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Tribal Review

Introduction

The Tribal is a 6ft freestyle manufactured by Eolo-Gayla and designed by Andy Preston. Andy Preston designed what is considered by many to be the original freestyle kite, the Flexifoil Stranger back in 1993. He then designed the high wind Flexifoil Psycho, the Flexifoil Matrix and finally the Flexifoil Stranger Level 7. The Matrix is a famous team kite with a deep channel in the sail that actually shared development time with the Stranger Level 7. The Stranger Level 7 was a few levels too strange for many people, but the Matrix has inspired many freestyle kites, including the Mullin Area 51, the Robertshaw Dot Matrix and some suggest a couple of the most successful French kites.

So it has been some time since Andy designed a freestyle kite, as he has been focusing on Power kiting in its various forms. So is this the ultimate Preston style freestyle kite or has Andy been out imitated?

Construction

>The Tribal is constructed out of 6mm Structil Carbon and PC 31 Icarex cloth, weighing in at about 220g. The kite has four standoffs, each set of two creating a channel in the sail that runs right up to the nose; deep but not as deep as some kites today. The standoffs are glass fibre and are not stuck into the standoff clips - so you have to super glue them in yourself. The standoff clips are protected at the rear of the sail with mylar to prevent line snags. There are no other flaps or carbon parts to prevent line catches on the leading edges.

The leading edges themselves are slightly curved and tensioned with bridle line. The Tribal has a leach line for silent flight, and the bridle is a straight forward three point design. The bridle only has one position marked and no easy adjustment, although it is of a thickness that makes tweaking not too difficult.

The Dacron leading edges go right to the nose with no webbing. The nose is reinforced internally. This means no line catches but it remains to be seen how well this will wear. On our review kite the nose reinforcement was sewn on neat but crooked. This tends to sum up the general construction of the Tribal. The rolled seems are neat, but some of the little details are slightly off. The Tribal falls between Workshop and Far Eastern quality levels. I would have expected a bit more at £110. However you do get a set of 75ft Dyneema lines and straps comprehensive flight instructions and a decent velcro kite tie in the bag.

Style

The Tribal's panel layout is very simple with each side mirroring asymmetrically the other.

One panel has a large screen printed tribal design and logo. I like the look of this kite, clean and simple. The bag is cute, but seems a little bit 'toy kite' in style. Still it is practical with a couple of pockets and gauze to release sand and bugs. Having said that the uncapped stand offs can catch in the gauze if you don't wrap them up in the sail! The color schemes seem to be varied. Overall the package is simple but effective.

Flight

First thoughts are that the Tribal feels like a real freestyle kite. There is slight but predictable over steer, a playful edge, good response to light winds and a desire to fly curves. In light winds the Tribal eats up the basic trick book with ease; real flat axels and flowing cascades with simple hand movements; flowing 540's and helicopters; easy fades and flic-flacs. However we found that as the wind picked up you had to be a bit more careful, 540's had to be popped early or we ended up with a tip wrap, resulting in less than flat spins. The Tribal actually has a shallow sail compared to other 6ft freestyle kites on the market, and as the wind gusted far more effort was required to stall and trick the kite.

Groundwork is there, with some great pop up launches and axel take offs wriggling to escape from the kite. We managed to dead launch the kite a couple of times, but this usually resulted in knocking the standoffs out of shape.

Flying has moved on since the old skool. The Tribal keeps up. It backspins with ease and it is possible to vary the flatness of the spin, the Tribal does the sort of very flat backspins that many UK fliers like, and that the Continental kites seem to avoid. You can get multiple spins with a single pop, which can encourage a very flowing style of flying. The kite lies deep over on its back and lazy susans fast and hard. We found in stronger winds it would hold in a rising turtle too: Very nice.

Despite having no weight system the Tribal is pitchy. I found it relatively easy to push flic-flacs to the limit and into yo-yo's. I found it harder to recover with no yo-yo stoppers, although when I attached a yo-yo line like the one Dave Morley designed for the Fury there was a lot of fun to be had. The pitchiness of the Tribal does cut in sometimes when you don't want it to resulting in tip wraps. The Tribal does recover very nicely from most positions - I had to lazy susan out of a few tip wraps.

Modifications

The Tribal is a yo-yo happy kite. In high winds it will wrap and unwrap very fast, and in light winds it is not too hard to perform old school yo-yo's with the lines caught before the top spreaders. A yo-yo line is an easy addition without the significant disadvantages of yo-yo stops, although you only get one wrap. Yo-yo glides are also needed on those top spreader fittings. Add 6g of weight in the tail (The Tribal has a handy pouch in the for this) and the Tribal becomes seriously pitchy. It is possible in light winds to achieve significant multiple wraps in a controlled manner. The weight does not seem to have any major negative effects. With weight in you are probably going to want to think about yo-yo stoppers rather than just the yo-yo line

Conclusion

The Tribal is undoubtedly an excellent design. It is unashamedly British, and sums up the progressive old skool revival bubbling in the UK in response to the French school. Any flier who has been around for a few years will pick up the Tribal and feel like they are flying an old friend. The Tribal's performance in different wind conditions does vary, it feels like a different kite when the wind gets up, it doesn't iron out bumps and gusts quite the way we would like a kite to. Even so it has a lot of character and potential.

Sadly Eolo-Gayla's construction quality is not quite up to the quality of the design, £110 is maybe a little on the steep side when an Area 51 is so much less.

Overall the Tribal is probably worth the money for the design. There is potential here for the serious flier to modify and push this kite to the limits.