Introduction: The Flysurfer Viron is a closed cell depower foil designed for teaching the basics of depower and traction kite flying. Due to the closed cells on the Viron the kite is suitable and will relaunch safely on land, snow and water. With its new delta inspired canopy shape for high depower and easy relaunch the Viron can tackle most conditions, in the hands of most riders – new or old to the sport.

Talk the Talk: The Viron comes in a mini version of the speed bag, very lightweight and wrapped in a couple of compression straps to make it pack down nice and small. Nothing fancy going on with the bag but its practical and its not the bag you fly. We set the kite up from brand new and it took a couple of minutes to unwrap, inflate and get into the air. Unlike other Flysurfer foils the Viron has just one large inflate vent in the centre of the kite. It took on some air whilst the kite was lying flat as we unwound the lines, but you have two options here. You can either launch the kite with little air in (not advised) or hold the inflation area open for a couple of seconds to fill the kite up. To test the ease of launch we purposely only partially inflated the kite for the first time to see how it handled, The kite inflated very quickly at the side of the window without to much power and rose to the zenith.

The first thing that is very apparent when flying the Viron is the extremely large depower range, flying the kite directly over head in around 25mph with the bar out there was very little power in the kite. Even with the bar out the Viron maintains great stability in the gusts which makes it ideal for turbulent conditions in the hands of a beginner.

On the bar the Viron is plenty responsive without being to quick. Having the bar in the middle keeps plenty of tension on the lines to give a good turn rate whilst letting the bar out fully slows the kite right down and kills loads of power. The Bar itself features a new Flysurfer quick release, unlike the more expensive Infinity Bar 1.0 and soon to be 2.0 there is no swivel here to save costs, Also the chances of multiple kite looks and rotations are far less on this kite so it is not necessary. There is a new style chicken lock on the chicken loop which we also liked. It is completely solid and pulls in and out on a strong bungee cord. This should make it much easier to use in cold conditions and with gloves on (snowkiting) The trim strap, on both powering and depowering the kite was very easy to use with very little friction, it is also not to far away to reach - great if you are teaching short people or young children on the kites! One of our favourite features on the Viron is the near auto relaunch of the kite which you will see in the video below, remaining hooked in and slamming the kite into the ground it will sit onto one tip and relaunch at the edge of the window. Due to its delta style shape it also relaunched extremely easily when in the middle of the wind window facing the ground, just a small pull on the bar or outside line and the kite would spin over and launch.

The  new Reefline Safety (RDS) works like a drawstring across the top of the kite rendering it powerless,whilst testing we gave this new safety system some abuse, running and riding around with random safety pulls here and there demonstrated how easy the kite is to reset and relaunch.
On some occasions the kite would remain low in the window still in the air whilst on the safety. Although there was no power in the kite at all it was a slight pain at times.

On the landboard the Viron was quite grunty, and although not designed with a lot of traction in mind the kite pulled well with good speed across the field. Although the Viron is not designed to have any lift in powered conditions there was enough for some very small jumps, hooked in and unhooked.

For a better understanding of the performance check out the video below by Laurent BSD;

Liked: The extremely easy relaunch and large depower, aided with the stability in gusty conditions.

Would Change: For the price there is not much else to expect from a beginner kite, although an 8m geared slightly more towards traction would be fantastic.

Overview: The Viron is a great kite option for a beginner getting into depower or for shops and schools to use for teaching on a variety of surfaces (land/water/snow) – Get Infected

Size on test; 6m complete provided by Flysurfer