Peter Lynn Synergy Review

The long awaited synergy kites uncermimoniosly arrived at the neighbors door with the address fumbling grace of a nearsighted UPS driver and their existence in our realm of stoke was not announced till the neighbors call three very, very, could have used them in the surf hours later that evening... So here is the meat of it.



The kites received were 10,12 and 15 meter in each of the new colors and all looking very cool. The bag is a major departure from the old with top and bottom mesh for evaporation and some other clever bells and whistles for bars etc. On first inspection the kites seem shorter and fatter or lower aspect relative to our venoms and exaggeratedly so relative to Peter Lynn's speed rocket, the scorpion. The new kite sports a very simple tip bridle like the scorpion to allow fine tuning bar pressure and power delivery and the new owners manual does a first rate job of walking you through every stage of setting up your new kite.
We bolted straight to San Felipe Baja with a group of our MonkeyAir test crew to run the kites through their paces in winds from 10mph average up to 30mph plus.
Right out of the bag the kites are fun and fine tuning makes the smiles broader. The kites are much quicker turning, develop significantly more grunt and feel much stiffer than any previous arc style kite. Each kite size develops more power easily than the venom II size it was to replace and the ease of signing these kites allows the use of a smaller version than you would expect. The usual arc stability is there in buckets. These babies pivot off their tips unlike the older versions more center canopy pivot points. Jumping is huge and floaty and the ability to get the kite just where you want it puts smooth landings in the no worries category. Six dunkings by myself on various sizes as well as a few from another tester displayed a kite that is very easy to water launch even in barely schlogable winds. The canopy is significantly stiffer than old arcs and more rigged still with all three internal straps tightened. My usual large fish surfboard and light winds on the 15 had this lard butt zipping up wind and having fun in what would have been VII 19 winds for me last year. One five hour session on the 15 went from 13mph average all the way up to 26 mph average with just a change of board to change things up. Depower is about that of the Venom II which is pretty good and the range seems even larger secondary to the synergy kites better bottom end. We flew all the kites on 25 meter lines and 60 cm bars. A 20 mph steady day had my 195 pounds cruising in heaven on the 12 and Vic on the 10 with huge smiles and range for a lot, lot more. One downwinder in the waves had 16mph gusting to 28 mph at times on a ten synergy and a mid sized old school fish underground board. You can loop the heck out of these kite to generate power and they like a fast efficient and floaty board in the super light stuff like all other arcs. Vic with his lighter weight raved about how great the ten turned relative to his ten VII and thought it was fast as could be through the window. Upwind is great and we have just started to play with internal adjusters and bridle point movement. There is heaps of room for tuning and so this review should be considered analagous to a first time driver of a brand new car where the limits are not know. Expect more reports to come in the near future with further testing from the crew and hopefully a few videos in some surf locations to show the kites wave sailing prowess. If you liked arcs before, you will love the synergy. Oh, yeah, it is park and surf the point break with light auto zenith but now you can loop it way easier to catch that section.