Kick @rse!
Never realised TH could kite like that.
Makes a total mockery of all the blah blah gear talk seeing him rockin on that plank (with his whacky fixed bar set-up too).
Dig it.
.
.
class riding and conditions
get the new 2011 top hat articulated broomstick bar - makes your kite turn on a dime!
waveslave will be happy - same 100% depower system
One of these days - for certain sure.
Ive got a HUGE hat collection but still no Top Hat.
Some day... at some op shop somewhere... I will find the elusive Top Hat.
a quick mod of ear flaps and chin strap & I'll be out there. 
I'm gonna take it that your being serious. He is using a pulleybar, invented by Lou Wainman to essentially use a 4 line kite like a 2 line with no rope running through the middle. a rope runs from either end of the bar and in the middle sits a pulley, above that sits your depower strap. Your back lines connect like normal.
Everyone used to run pulleybars back in the day, I think I stopped using them altogether around 05. Back then kites didn't depower much anyway, so having a chicken line or not made little difference.
It intrigues me that people these days haven't seen a pulleybar or even a 2 line inflatable kite. Not their problem, I just find it interesting.
Today's Kiting Youth are just plain lazy.
I think we should do our thing for the sport and tie a newbies chicken loop to their bar.
It'd be unAustralian not to do this.
http://www.obecheboards.com/home.asp
THERE wwere similar sort of boards in star before christmas, bout 6-6"4, narrow and no fins, just straight rails and a massive concave. rail was like a body board rail. aparently some dudes down south were ripping on them doing big 360's
after my experience so far with the liquid force twin skim riding a short finless board is super fun for small surf, just gotta work out a design so you can ride waves with them. perhaps a massive swallow tail like that one of top hat's would work? might have to go to bunnings, buy a piece of ply and jigsaw a shape and see.
p.s. top hat has allways been able to hold his own.
i would so love to see half of today's kiters try to kite with the things we were using in the old dayz. man it was so fun tho! i still remember my 2 line getting stuck on the tree at peli point.
2 lines, pulley bars and bindings. they were some fun days. the old thing called fear gets you addicted every tije.
You know the funniest thing, I still have a lot of that gear around and I find when I give it a go these days I don't really ride that differently. However you give that gear to someone who grew up with SLE's and they don't understand it at all.
Also lets clear some things up, the Hats board isn't an Alaia surfboard, really its far from it. Yeah its a piece of ply cut into a shape but thats about as close as it gets. A real alaia is a lot bigger and would be a lot harder to ride on a kite.
There is a guy with dreds who surfs one at Lennox point every now and again and fully rips on it. Proper turns and barrels. The weirdest is how he has to take off (which is totally missed when using a kite) he has to take off under the lip, kind of in the barrel and then come out through the lip and edge around it. It is really suprising when he does it, I always think he is way to deep.
does anyone know him? Looks like a pretty wild kind of dude. Wonder if he has a job or if he just kites everyday on maui?
