Skyshark 300 tubes (32" long) are on sale for $4 here:

here

The ones I bought were high quality wrapped tubes and I have used them for the vertical members of a backpack that I have used for about 100 hours over a 6 month period.

There's no buy button on their form, checked other items, is this their way of indicating out of stock?

Do you see a buy button when you view the page with your browser? And if so, what browser are you using? I checked it on firefox, chrome, msie 6, and opera, and no button.

Too bad, I just bought some carbon fiber tubes too, from goodwinds, for way too much.

Edited by hhope on 06/17/2012 12:54:52 MDT.

From the looks of the site, no "add to cart" button or "qty" box indicates out of stock.

They have plenty of other low price or sale tubes though right now.

This may interest you:

http://www.kitesandfunthings.com/ProductInfo.aspx?productid=SS.385

Harald,

From past experience I think it does mean that they have sold out of this item.

Sorry. I didn't notice when I posted it.

It's worth checking back from time to time, however. I've bought tubing from them several times over the last few years and, as pointed out, they have other tubing in stock that might be of interest to you.

Daryl

wow, that's cheap, too big for my current project though.

Due to some judgement and other errors, I have to use 0.26 or smaller tubing on one side of my pack.

So that will be good anyway to see, just got my goodwinds stuff, skyshark too, but that's 4x more per tube than the link you posted.

I'm actually curious to see if the 0.25 or so stuff will work, it's very light and thin. I also got 0.28 to see how that is, plus some 0.29 stuff I got from our local Tap plastics, which is a lot heavier and probably not as strong, but still pretty light relatively speaking.

0.385 sounds like it would be interesting for something more like an external frame type pack though, but those prices might just be too low to resist.

I'll watch this site in the future, good to know there's some deals on this carbon tubing, it's really not cheap to get it at list prices, easily becomes the single most expensive part of the pack.

Harald,

Kitebuilder is another source for carbon fiber tubing. They recently opened back up after being closed for several months. You can get a Skyshark 400 there for $6.50 if I recall correctly. Same thing sells for $9.99 at Goodwinds. Here's a link:

here

Also, don't rule out fiberglass tubing, especially if you are experimenting. Kitebuilder has them in the $2 to $3 range. I used no-name fiberglass tubing in my wife's frame pack and she has had no problems with 5 years of use.

Daryl

Yes, I used fiberglass tubing from TAP plastics, but they were and are out of the diameter I needed, so I figured I'd start experimenting with carbon fiber.

.291 32" tubes go for 3.60 from TAP, useful if you live in SF bay area region, where they have stores.

Weight is about 50% or so more than carbon fiber, but agreed re stiffness, they feel about as strong to me too.

I couldn't resist, and ordered .385, and the camo sale stuff that is .29 or whatever, from the above links. Wish I'd seen that before, they have seconds there if you buy 10 tubes that cost only 2.50 a tube, oh well, live and learn.

I was planning on eventually using some carbon fiber for a tent, so it will get used.

I find these ones are great too.

http://www.kitesandfunthings.com/ProductInfo.aspx?productid=SSP4XCAM0

Jeremy,

Those wrapped tubes have same id, od and weight of the Skyshark 400s at about half the cost. I hadn't looked at them closely until you posted. The write-up suggests they might be the same as 400s without actually coming out and saying it. Bring on the Camo!

Daryl

Daryl, they're actually an update of the old P series as this link shows:
http://www.kitesandfunthings.com/ProductInfo.aspx?productid=SSPXSERIES

The relevant bit is "We have a new series of tubes the P1X, P2X and P3X.
The new tubes have a new woven look, they are very much the same as the old P series tubes, same ID and OD. The big difference is the tubes are made with a higher modules of carbon which makes them 15% to 20% stiffer that the old P series tubes."

Dustin,

Thanks for the added info.

Every time someone posts I find more info and product at the Kites and Fun Things website.

Daryl