Night Heron - Circular Race Gate Review

Posted on June 20, 2017 • 4 min read • 847 words

I was contacted by Alice at Night Heron to review one of their new and seemingly popular gates, and decided to go for the Circle gate as these are becoming more and more popular among race tracks.

The circle gate in question is their #04 gate - the Circular Race Gate. It’s actually a pretty small gate in comparison to some competitors, but as we know I like a small gate (hence the Forza popup gates), so this seemed ideal.

The gates are available from Night Heron Outdoor direct here.

Product Specs  

Fabric:

• Fabric: Polyester Oxford 210D

Box Contents:

• 1 * 7.9MM fibreglass pole
• 8 * 16MM black steel poles section
• 2 * special steel pegs
• 1 * FPV race gate fabric
• 1 * carry bag

Specification:

• Ring outer diameter.: 160cm
• Ring inner diameter.: 118cm
• Overall height: 255cm

Setup & Thoughts  

From the product specs and their stock photo we can see the gate is pretty small. With a size of 118cm all-around (around 50cm less than a regular gate), it’s around 1/3 smaller that will make the high gate great fun. It’s positioned around a meter above the ground, so you can assemble some pretty fun tracks if you have gates before and after that are on the ground, and depending how close you put them you can make it quite a difficult track! Being Black & Yellow the gate is pretty easy to see, though I would have opted for maybe red and white, or some brighter colours that are a slightly better offset compared to grass.

Straight out of the box we can see we get a nice carry case from Night Heron. It looks a little thin as you can see but hopefully it won’t wear out too quickly over time. Having had gates that use fiberglass poles after constant use you do tend to get some of the fibers that split away from the poles, which will easily puncture through. It won’t tear the bag but may end up needing gloves to open it :D

Inside the bag every item of the gate is individually wrapped to further protect it during transport.

With everything unwrapped we can see there are some tent poles that create the gate, as well as some thicker steel poles to float the gate in the air. We’ve also got some ground pegs that the poles slot into to keep it in the air.

Assembly  

Assembly is as easy as follows:

• Assemble the tent poles together so that it is one long pole and slide through the main material in the associated hoope
• With the pole all the way through, join the 2 ends together and slot as you did the other poles.
• Zip up the gate material and attach the velcro - you have now assembled the main part of the gate!
• Slide in the main poles into each other (3 total on each side), and slide these into the gate. Securely attach them using the provided string attached to the gate.

Here’s the gate assembled at the field. You can immediately see one modification that had to be done with the UK weather - it’s always extremely windy here and I tried assembling the gate a few times, but it was just not sturdy enough without any guide ropes. I tried maybe 3 times, even angling it so it wouldn’t take the full force of the wind, but it was not enough. I’m not sure why it doesn’t come with these guide ropes as standard, it definitely needs to down the line.

After a days worth of flying I’d say the gate actually survived pretty well, it took many many hits during the day of which most did not actually do any damage. I thought more damage would occur as the material felt a little thinner than I would have liked, but what can I say I’m impressed.

Flying it  

Here’s some flying footage of the gate in action!

Here’s a run from Brett Collis aka CollisionFPV.

And here’s one of my runs, following CollisionFPV and Harry Plested as they battle it out, with my freestyle quad.

Final Thoughts  

Positives  

• Assembly is quick and easy
• Bag is useful for storing everything without losing anything
• Material was surprisingly strong
• Colours are easily visible when flying

Negatives  

• It NEEDS guide ropes to be effective, there is no beating around the bush here. The good thing is it’s a cheap addition should you just do it yourself
• Price is ok but there are better deals out there if you look.

Overall the gate is a nice addition to any personal track, I’m not sure I’d use it for an event as I don’t think it would last if you had a good amount of pilots but overall I really like the gate, it’s easy to see and pretty well priced.

The gates are available from Night Heron Outdoor direct here.