A tricky (and growing) kite bag
Early or late every kite pilot will come to the point where he asks himself: Where to put all these damn kites ? At the beginning most flyer’s have around one to three kites. But if you fly more and more the wish for new and different kites grow and you eventually want a kite for each wind range plus some nice fun kites. But if you have more kites, it hurts you more, when you have to transport them in single little kite sleeves.
Kite bags are available in all variations and price classes. Some kiter’s buy a ski or snowboard bag from the supermarket advertisement for around 10-20 Euros, some will buy a high end roll out bag with the finest material from the US manufacture Prism, which costs the same amount of money like a complete kite.
Many cheap kite bags are not very clever designed and the bags with perfect construction are as usual very expensive. The spectrum of kite bags on the market is huge and you can loose focus very quick. At the end you just buy a bag, which looks OK on a web shop picture or you get the one with the lowest price.
The kite bag in the article is made by the Spanish kite manufacture EOLO-Sport. You can also buy the same kite in black/silver with Bilboquet or Atelier Kites applications. Technically they are the same bags, but they have other color and sticker arrangements.
At the first sight, the bag looks very simple made and you would eventually not decide to put this bag in the short-list to buy. The color variation is a bit to racy and some customers would rather buy a more descent kite bag. However the price of 35 euros is so good that you should dare a second sight.
This is a view on the sewed on outer bag which is approximately 75 cm long. The bag is big enough to fit a 1,5 liter bottle of soda or to put accessories inside.
Inside the bag you have 5 large kite guides which fixes the kites when transporting. These pockets are big enough to fit even more than one kite per pocket. Additionally there is a second accessories bag sewed inside the bag.
On the other half you have Velcro strips to fix the kites. The dark cloth is gaze to let the kite breath and get humidity out of the inside.
You can also open the gaze cloth to grab into the inner bag, without opening the whole kite bag. So you can leave accessories inside the bag and even at windy day you can put thing in and out of the bag.
Next to the kite pockets, you can also put kites – similar to other kite bags – loosen inside the bag. Just stuff them inside the bag and close the zipper.
And this is one of the clever things with this bag. The kite bag can be converted from a normal to large kite bag just in a snap. As long you have just a few kites, you leave it in standard.
If you need more space, you just enlarge the bag with another zipper inside the kite bag. Now the kite bag is much bigger than before, as you can see on the picture.
So this kite bag grows as the flier needs more space for his kites and accessories, which needs to be transported safe and complete to the kite field and vice versa.
There are some nice details inside the bag too, like the savers for the kites and the zippers.
At last a picture of the bag with some kites inside. This should help you to get a feeling of the dimension of the EOLO Kite bag.
In the bag you see a Prism E2, Benson Gemini, Drachenkiste Siebert WSO and a HQ Tramontana.
The Tramontana and WSO are full size kites. So your kites should not exceed the length of approximately 170 cm to fit inside the bag. I think for around 25 to 35 Euros, this kite bag is really a bargain, especially were “Bilboquet”:http://www.bilboquet.com/ is selling these bags in black/silver.