Once upon a time
Pictures of synergetic zero-wind kite prototypes, discontinued products and designs.
Things by the Kite Lab
The Tubes were made of thin wall aluminum until 2005, with round caps. Expensive in production. Today, they are black PE, lighter, scratchproof and also made in Switzerland to our specifications. All of the Horvath kites come in the Tube to ensure flawless shipping and to protect the kites in everyday urban use.
Instead of aluminum, now from 2006 environment-friendly PE Tubes, still ø 50 mm. The round caps were a bit too heavy and, of course expensive. Nowadays, everything is lighter, highly optimized and still 100% Swiss made.
This was a test on the first series of this kite, labeling the Tubes on the front side. Quite handy to overview for a collector, but this layout was not very compatible with our packaging procedures.
The ergo kite reels were products modified by us and complemented our kites and the zero wind flying style perfectly. Carbon-reinforced ABS. Ergo.80 was intended for ladies. They aren't produced anymore since 2006 and no longer in our product portfolio.
The ball bearing swivels were, although very small, too heavy. A swivel isn't really needed at zero wind flights. Maybe for the maintenance of the flying lines once per season.
The yoyo reels are also available from the original manufacturer Gator-Reel, of course. They are of smoother quality, a bit heavier and harder, but that's not exactly the goal for our purpose. Today, our zero.124 reels are more handy and compact. The long flying lines come on a zero.124, the short ones on the Microwinder™.
Demolished at a night flight show in Potsdam: a rotating 3 minutes sun was attached to the kite. Once upon a time there was an urban ninja.
At this place, the synergetic zero-wind kite was invented, developed and born. The former atelier, where we started the zero-wind kite business and used to manufacture our kites, at the Fluela Street 54, 8047 Zurich. During summer, it was hot inside, despite a lot of beautiful concrete. Now, in the new atelier, a couple of blocks downstreet, it's a bit cooler, calmer and there's even more concrete.
A couple of zero-wind kite prototypes
Some attempts to truncate the shape of our kites, no success, 2002.
The research objects ended up in our prototypes-archive, but some kite-manufacturers and commercial Facebook hobbyists took the chance to copy this concept anyway, without our authorization, of course. More to come. Don't support copycats, please.Discontinued products and versions
The sail of the first series of “I'll be back” and “C'est la vie, darling” was made of white HDPE film in 2007, as an alternative to 0.34-oz Dyneema-composite-fabric, which was called cuben-fiber at the time.
The first small series of “the long way home handling compact stradale” was also produced in slightly thicker 20g/m2 HDPE film until 2007, and since then in 0.34-oz Dyneema-Composite-Fabric. A couple of years later then also in Icarex.