As a freestyle flier, living in Australia has its ups and downs. Sure, we’ve got plenty of space and some lovely beaches, but on the other hand, we’re pretty much cut off from the rest of the freestyle flying world. Luckily, a few Aussies have taken the initiative to design their own modern freestyle kites, including Kevin Sanders, designer of the Temptation. I’ve been fortunate enough to get a loaner Temptation UL for review, so let’s take a look at the kite in more detail.
What You Get
The Temptation UL is a seven foot kite framed using a fairly familiar scheme for ULs: Skyshark P90 leading edges and spine, 3PT lower spreaders, 5mm upper spreader, and 3mm standoffs.
Fittings are also what you’d expect to see on a high quality kite, being a mixture of APA and Jacos. The majority of the sail is Icarex, with fairly light nylon leading edges and Dacron reinforcements where they’re needed.
First impressions upon unpacking the kite are very good – everything is bundled up tidily and, notably, the kite ships with the standoffs and rollbars kept separate. This means that the rest of the kite can be packed down to produce a minimum of sail creases when everything is assembled. Inserting the standoffs and rollbars proved to be a simple five-minute job and not at all a problem.
Going over the kite with an eagle eye, there’s a lot of positive things to report. Panel alignment is spot-on, as is the stitching on all areas of the kite. There’s a decent-sized strip of Mylar that backs the standoff area and a similarly sturdy piece that runs from the tail to the nose of the kite. The nose isn’t any sort of voodoo folding of webbing, but it is extremely streamlined so that there’s nothing protruding from the leading edge; nose snags aren’t a problem.
The Temptation UL also gets a reassuringly thick rub-patch for the upper spreader, as well as covered leading edges. Kevin has achieved a smooth, even sail tension with only minor bumps produced by the fitting covers on the leading edge. A simple slotted nock system is used for leading edge tensioning, and a leech line is also fitted.
The bridle is a turbo design with keeper lines that slightly pull in two of the legs, so I suppose you could say that the bridle is mildly activated. I did notice that the bridle is made of very light bridle line – 90 pound, spectra-cored Laser Pro. Time will tell how this fares with respect to the rough surface of the tapered 3PT spreaders, and whether it cuts into the APA rollbar fittings.
The bridle is a set-and-forget affair and there’s no obvious points of adjustment, though having said that, the dimensions seem about right and I wouldn’t be looking to adjust things anyway. Other accessories include a three-piece weight kit (10g, 12g, and 15g) with a nice little pouch to store the weights not in use.
So, that’s all the good stuff, but what could be improved ? Well, the nocks insert into the lower leading edge using a short 6mm stub, but the problem is that the stub is too short and seems to be just friction-fitted to the nock (not glued). I had a situation where one leading edge suddenly de-tensioned and I found that the stub had slid up into the leading edge spar, causing the nock to come loose, after which the stub flew out onto the ground. The fix is simple – lengthen the stub and ensure that it’s glued securely to the nock. I also had the rollbars pop out a few times at either end. This could be fixed easily with a more secure fitting at the sail-side (maybe a screw-in type, like Benson and Sportkitedesign use), and fitting a slightly larger endcap on the rollbar so that it sits more snugly into the leading edge fitting.
How It Performs
The Temptation UL will appeal to those who enjoy the smooth Benson/Jest of Eve feel, and in particular, those who enjoy the Deepspace. The kite has a nice even forward drive without needing to be assertively drawn into motion, and it’s very quiet in flight due to the taut leech line. Precision is akin to a Deepspace, meaning that you can get decent results if you really set your mind to it, but it’s fair to say that neither kite is aimed at precision competitions. You’ll get the most enjoyment out of the Temptation UL if you fly it with an attitude towards tricks and freestyle combinations. Suits me just fine. 
In terms of the supplied weights, I enjoyed the kite most with the 15g weight fitted. The 12g weight that came fitted to the kite was fine too, but my personal preference is for a backflip that’s fairly snappy and tighter roll-ups. The 10g weight could be used in a pinch when the wind really drops, but you’ll have to work harder for yoyos in those conditions.
Overall, the kite moves through tricks with small, flicky inputs. The Temptation UL requires that the flier keep the inputs “tight” and very controlled, and it’s a delicate balance between offering too much slack and choking things off by not giving enough slack. Tricks wise, the kite ticks most of the boxes that people expect of a modern trick kite. The half-axel cascade is a little “rolly” as opposed to square in its rotations, and you really have to keep the inputs tight there, but it’s certainly a nice, recognisable cascade. I had no unusual problems with half axels, 540s, slots, slot cascades, snap lazies, inverses, multilazies, the jacobs ladder, backspins, and backspin cascades. With 15g tail weight, the Temptation UL will roll up reliably provided you give a solid input to start the pitch rotation and plenty of slack to let it arc around. It’s not what I’d call a tight yoyo, but at same time it’s not a big scooping arc that I’ve experienced on some other ULs. Once the kite is rolled up, there’s a solid feeling on the lines and tricks like the wrapped 540/slot/snap lazy are fine.
The flic flac is particularly nice on this kite because you can feel the end of the flare as a soft response through the lines, and it’s very easy to draw the kite back under into a fade. There’s no problematic dead-spot in the flare; the Temptation UL repeatedly came back into a fade from many degrees of a flare. Put those traits together with a nice flat backspin, and it was easy to fly duplexes (backspin, flic flac, backspin, etc.) in a highly reproducible manner.
One of the main traits that I liked about the Temptation UL is that it provides a good feeling of flow and fluidity when linking tricks together. Some kites need to be forced through trick sequences and it doesn’t feel natural through the lines, but the Temptation UL transitions smoothly from one position to the next. The transition from fade to 540 works well and the kite can be moved from a lazy susan back into a fractured axel just like a Deepspace. This sense of flow is one of the most important things that I look for in a recreational trick kite, so the Temptation UL scores big points there.
A kite can’t be good at everything, so what doesn’t come easy for the Temptation UL ? First, it’s not the easiest kite to comete – the timing on the third and fourth inputs is a bit quirky, but once you dial that in, the comete comes along fairly well. I’d rate the comete difficulty as medium – nowhere near as hard as a Transfer, but not a giveaway like the Fury 85. The Temptation UL also needs very finely tuned timing to get the taz machine looking decent. The first input is fairly standard, but the second (and third, if that’s your technique) need to be very delayed and well-timed to keep things flat. I did get some nice taz’s happening, but my success rate was noticably down compared to other kites. Furthermore, the rolling cascade requires very careful tending. The kite will rotate properly once the line is tensioned against the trailing edge, but if you’re not careful, the line will tension on the outside of the leading edge, effectively giving you a tip-wrap. This one had me stumped a bit since it’s one of my stronger moves on other kites. Some decent rolling cascades (with three or four rotations) came out in the end, but it was a bit hit-and-miss because I wasn’t keeping the inputs tight enough during the change in directions. Lastly, wap do waps need a fairly large shove to get the over-rotated flare setup, but once that’s deep enough, the kite spins around nicely.
The Temptation UL’s wind range seems to be about 3mph to an upper limit of about 8mph, and it seems nicest in about 4mph. I suppose you could fly it down to 2mph with reduced tail weight and a lot of flier movement, but you’d be best to stick within the 3-6mph range. Funnily enough, my first session on the kite was in winds that’d make some people nervous about most standard kites – I’d estimate the wind was 12-14mph that session. Crazy for a UL – yes – but I wanted to give the kite a torture test and see how it fared. Pretty well, as it turns out ! Sure, there was noticeable flex in the frame and the wingtips shuddered through the window centre, but everything stayed together and I wasn’t at all worried that something would break mid-air.
Summary
Being a fan of free-flowing trick combinations, the Temptation UL has been heaps of fun to try. The kite features very high build quality and, given some trivial build changes, it will be an offering that you can buy and fly straight out of the bag without fuss. In the air, the Temptation UL has a smooth, flowing feel that gives you a sense of being “connected” through the lines. Like any kite, there are some quirks to work around, but none of these things made the flying experience frustrating. Fans of Benson and Jest of Eve’s newer designs might do well to consider the Temptation UL.
Special thanks to Kevin Sanders for lending me the Temptation UL.
-Adrian
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