Ewan Jaspan

NAISH parawing and kite lead designer, and a long-time pro kiteboarder and freestyle pioneer (Ep 123). The hosts recorded at his Hood River home, using it as a base on their 2025 US trip. Central to the show’s Parawing coverage.

• Career path (Ep 123): Moved to Hood River ~3.5 years ago as a NAISH team rider, initially assisting kite designer “Brian” as an unofficial “sidekick,” then took over all NAISH kite files as Brian got pulled into wing design. The turning point into a full-time design role came when he was asked to sign off a production kite run while still nominally a team rider — realising the weight of that responsibility pushed him to formalise as a NAISH employee (~3 years ago). He estimates he was one of the top freestyle kiteboarders in the world at the time he stepped back from full-time riding, roughly age 28 after ~12 years as a pro.
• Now leads NAISH’s parawing programme too (Ep 123): Took over parawing design this past summer after original designer “Matt” left the company, running ~5 rounds of prototyping across sizes 1.9m–5.1m. Notable design decisions: keeping bridle lines to roughly one arm’s length so the wing can be stowed one-handed mid-session, even though this is mechanically harder to design well than longer bridles; and detuning the smallest sizes after an early 1.9m prototype proved dangerously twitchy for less experienced riders. His first strong wing prototype was scrapped for general sale despite excellent light-wind upwind performance, because it collapsed unpredictably once powered above ~20 knots.
• Design philosophy (Ep 123): Designs from desired rider “characteristics” outward rather than starting from a theoretically optimal profile, on the reasoning that wing/kite performance is an emergent property of the whole package (profile + bridle + angle of attack together) — a good feature can’t reliably be lifted from a competitor’s product in isolation.
• On kite vs downwind foil design (Ep 123): Explains kite foils are built purely to resist becoming “lifty” at speed (he’s hit 30+ knots on a 700cm² kite foil, and ~27-28 knots on a power wing), unlike downwind foils which prioritise glide/carry — a distinction he draws from personally testing the same foils across very different craft.