Nobile Kiteboarding NHP 666 12m 2008
Reviews / Kites
39,091
At A Glance
Ever since Mark Shinn joined forces with Nobile a few years ago the brand has gone from strength to strength. Their dominance of the European board market cannot be denied and we suppose it was only a matter of time before they tried their hands at making kites. Ever since leaving Naish Mark has been riding different brands of kite according to what suits him best. In more recent years he established the Shinn Centre in Tenerife which houses kites from all the major brands and affords riders the opportunity to go and try everything. One thing is for sure when you first look at a Nobile kite; all those years of scrutinising other brands have paid off. We always see innovative ideas on different brands and often dream of the ultimate kite that takes all the best bits and puts them into one design. The Nobile kites do just that, but not only do they take the good bits they improve on them. The One Pump is very similar to the system used by Slingshot and Flexi, but the positioning of the tubes is such that you can replace them with a normal standard bladder with a valve. So if you are on holiday and a bladder goes the local kite centre will have something you can replace it with. It is the small features that make the big differences as they say. The build quality is to a very high standard as well with all sorts of reinforcements in the right places and a solid feeling kite. In terms of the design the 666 is a C style kite with a hybrid lean. A 5th line set up with two tiny V connections for the front lines and direct connections for the back lines. Another thing to mention is the design of the kites themselves, Nobile have employed the services of an ex military aeronautical engineer who uses a raw CAD program to come up with the shapes. They looked at the reasons why kites backstall, invert and behave in different and unpleasant ways and utilised all their skills to stop this from happening. In short a lot of thought has gone into these kites, be sure to check out the website for the full lowdown. The last thing to mention that everyone will notice straight away is the plastic chicken loop, yes you heard right it’s a moulded plastic affair! Designed to hold its shape no matter how much you use it and also to release under the most testing of conditions.
In The Air
Aside from bristling with neat features on the beach the 666 NHP looks the part in the air. The asymmetrical bar grip (to help you feel when it is round the wrong way) is really comfortable to hold and once you have got over the shock of hooking in to a piece of plastic you’ll notice how stable the kite is. The canopy and profile of the NHP combine to create a super stable shape in the air and this is felt right down at the bar. The kite feels so solid and well behaved delivering a super smooth pull right the way through the wind window. Unhooking with the NHP doesn’t effect the handling of the kite at all and it flies naturally as you would expect with a kite that has been designed with freestyle in mind. The plastic chicken loop is really easy to hook in and out of, and the male female loop to bar connection mean the loop is always in the optimum position for hooking back in. The turning is very responsive and the kite certainly feels like a C kite in the hands. Unhooked kite loops deliver a serious amount of pull and the windier it is the more extreme they become. Freestyle lovers will really enjoy this kite. Bar pressure on the 666 is fairly light, giving the rider just the right amount of feedback to know where the kite is at all times. The 12m is quite a small kite though, on the beach next to other kites it looked pretty small and on the water it felt small. The low end is not something this kite has a great deal of, it makes up for it with smooth turns and efficiency but it is far more suited to powered and overpowered conditions where its top end can excel. Old school riders will enjoy the jumping and hangtime, this kite isn’t just all about freestyle, it boosts big with the rest of them.
For
Packed full of features, solid in the air, awesome for freestyle big top end range.
Against
Lacks a little low end grunt and needs a good bit of wind to excel.
In Short
As first kites go the NHP 666 is an awesome kite, packed with useful features and delivering a stunning performance in the air. If you like C kites and are into freestyle but want something with a good range as well then it will be well worth checking out the NHP 666.
This review was in Issue 8 of IKSURFMAG.
For more information visit Nobile KiteboardingRelated
By Rou Chater
Rou has been kiting since the sports inception and has been working as an editor and tester for magazines since 2004. He started IKSURFMAG with his brother in 2006 and has tested hundreds of different kites and travelled all over the world to kitesurf. He's a walking encyclopedia of all things kite and is just as passionate about the sport today as he was when he first started!
