What would you buy?

Buy whatever, goats, surfboard, grange, go to town, but please, not a GoPro. Why watch shaky unfocused vids of mediocre kiters, even if one of them is you, when you can watch professionally shot and edited clips of top riders for free thanks to the interwebs?

98% of GoPro use = tragic narcissism.

Spend your life kiting, not stuffing about recording yourself.

Indeed, but I was kinda liking the idea of documenting my progress for myself, not necesarily anyone else, that and possibly being able to get a couple of nice overhead shots of myself kiting.
Hey, kiting is awesome, is it any wonder someone would want some footage/shots of themselves doing what they love?

The second kite is still up the top of the list too.
I just hate the idea of possibly buying a secondhand bunch of problems.

As Faith No More said; 'Indecision clouds my vision...'

BTW, the gifting of the present is a reward from work for services rendered and they want to be able to present the gift at a cocktail party, so they're not actually giving me the cash straight out, which would have made this much easier to decide what to do.

Still we should all have these problems shouldn't we?

that is the best advice i have read in this topic

Given the fact you don't know what to buy, that would probably mean you don't really need anything. Hand it over to someone who does.

Cheers

Now where did that come from? I'm not sure if it's the prejudice or the stereotyping you should be addressing 1st.
Col

Mate, If you don't know what to get you most probably don't need anything ATM......... (or $500 not quite enough to get what you want)
So why not spend it on the Misses (if applicable), I think that your $500 will go much further this way.

IE: Oh I need a new kite ? board, brownie points ETC.

nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom

Smaller kite. 7m! The new kites are all out soon - good deals to be had on second hand ones.

...ebay?