The China Team video from 2015 in Qingdao, when they got their first couple Jetblades after using the French brand for the past few seasons for shows. They love the durability and the construction and have enhanced the team cooperation with X for the summer of 2016. China is going to be a great model for what the future of hydroflight sports will hold in terms of training and competitions integrating with boat and “aquabike” races. X is proud to be supporting team riding Jetblades and X-Jetpacks and the looking forward to sharing the developments as the season progresses.
Sometimes we feel like we are back in high school, we wear an Iron Maiden t-shirt on Wednesday, and on Thursday, “that guy”, shows up again a day later, wearing an Iron Maiden t-shirt and crossing his arms just like us. We are flattered to be so many people’s role model. We hope that all members of the hydroflight industry will follow the same principles that we try to adhere to:
- Good design that allows anyone to participate in the sport.
- Building gear from high strength materials that can hold up to foreseen uses.* Gear that holds up to rental and backflips, (which have been considered ‘normal’ for the past four years.)
- Explaining the technology in clear, concise and free from massive exaggerations.
- Selling product and accepting payment only when the product is finished and ready to be delivered. No deposits, no prepayments, no months away promised and broken delivery dates.
*We can imagine someone might come up with cinderblock polo using a Flyboard as a mallet, we cannot “foresee” it with a Jetblade. 🙂
Hydroflight, as any flight based sport has risks. We are determined to do everything we can to make it safer. Flying over the water you need complete trust in your equipment and your connection to it. However in an emergency, the quicker you can get out away from it the better. This is a common thread through sports, from car racing to skiing to paragliding. The XTR Total Release is the next step in addressing the safety needs of the jetboard community.
We had one main requirement as the brief, give the ability for a first time user to exit the board as quickly as possible with as few chances for hang ups as possible. Such emergencies can be simple or complicated.
- A first time user might just want to be free of the board.
- The hose can get caught on an obstruction under water and start to tug the user under water when pressurized by the jet ski.
- An unpowered jet ski and rider in flowing water can get caught on a bouy and the rider and the ski can be dragged under due to the current forces.
- A boat passing between the ski and the rider can catch the hose and drag the rider.
- The jet ski could sink (unlikely given floatation foam inside).
- Lots of things we haven’t thought of, in short, there are times you want to give the rider the possibility of a quick out.
This has been a concept that we have been developing since the start of the Jetblade development. Continue reading
Let’s start with a controversial viewpoint, freestyle in any sport is fundamentally boring to watch and does not build an action sports audience for the future. Ouch. We know it hurts. What freestyle athletes do is amazing, it truly is a great level of talent. The level of commitment, training, involved are beyond compare, 99% of participants in the sport will never be able to attain the level of what the top 1% pull off. We do not question that a bit! What we are saying is that it is necessary to innovate on the very nature of hydroflight competitions themselves. Take the time invested in training and help to turn the sport into more than a passing fad.
Gymnastics, skateboard freestyle in a parking lot, ski freestyle, all requiring great commitment and preparation, remain boring to watch when compared to interactions with a dynamic environment. There are only so many flips that a viewing audience can watch before flip fatigue sets in. Audiences are engaged for the first few minutes, and then start to fade away. In other sports, the participants themselves, once the boredom of the routine has set in, have sought out new challenges. Skaters raided empty swimming pools and then built ramps and urban skaters utilized the very urban environment that surrounded them. Parks, rails, benches became fail game. New forms of expression emerged. The added risk of judging abilities and limitations as well as adding imagination and creativity to a three dimensional riding environment made everything new and engaging.
Stratospheric, X, develops solutions and innovative designs for the field of sports. We know that the future of hydro is tied to participating and building audiences and bringing new people into the sport. A big part of this are competitions, interesting to watch competitions. One of the things that we are working on are inflatable shapes that can be used as safe obstacles to illustrate the edges of riders abilities. We call the first developed shape a “Jaxx” a shape based in game history blown up to a superhuman scale. No matter how you flip it, it lands on three legs and allows for both stability and flexibility to flip to a new position. We have had one set of rider experiment with version 1.0 and we built version 1.1 for the Session One event in Florida.
We have a longer range view of this sport and the path to an interesting life that will attract particpants, viewers and sponsors. Freestyle is a technical expression but technical movement without restriction is often viewed as repetitive and runs out of viewer engagement quickly.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a fad: “a practice or interest followed for a time with exaggerated zeal “. Could that apply to hydrosport? What causes a fad, to fade?
Most often, it’s the lack of innovation that causes a fad to lose appeal or be replaced by new, more interesting things. Sometimes safety concerns also cause people to abandon the latest fad.
As hydroflight equipment professionals, and active participants in the hydroflight industry, we never want hydroflight to be considered a fad and lose its appeal. We don’t want hydroflight to appear to be for extreme athletes only, or have other activities to seem more enticing to current fliers and potential fliers visiting the water. We don’t want to become complacent and stop innovating – either as an industry or as individuals. We want to keep the real spirit that this is a growing and reactive sport filled with people that care about the growth and evolution of hydroflight. People fly through the air propelled on jets of water! How awesome is that? We are certain there is a huge future ahead for all of us to work towards, lovers of flight, athletes with visions of fame, business owners and everyone that appreciates the wild things that bring smiles to faces and awe to viewers.
Importantly, we also don’t want to let safety issues scare people away. The risks of flying, over water, attached to a high powered machine are both very real and can be a stall for some people to try the sport and accept it. We need to continue to work on the best safety practices and continue to innovate on ways to make the gear safer. Other companies are working on this as well and we keep in mind the common goal of both informing hydrofliers and making
To keep hydrosport vibrant, we must be forward thinking and really understand the needs of today’s players. We must offer products and services that are the best experience possible, and can compete with other recreations for customer attention, loyalty and business. We have to build on the foundation of the sport with innovations that make the sport easier to practice, safer for everyone involved, and most of all, expand on the promise of fun.
We’ve made it past the first bump with a new set of innovation and solutions and competitiveness that is benefiting all of hydrosport.
As an hydrosport participant, your knowledge of the HydroFlight industry and the hydrosport market are crucial to your success. It’s important for you to stay informed, pay attention to your customers, and strive to be at the innovation forefront. X is here to encourage development in the sport and the promotion of the future. We want to push forward the sport, we listen to you, we build products for you and we work to make sure that tomorrow’s hydroflight is a better experience for all.
Hydroflight is serious, in all kinds of ways. Serious fun most of all, and a serious pursuit in the aerial marine environment. Stratospheric Industries, aka X, takes every aspect of hydroflight equipment production seriously. You see it reflected in how our products look and how they perform. We are building ‘gear’ in a gearhead tradition and we build it the best with no compromises. The sports equipment that we love is all serious, tech and cool, mountain bikes, snowboards, skateboards, diving equipment, skydiving equipment, cars, the list goes on. Tuned by generations of designers and built to excel for the tasks at hand, defying gravity and creating thrills. Tough dependable materials are more expensive and require greater skills to produce, but are worth their weight in gold when your pushing the boundaries of what is possible. It is a choice, a fork in the road that manufacturers take, the high road and the low road. There are quicker, cheaper methods to mass produce products, we have always been able to look back and say, we built it right. There has always been mass produced throwaway gear available at a cheaper price. Cheap gear doesn’t last the test of time and worse, can let down riders in the middle of a run. We know the coolness of the sport and want the gear to be just as cool.
Session One video edit by Blaine Jeffery of H2Ro Magazine. Video shot by Fernando Morales of FocusFL.com, Nice work capturing the cooperative vibe of the event.
Great video from Aquajet Miami! Here is their accompanying description and info:
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This video by Rush Bragg as mentioned in the Facebook discussion shows you how to prepare a Pro Series Flyboard for “professional” use. As contrast, keep in mind that all Jetblades and X-Jetpacks come out of the box ready for professional use and are designed with the rigors of real world use in mind. Jetblade inserts are CNC machined 316 stainless steel from our first model on-wards, with a 100% service rating, meaning zero inserts have ever failed. One more note, all of the modifications shown in the video, as well as any professional use, most likely immediately void the warranty on the Flyboard as it is intended for leisure use only.
Another discussion in the hydroflight group on Facebook about the article published on Aquafly with a side by side comparison of the Jetblade vs the “Pro Series Flyboard” from Zapata Racing. Bobby Vance of Aquafly, formerly a Zapata Racing distributor and now a representative of the Jetblade in Texas. Bobby has a lot of experience with the first generations of Flyboards and the new “Pro Series Flyboard”. He took the time to make a parts comparison and a description of the process of disassembling the two products for service. For the full article, see it here.
