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The Tona Pop brings something fresh back into the kiteboarding world with its unique design and bottom contour. If you are looking for a board that explodes off the water whether its on natural kickers or flat water, without sacrificing any upwind ability, you will love this board. The Pop is stiffer than the average kiteboard on the market, this helps the board hold its static rocker line while riding and also helps generate the maximum amount of energy when you load up to pop off the water. The double concave in the center and deep channels along the rails give the board lots of stablity while riding finless, and the flat surface area out the tail makes for minimal drag and great release off the water on air tricks. The channels are also effective in creating extra surface area, which in turn increases upwind ability. The Pop does not disappoint!
Sizes?
The POP comes in two sizes right now, 138 and a 133. If a board is designed well, its range can be wide and the need for more sizes is reduced. This makes the decision easier for the customer when trying to select the ride size. Having a lot of sizes in one model causes overlapping which can make it tricky to decide what size is best for you. We did not want to produce any more sizes at this time, as we felt the 138 and 133 would satisfy most kiteboarders out there. We spent a lot of time and energy testing and prototyping just these two sizes individually to maximize each size’s expectations. In our board R&D we will not just make one size and have a computer scale up and down to make the different models. Each size is tested individually. We wanted to put more effort into less boards rather than less effort into many boards.
Why no 140cm or bigger?
Because of the deep channes, rocker line and profile, we can accomplish the performance of a larger board without adding length. It is all about wetted surface. If you could iron our board channels flat, you will get as much surface area as a larger 140+ board. I just designed it into a shorter package. So basically, if you’re riding a 140 or larger, flexier kite board now, you will not loose anything with the 138 Pop. Board sizes in the kiting industry have only gotten longer bacause of the demand for more energy from the board, unfortunately the thinner flexy board construction can not deliver this sort of needed energy so they make up for it with added length. If we do decide to offer another size Pop in the future it will be a 142 or 143 for the really big guys out there.
Yearly models?
You will be pleased to know that Tona will not be releasing a new model every year making last year’s models obsolete. We do not subscribe to this industry standard. We put a lot of effort and testing into the design and function our boards. After many years of custom board building I have learned that not much really changes in terms of design of a kite board, definitely not enough to warrant a new design every year. Most companies are putting out boards every year with little or no design change and claiming the new one to be the ‘best board ever’, that is simply smoke and mirrors from a marketing perspective. If you want to buy a Tona board near the end of a season, you will not have to worry that a newer design will becoming out in a month. At Tona we honor the Research and Development process, and we will not make sacrifices in this area to simply meet deadlines. I am using my experience of making custom boards to make sure we produced boards which have longevity it their design. We will only release a new model if we have something legitimate to contribute to the industry and not before. The POP is NOT a 2012 board or a 2013 etc…Etc… It is simple a board we feel is the best we can produce currently. Don’t expect us to change something by a few millimeters next year and call it the latest and the greatest. We spent 3 years designing the Pop, and we are confident that we have produced a board that our customers will be stoked to ride, now and into the future. This is just a fresh approach we decided upon at the foundation of TONA. No marketing nonsense, just good products that we think will simplify your experience and enhance your riding.
Weight?
The Pop is a little heaver than most kitebaords currently out there. But most of the kiteboards available now do not deliver the energy and have the strenght the Pop has. With more than 10 years of making custom kiteboards, I can tell you there are two things that are a total misconception when it comes to kite board design. One is weight and the other is fins. (More about fins another time) Lets talk about weight. The only time weight really becomes a factor is if you are doing board offs, especially when we’re talking about just a few ounces. You might develop tennis elbow or knock yourself out if the board is heavy, but apart from that, a little weight will not effect the board at all and in fact if you are adding weight while making the board stiffer and stronger you actually gain a lot! Modern wake style kiteboarding is all about power. So anything you can do to add energy to the board the better the board will serve you. This is why dedicated wake boards are much heavier than kiteboards and their performance is not effected by the added weight because they deliver power and energy in return. We have done the same thing with the POP. To get the channel depth we wanted we had to make the core thicker so that it is not paper thin in the deepest part of the channels resulting in unwanted flex and breakage.
Flex in a board makes any poorly designed board ridable. But this flex also kills a lot of energy. So you have to use bigger fins to get the bite you need, the bite you are giving up when the tips flex upwards. If you want energy from your board like the new power style of riding requires, you don’t want to be riding a noodle. You want something that will not twist and bend under load. The stiffer Pop boards carry enough energy (even finless) that can actually go upwind better than most boards currently available which have large fins! So the result of our design is that we are using the energy more efficiently….That’s also one of the reasons why we did not feel the need for a larger size board. With the channels and stiffer flex patterns, our 138 (which is actually a 139) rides pretty much like a larger 142-144cm flexy board would but without the added swing weight. Now a word about swing weight. The slightly heavier board with less swing weight gathers momentum helping your rotation. So you might notice a small difference in weight when you hold a pop in your hands, compared to other kite boards, but you will not notice it on the water. In fact you might be surprised that your rotations feel smoother.
Tona ramp fins.
Kiteboard design and the current big name kiteboard companies all evolved from the windsurfing world. As far as board design is concerned, I think we would have been better off evolving from the wakeboarding world and not the windsurfing world. Fin use and design is one element that followed suit from windsurfing. When kiting started the windsurfing world was all about high performance foils on fins made from the expensive, very stiff, G-10 material. On a wakeboard or kiteboard, fins are not a necessity, and if you do need fins at all, it is simply to stabilize the direction of the board so you can use the rail more effectively and increase stability on landings. The lift comes from the rail of the board and not the fins. So if you want to go upwind better, its more about how you ride the rail than what fins you are using. ( Kite race boards are a different animal. They are very dependent on fin foils for lift.) We designed the Pop to be ridden finless. The channels stabilize the board enough to allow you to use the rocker line of the rails to track upwind and generate lift. We did not think the kite world was ready for a completely finless board, and we wanted to give our riders the option, so we do offer fins with the Pop. We use longer, shallower 0.8″ ramp fins. Because of the shallow height of the fins they can be used when hitting ramps, and the softer material allows them to break away before doing damage to your board or to the obstacle you are hitting. The fin material was also something that we considered over and over. Companies are charging large amouts of money for G-10 fins when is fact the fins are so small that flex is not an issue and you can get away with a much cheaper material. Making a small kiteboard fin out of G-10 is like making a bottle cap out of titanium. Its over kill and its expensive. So we went with a softer less expensive material that is just as effective as G-10 or fiberglass at that size, and easily replaceable if you decide you want to ride with fins.
How tough is the base? Will it hold up on the rails and kickers at the cable park?
The bottoms are a tough plastic coating specially designed for this purpose. It is the wakeboard industry’s best surface for sliders and ramps to date and not yet used in kiting. Our boards are made in a very well known and established wakeboard factory and we use the same materials and process used in the proven wakeboarding world. The Pop is an excellent cable park board.
Have you tested whether certain straps or boots will fit the Pop?
The inserts are setup to offer 3 position options of 6′, 7’ or 8′ spacing so you should be able to fit most if not all systems. That was important to us. To make sure the riders can ride with whatever system they feel best on. We just promised that the board was the best interaction with the water. How you choose to attach to it is strictly personal.
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