Product Review: Peter Lynn Venom 2

March, 2005
Product Review: Peter Lynn Venom II

Tester:

  • Traig - 195 pounds on an assortment of surf oriented, larger directionals and a strapless fish surfboard
  • Monkey Air Team riders

We have been putting the Venom 2's through our usual thrashing, crazy wind range tests and back to backs with all sorts of new Bow/ SLE kites for quite a while now and here is what we think. The V2 is a faster turning, stiffer feeling and more powerful, higher aspect venom than last years kite. The V2 has a nicer bag with a zipper on the side of the center extended spar kite section for easy access. The spars have been improved dramatically to a strong high diameter yet super light aluminum collapsible spar arrangement that is both very neat and effective. The spar pockets are a bit larger to accommodate them and no longer necessitate the return strap plug of the V ones. The kites have three adjustment straps in the rear to optimize the kites for conditions or taste. Venom one kites had a reverse funnel shape while flying with the large end of the funnel faces rearward. The Venom two has a reverse shape with the tightening of the trailing edge through over all cell shaping being much more than the simple Trailing Edge Tightening many expected from the mods we all played with last year. (ALL PL kites work very well out of the bag but some of us just love playing with them this way as NO other kite allows this range of modification to personalize to a specific application in our experience). The difference in performance in just a tiny bit of rear strap application is significant. The range, stability and user friendliness of these new V2's have brought several of our past PL kite users now on Lei C kites and latest Bow/SLE kites back to Venoms. The color patterns and designs are a step up as well for PL kites.

With thousands of hours on the PL kites between us, the immediate consensus from testers/students after just a few minutes on the V2's was..."WOW", more usable power (stiffer kite creating more apparent wind with improved turning in light stuff), better turning and stiffer feel with no compromise in the unbeatable arc stability. PL has made another step forward in arc design though not of course as large as the jump from phantom/G arc to venom one, it is indeed a real step up from our last years favorite Venom one and most used kites of our M A quiver. We really didn't expect to say this after testing so many of the new lei C and hybrid kites out there this year, but if we stuck with one quiver of kites to withstand the kite destroying condions, unstable winds and ease of use, there is still no better choice than the V 2.

These are the most Under -hyped kites on the market. The bows/SLE's are just starting to touch some of the arcs attributes. The kites are durable, flag out with complete power loss on leash, are of a very simple design and have stability like none other. We use what we like and could make a lot more selling over hyped brands. PL kites just plain work and sell themselves through word of mouth… .

More to come with further testing...

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