G'day John,

Grant Walker is my name, I live in Australia in a small town called Barham, on the Murray River.

I saw your site and thought you might be interested in my experiences with power chairs. I am a c7 quad as the result of hitting acar on my motorbike 28 years ago so I have been in many chairs and seen a lot of advancements in design, the chairs are getting better all the time.

Please edit this as you need, its a bit basic compared to your reports, I
hope to get better with practice so I will keep in touch (even if it is only
to check the pics of your gf).  (where did you find those!??? - burgerman)

The P40 Karma chair is from Korea and imported by Fisher Lane (not sure of
spelling) in Melbourne, Australia, I had it for nearly 5 years and it goes
very fast and a nice smooth ride, I have not seen much about them on the
web, they may go under different name in other parts of the world, for some
reason the Blast is much easier to find info about.

I am only changing over to the Blast 850 because I am getting old and
crotchety so I need reclining seat and elevating footrests. The OT here said
the Blast was the way to go and if I don't do as the OT says then anything
that goes wrong is my fault. I don't know how cripples survived before able
bodied OT's and social workers came onto this earth.

From all the other posts on the net, mostly American and some English,
everyone is pleased by the speed and power of the Blast, I think that none
of them had a fast chair like the Karma or a couple of other fast chairs.

I have only used the Blast for a number of weeks so I am still learning
about it, first off it looks ok but has many nooks, crannies and bolt on
bits that catch dust and dirt and its really hard to keep clean, the Karma
has a smooth one piece plastic surround, it only takes a wipe and its clean.
This may seem a trivial thing to some but when I have to rely on others to
clean my chair it is more difficult to get my Blast cleaned compared to the
Karma. I hate the whinging and bitching about cleaning my Blast so that I
don't look like a real dero, I have enough disabilities without looking like
dag.

The ride on the Blast is not smooth, maybe tyre pressure which I am
experimenting with and the seat is pivoted at the back and causes the chair
to rock as its not bolted down on all four corners also the seat is located
over the back axel so that may cause a rougher ride, though it allows the
Blast to wheelie over small curbs etc as the centre of gravity is further
back than the Karma.

The control box is digital computerised control and the settings can be
changed, the factory settings are not to my satisfaction, they are not very
precise, too much delay in acceleration and deceleration, especially in
turning, these settings can only be changed by the chair supplier I
understand because I asked and they won't even sell me one.

These are just what I have found in a short time in the Blast, I hope my
thoughts are of use, if you would like any more info, just let me know. If
you have any thoughts or suggestions on my review I would be pleased to hear
them.

Anyway, I must be making two parallel tracks, I will catch up with you soon,

Regards,
Grant.