued now, not at the beach.
4. Audit the lines. Run every flying line through your fingers checking for wear and knots. Check the depower line and the centre-line chafe points on the bar, and replace the trim line if it is fuzzy. Then equalise the line lengths under tension and re-trim on the pigtails, or replace the set. Replace worn pigtails too: once the coloured coating tears, the core wears fast.
5. Fire both safety systems. Quick release, then leash release, several times, until reassembly is reflexive. Rinse, inspect for corrosion and cracks, reassemble. Sand and salt corrosion can seize a release exactly when you need it.
6. Check the harness and the leash. Stitching, buckles, webbing fatigue, spreader-bar hook wear, leash swivel.
7. Check the board and the pump. Fin screws tight with fresh anti-corrosion grease, no delamination, footstrap stitching sound, pump gasket and hose intact.

How long does kitesurfing gear last?

Honest numbers, assuming decent care:

• Kites: roughly 300–400 flying hours, or 150–200 sessions, before the canopy goes porous and soft. For a weekend rider at 50–80 hours a year that is 4–5 seasons, stretching to eight with exemplary UV discipline. For a daily rider, a tropical-sun location or school duty, 2–3 seasons, usually with a repair along the way. Bladders and valves are consumables. A kite normally goes socially obsolete, three model generations old and worth little, at about the same time it goes physically tired, which is why keeping resale condition matters.
• Bars: the frame lasts many years if you rinse it. The soft parts are consumables: the depower line at about 100 hours, the flying lines at about 200 hours or every two to three seasons, sooner at sand-heavy spots, plus pigtails and chicken loop. Budget $30–80 a year in bar parts in 2026.
• Boards: near indefinite. The straps, the pads and the fins are replaceable, and twintips die from car-park accidents rather than water time. The board outlives several kites.
• Harnesses: 3–6 years before the foam packs out. The webbing, the closures and the spreader bar wear first.
• Wetsuits: 2–4 seasons of regular use.

A realistic running cost after the initial purchase is $150–400 a year in 2026 in consumables and repairs, which is small next to the depreciation you avoid by keeping everything alive. Resale closes the loop: sell kites at two or three years old, while parts are stocked and the model is still current-minus-one, and the true cost of ownership drops to a few hundred dollars a year.

Do you need a trainer kite? Beginner

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A trainer kite is a small two-line or three-line foil of 1.5–3.5 m² flown on land, with no bladders to pump and near-indestructible construction, and at $100–300 in 2026 it is the cheapest progress per dollar in kitesurfing.

Sizing: a 2.5–3.5 m² suits an average adult of 65–85 kg in 10–17 knots; drop to 2–2.5 m² for kids, lighter fliers, or gusty and windy regions. Choose a three-line model if you can, because the third line adds a kill and relaunch function and teaches you that a kite can be depowered, which is the single most important reflex in the sport.

Kite control is the bottleneck skill of the first lessons. Riders who arrive with 4–10 hours of trainer time reportedly get through those lessons about twice as fast, and at $60–120 per lesson hour in 2026 the trainer pays for itself before you touch the water.

Unlike everything else in this chapter, a trainer barely depreciates: it resells for most of its purchase price, or becomes the gift that recruits your friends into the sport.

What to practise, in fields, on beaches and in parks, never near roads, power lines or people, and not in strong wind:

1. Park the kite. Steady hands at the edge of the window, at 10, 12 and 2 o'clock, learning where the power lives (the centre of the window) and where it does not (the edge).
2. Fly figure-eights. Slow, controlled figure-eights and sine waves through the power zone on both tacks, to feel where the pull lives and how kite speed makes power.
3. Fly by feel, not by sight. Hold position while looking at the horizon, steering with bar pressure rather than arm strength. On the water your eyes will be on the board.
4. Launch and land. Repeatedly, both upwind and cross-wind, until it is routine.
5. Fly one-handed, and in every posture. You will need the free hand for the board later. Fly while walking, while sitting, and while standing up, which is a preview of the water start.
6. Crash it and relaunch it. On purpose, until recovery is boring. Later, let it drag you gently across grass or shallow water, the direct precursor to body-dragging.

The kitesurfing gear buying checklist

Take lessons before buying anything except a trainer kite. Buy your first setup used or previous-year discounted: a one-to-three-year-old kite with a crisp canopy and an honest description, from your local community or a shop's ex-school fleet, inspected inflated, with the bar's quick release tested, for around $900–1,200 in 2026 rather than $2,000 and up (2026).

Buy the big kite of your future quiver first, keep 2–3 m² between sizes, and let a season's logbook drive every purchase after that.

Protect the gear from the four killers, UV, heat, blown sand and wet storage, rinse the bar but usually not the kite, learn the small repairs and pay a loft for the big ones. Check everything before the season and glance at everything before every launch. Do that and your gear lasts four or five seasons and sells for enough to fund its replacement.

Questions riders ask

Should I buy my own kite before lessons?

No, with one exception. Until you have flown school kites in your own local wind you cannot know your size, and you will crash whatever you buy. The exception is a trainer kite at $100–300 in 2026, which pays for itself in lesson time saved.

What kite size should I buy first for my weight?

A 12m is the usual first all-rounder for a 70–80 kg rider in 14–18 knots. Under about 70 kg, go a size or two smaller; over about 90 kg, a size or two larger. If you can afford only one kite, buy the big one, and check the typical wind range on your home spot's page before you commit.

How old can a used kite be?

One to three years is the sweet spot, three to five is the outside limit, and any kite old enough that you cannot buy bar spare parts for it is too old. Nothing designed before roughly 2007, whatever the price.

How much does a complete used setup cost?

About $900–1,200 in 2026 for a kite with its bar, a board, a harness and a wetsuit, against $1,800–2,200 in 2026 for the equivalent new. Well-kept newer used kit runs $1,200–2,500 in 2026.

Should I rinse my kite with fresh water after every session?

Not the kite. Salt suppresses mould and trapped fresh water starts mildew within about three days, so brush the sand off, dry it and pack it. Rinse the bar, the harness hardware and the pump every time, and cycle the quick release while you do it.

How long does a kite last?

Roughly 300–400 flying hours or 150–200 sessions before the canopy goes soft: four or five seasons of weekend riding, two or three for a daily rider or a school kite. Pack up promptly after every session and it is reportedly closer to double.

Chapter 05 · Part II · The Machine