Peter Lynn Escape 9m 2016
Reviews / Kites
7,166
At A Glance
Peter Lynn have been making kites longer than most, starting with foil kites and becoming popular with the Twinskin design of the Guerrilla and Phantom. They started making LEI kites a few years ago, and the Escape is their latest design focussed on the freeride and freestyle side of kiting.
Interestingly, the Escape is a four-strut design, something that became popular a few years ago but isn't often seen these days. The kite features a large bridle system with low friction Ronstan rings for pulleys, and plenty of different knot options to tune the kite exactly to your liking.
The Escape has good construction, built with Teijin sailcloth and Dimension Polyant Dacron for the leading edge and struts. There is great reinforcement in all key areas including the leading edge and any attachment points on the LE. The Escape is a supported leading edge design kite, with square tips promoting quick turning and solid feedback through the bar.
Sizes: 5, 7, 9, 11, 13m
The Bar
The Escape comes with the Navigator TS bar, in the ‘small’ 52cm size. A solid bar with an ergonomic grip and clear colour identification. There is a good quality insert allowing the centre lines to slide freely without snags. The safety release is a usual push-away affair with excellent quality components. The bar uses a single line re-ride system that is attached to your leash in either safety or suicide mode. The bar comes with four 21m lines with 3m extensions, again allowing you to customise your kite.
In The Air
The kite holds its shape well in the air and provides instant confidence-boosting feedback through the bar. The kite sits wherever you put it and behaves impeccably while you are riding and performing tricks, making it very easy to progress.
There is excellent and controllable power delivery and great upwind performance from the Escape. For jumping, the Escape it is incredibly forgiving, getting those take-offs or landings a tad wrong is no real bother as the kite will just float back to where it needs to be and carry on pulling through. It won't shoot you to the moon, but the jumps were of a good size and float, and with a constant feel as to where the kite was.
Very easy to ride, forgiving and stable, great for improving your kitesurfing.
The turning speed of the Escape was very impressive; you could make the kite pivot should you sheet the bar in completely. Though the Escape has been designed as a freestyle/freeride kite, we found it was also great fun in the waves. A huge throw on the bar with effective on/off depower and pivotal turning ensured some good wave riding capabilities.
Unhooking is easy and pleasurable with the kite staying put unhooked and responding as you would expect with no nasty surprises. Again it is very forgiving so would suit those looking for a kite to learn their first unhooked moves, it won't have the power and pop of a higher aspect C kite though.
The Escape loops well in the right wind, and again is a great kite to learn these and progress with as it will not throw you with amplitude, rather swing you round in an enjoyable fashion.
Relaunch is as you would expect from a kite from this age, very easy and reliable, allowing you to get back to learning those new skills.
The Escape boasts an excellent wind range and the depower is also fantastic; the high-grade cleat system comes into its own here where sometimes they can be tricky to get to stick in the stronger winds.
For
Easy riding characteristics, good quality and a safe bar make a great all round package
Against
The Bar being 52cm feels really big on a 9m kite. This is their small size so would be great to see the introduction of a smaller bar for the smaller sized kites.
Overall
The Peter Lynn Escape is a great all round, do-it-all kite. Billed as a freeride/freestyle kite it would also be very much at home with a beginner or someone playing in the waves.
Videos
This review was in Issue 54 of IKSURFMAG.
For more information visit Peter LynnRelated
By Robin and Sukie
With years of kite sport experience combined, you can be sure you’ll be receiving the highest quality of knowledge on the best equipment the industry has to offer.
