First of all, a little about myself just to give the review some scop: Height: 6'3" Weight: 75-80kg Experience: Kitesurfing for one full season. Would describe myself as intermediate as i'm happy boosting and am starting to work on my style (a style?). I've been traction kiting for a couple of years now but no buggy experience. Have mountainboarded a couple of times and have spent a while playing with a petrol powered mountainboard. So after much deliberation i decided to go for the highest spec Bomerlite deck board that G.I have on offer for the '08 season. The only difference between the Patrol 106 and their top of the range board the Conflict 106 is the deck construction and i'm sure to a seasoned rider there's worlds between them. For this humble ground-board-kite-newbie the Patrol 106 is a damn sweet piece of kit! It arrived to my office with my workmates giving me daft looks like 'wtf has he bought now?!' So i took a break and ripped it out of it's spiffy box and started assembling. In 15 minutes i was jumping around the office with my feet ratcheted in with even dafter looks and comments like 'your going to kill yourself'. First impressions since i've had it and given it a couple of runs downhill and one kite session are that it's going to take a fair bit of abuse to damage or kill, and to be honest i doubt i ever will! Which is one of the things i love about this board and the thing that actually ended up swaying me away from MBS boards - it's so mechanically simple. The torsion cubes (main suspension component) have a single 'king-pin' running through them are so simple they can't fail, they can't! On the off chance you manage to snap a king-pin i've been told they're readily available... but i could only imagine the damage i'd do to myself in order to achieve that! The bomerlite deck (whilst i have no idea what bomerlite means!) seems quite flexy but with a solid feel to it. I've been riding the Patrol 106 now for about 3 months and i can honestly say that i really like the feel of it! For my ~80kg the flex means i can get great pop whilst loading up for jumps, and the landings are smooth enough to take the shock out of it without bottoming out the board. I'd imagine that if you were any heavier than me you might want to consider going for the Heliocore based Conflict 106 for the stiffer board and extra weight capacity. The graphics on the top and bottom of the board are an external layer that i can't really describe. It feels like it's got a protective rubber/plastic over the graphics which will probably serve well to protect it, but time will tell. Whilst it makes little difference to me as i'd much rather spend time riding it than worrying about scuffs or scratches, the actual graphics are pretty cool. Having spent the most part of three weeks travelling across the Kimberleys (Melbourne to Broome), it stood up to the torture test pretty well. The coating has taken on a slight red tinge from all the dust out there, but a quick rub-down wash brought it back to it's normal colour. I can only really compare the Talon bindings to the basic velcro based ones on cheaper boards, but i'll say the ability to click it to the exact tightness you want and then forget it is great. Even with my fat size 13's, the bindings do a great job of hanging on tight until i get to that 'ooosh' moment and kick the board off at which point i still manage to slip out of them without any issues. I'm sure if i clamped them down really hard i wouldn't be able to slip out even if i tried to... but for the moment i'm much happier being able to detach myself from the board at will. Even with it set so i can get my feet out fairly easily, by rotating your feet in the bindings you can lock them in solid enough to boost and pull semi-raleys (all i'm really capable of) with the board solidly attached to your feet. The big metal lever bit is the ratchet to tighten it up, and the smaller black plastic finger bit is the release. Not overly complicated, but very effective. Speaking of size 13's, one of my common issues with mountainboards, snowboards and anything with a board is that my feet tend to overhang the edge of the board a disturbing amount. Sometimes it's an issue (snowboarding with my heels and toes digging into the snow!) and other times it's just downright silly (first time i jumped on my mates GI AK103 and jammed my toes into a fast spinning tyre by accident). On the Patrol 106 i've had none of these issues so am very happy about it! It might be the deck width, it might be the binding mounting angle, it's probably the wider axles, but whatever it is this deck is good for big feet! The vegas hubs i've heard good things about and i can vouch for their durability from the torture i've given them so far. They're fairly light and the metallic finish on them looks schmick. No real idea on the tyre's other than to say that i started off with them at 30psi and found that to be a bit soft on the grass i've used it on so far; they run much better at 40-45psi. Haven't gone any higher than that yet. My only criticism of the entire board is that the absolutely stunning shiny green coating on the trucks has worn off slightly on the edge's where it's constantly getting grass, sand, dirt and other probably abrasive things rubbing against it. Overall a fantastic board that i'd highly recommend to anyone looking at getting into mountainboarding or especially KGB'ing. Yes it's more expensive than some of the other boards with skate trucks, but as soon as you feel the difference the torsion cubes make to the handling and stability you'll be very glad you spent the extra dollars.