Postby flying grandpa » Mon Jun 19, 2017 8:48 pm
Hi, foilers.
Today was my fifth session with the Pulsion 18m. I've never ever HFoiled in so little wind.
I shortened front line in the mixer to increase camber, with the intension it will increase lift and speed of the looping kite.
On my long and narrow lake was blowing 1-8kts with 1-3 knots luls lasting 2-6min.
My 90 kg body sprung above water mostly just after 1 kite back loop. Enormous power!
During luls I was looping the kite to keep it flying, but few times that was not enough and the kite ended in the drink.
Luckilly,I found very easy relunch procedure for Pulsion in marginal winds.
In to little wind the kite slowly moves directly downwind from overhead.
What you need, is to carefully place kite on the water on its trailing edge and then move the bar away from you and pull the depower.
To increase drag place your board across, and put your bar on the board. Keep vertical position of your body in the water to resist kite pull.
The kite was usually sitting on trailing edge for 2-6 min, with breeze to little to start, but just enough to keep small overpressure inside, as the inflate openings were looking directly into the wind.
This way no water enters the kite and even after 6 min it can jump stright into the air at the shortest gust.
When the gust big enough (4-6 knots) came, relunch was automatical (kite starts to the sky by itself). Just remember to relese depower lines back to power position.
Benoit Tremblay warns to use Pulsion 18m with jet ski assistance for safety, but in my opinion that is the safest kite for light wind session.
All my previous kites would end up in the drink forcing my swim to the shore.
Pulsion falled down maybe 8 times.
5 times I managed to sat it on the trailing edge = easy relunch, twice it hits with leading edge and backline relunch was pretty easy.
Most difficult looked, when kite went to much overhead and started to go down in spiral movement. I was sure it will end up in a candy shape with little chance to recover.
Luckily, the descend was so slow, that kite drifted enogh to retension my lines in the last moment to regain the proper shape. Kite landed on leading edge and backstart was easy.
Quite often I manged to execute flying gybes with the downloop. Core thing is to release bar when kite goes down, to let him accelerate. Then the power is enough to gain speed even, if you touch down.
Finally, I came back to my start point and landed dry!!!!! kite on the grass. One month ago I would say it is impossible.
Now I can foil locally almost twice as frequent. No need for 200 km ride. Pulsion 18m is worth its money.
Big Thanks goes to Benoit Tremblay for this masterpiece.
Tadeusz