EH Ripper has everything!
Some contemplations of EH Ripper (EH BOW KITE) is appropriate after a 5 hour long session on the water today.
Bow kites has been spoken about among kiters around the world. 
Bow kites are great for gusty wind conditions, so it’s natural that people kiting in areas with gusty wind praise bow kites, while people kiting in more stable wind conditions might prefer c-kites. However, I think most kiters are used to gusty wind and choppy water which make the timing for jumps more
precarious and you’re always waiting for a good wave and pressure in the kite.
I like to kite with lots of power and have mostly been kiting over powered. You can avoid this with EH Ripper. With an enormous wind span and a de-power system that makes is possible to ride a 14m2 when it’s blowing 15 m/s. Also, you can kite with desired power until you will take off, just pull the bar and things will happen…
The lift in these kites are insane! I’ve only jumped a little with C-kite under perfect conditions, in places such as Spain, Denmark etc) To be able to control power is probably all kiters big wet dream and this has fortunately, come as a breath of fresh air into the sport.
Thus, this kite has an enormous de-power system like other bow-kites and which makes everything possible. Further, the kite flies very good by itself with just some wind in the kite. Yesterday I was out in 5 m/s with 14m2 and with great pressure (my weight is 82 kg). I would say that this kite has as good power as a 17m2 kite, but a little different. With bows you need speed in the kite since you don’t have as much bottom drag as in a c-kite. And when you speed up it just continue to accelerate. You definitely kite faster with bows than with other kites.
Other good things to mention is that this kite is very light on the bar, lighter than most c-kites. Very good feeling, you always know where the kite is.
When you loop this kite in the air when performing different tricks you are completely safe, when you notice that it goes wrong it all you have to do is sliding the bar from you and you’ll lose power, just as much as you want. This is fine when you practice kite loop, downloop, kite-dives, etc. So when you set the tricks and you want to take it unhooked, then it’s pretty much the same thing as with the C-Kite.
I see no obstacles with unhooked riding with this kite, it’s easy to set the desired pressure and the kite doesn’t stall if you’re unlucky with the setting. It’s easy to unhook and hook back and to adjust the settings for the front lines on the bar.
I have tested many kites, both 10,12,14 EH bow and most of the other brands as well. All these kites have an enormous wind span, so if you only want one kite and don’t weight more than 85 kg or are under 165 cm, then the 12m2 probably is the kite that fits you best. It’s easiest and cheapest with just one kite and use it widely.
So, if you’re not one of the best 10 kiters in the country and take kiteloops-handelpace and so on, then this is a very good and reasonable bow kite, EH Ripper!
EH takes control in the sky
The video below is from the Kite4Kids competition where the vast majority of the competitors are riding EH kites. Some people say that EH is a shitty kite and I can agree that EH kites are a bit different compared to others in the way that you need to be a bit more skilled to kite an EH kite and the for example the Ripper is hard to water start if you don’t know the technique. Anyway, I think this video speaks for itself, these kids ride their EH kites like it’s the most natural thing in the world!
EH Ripper – the kite for experts!
Eric Hertsens is the man behind EH-kites. Eric started to kitesurf 1997, but he wasn’t satisfied with kite gear that were available on the market at that time and so he started to modifiy and improve the kites that he used back then. People got interested in Eric’s modifications and more and more people asked for his help to make modifications on their own kites. This was the reason to why Eric launched his own company EH in year 2000.
Today is three different EH kites available on the market, Ripper, Beast and Ovando. Ripper is probably the most common of the three and it is known for its high performance in gusty strong wind where it’s stable and still very quick and fast in responsiveness. Furthermore, the Ripper is very powerful and the lift is unbelievable, simply a beast when it comes to high jumps! Ripper has been released in six different version. v6 is the newest version for year 2010. EH plans to develop a new 12M Ripper kite for 2011, but they say that they don’t really see they point with a larger kite partly since the V6 ripper has a huge wind span, (see the image below), partly because the 10M Ovando performs so extremely well, that it’s hard to make an even better kite.
