Aluula Composites | Episode # 135

[foilholio]

Yes but you are not really going to be able to jump much higher, have longer hangtime or pull better VMG on a race course. Faster turning is nice but not needed. Main benefit to lower weight is kite flys in less wind and falls out of the air slower. The better balance will help with the falling out of the air part.

Lets not kid ourselves, loosing weight does not change the type of kite this is. It is not a race kite. Loosing weight could make a kite better for waves but you won't be getting any major performance gains, except for light wind.

[Greenturtle]

A faster snappier redirect will translate into higher boost especially in light wind.
Also he says le diameter has been reduced on this first release already by 25%

[madworld]

Yes but you are not really going to be able to jump much higher, have longer hangtime or pull better VMG on a race course. Faster turning is nice but not needed. Main benefit to lower weight is kite flys in less wind and falls out of the air slower. The better balance will help with the falling out of the air part.

Lets not kid ourselves, loosing weight does not change the type of kite this is. It is not a race kite. Loosing weight could make a kite better for waves but you won't be getting any major performance gains, except for light wind.

I tested the kite. expanding on your opinion, the lightweight of the leading edge and struts moves the center of gravity further back from the leading edge and the rigid leading edge seems to make the kite very gust resistant and smooth and has a larger wind range. This aluula roam model kite has light bar pressure ans very fast turning for the 10 m size I tried. This kite sits in the window just at the intersection of mid aspect ratio and low aspect ratio. I liked it.

[Toby]

I had a chat with someone from industry lately...and the hope is that lighter materials will lead to a better performance similar like a foil kite.
And I would be very interested in that.

[purdyd]

The regular roam has a fairly large leading edge by design I assume to keep it back in the window for drift. A 25% reduction in the leading edge probably puts it more in line with more other all around kites.

So just because you can have a smaller diameter leading edge, doesn’t mean you should. It depends on how you want the kite to fly.

On the other hand for really big kites, that have leading edge sizes the size of sewer pipes, the leading edge size is probably driven more in the kite rigid than aerodynamics.

Go back and you find a review of the 20 meter hellfish and it did quite well because it was so rigid and didn’t have to have a huge leading edge or a huge number of bridle attachments to achieve this.

So Toby’s dream of a higher performance 20m lei is I think entirely achievable.

If we go back 15 years ago I think we can get a good idea where aluula will have benefits and where there will need to be more work in design.

[ARK]

Sounds really interesting.

I wonder what it does to a 18 or 20 sqm kite...

thats a great point I should have asked about the larger sizes.

Hey Adrian, you're doing a great job with the podcasts, huge thanks! Next time it's about to get technical give us a shout here to draft some questions for you to ask

Sure that's a great idea. I'll do this ))) keep an eye out.

[foilholio]

A faster snappier redirect will translate into higher boost especially in light wind.

Yes and no, more exciting but not necessarily higher.

Also he says le diameter has been reduced on this first release already by 25%

Yes this will help.

I tested the kite. expanding on your opinion, the lightweight of the leading edge and struts moves the center of gravity further back from the leading edge

Exactly. The balance improves

I had a chat with someone from industry lately...and the hope is that lighter materials will lead to a better performance similar like a foil kite.

In some regards yes. Many of the better attributes of a foil kite can be put to better balance and being lighter, though they are not everything they are certainly some important ones. You however are not going to even approach the performance of a high AR race foil kite by just taking a wave tube and making it light. This is a silly thing to think. Sailplanes and jets are very different.

The regular roam has a fairly large leading edge by design I assume to keep it back in the window for drift.

This is an incredible stupid way to solve this problem. You entirely ruin a kite so it can keep line tension. Then also you ruin it if it loses line tension...

So just because you can have a smaller diameter leading edge, doesn’t mean you should. It depends on how you want the kite to fly.

So the principles of flight are quite simple, high lift, low drag and weight. The larger tube diameter offers no benefit on any of those. So to declare that a tube size is for some benefit of flight is incredibly stupid, but then apparently so are most kite designers...hence we have chicken loops. Tubes however are structural and diameter is a structural principal.

I am surprised as yet why more elaborate bridling with an extremely thin tube hasn't been done. Ozone started with something towards that but not really explored fully. I guess having looked at the idiotic efforts to bridle tube kites this is beyond the stupid kite designer.

So Toby’s dream of a higher performance 20m lei is I think entirely achievable.

Toby's dream of a higher performing 20m KITE is already available. You just need a mind that is lets say a little more flexible than that which is susceptible to the standard marketing strategy the "brands" play.

If we go back 15 years ago I think we can get a good idea where aluula will have benefits and where there will need to be more work in design.

Definitely, 10g/m2 single skin kites that fly in half a knot. Such a kite would pratically never fall out of the air wave kiting, always flying to the wind or opposite. Or the same double skin foil kite, where it weighs so little now when the sun heats it it has positive static lift like a hotair balloon or the fabled "helium" kite.

Dont think material advances solely benefit tubes over foils. For certain tubes will get the most benefit. This is because lower weight to benefit is logarithmic, benefit gained decreases with more weight lost.

[pikovsg]

I loved and always promoted the idea of less weight and more rigidity. Aluula hopefully is that kite, but for over 5-6 years we've already had a much lighter, cheaper and faster turning kite - the BRM Cloud.

10m Aluula - 5.1lbs
10m Cloud - 4.3lbs

A pound lighter. Based on review vids, a good bit faster turning and drifting too. Clouds are almost religiously loved by pretty much every non-race foiler out there, including myself. Yet mainstream reviews for Clouds barely exist, outside of this forum. I don't mean to bark on Aluula at all or turn the discussion to the Clouds. Quite the opposite - major hopes for OR and will be first in line to demo it. It just seems strange that how much hype is going to Aluula tech vs. something we've had for years that's proven to work.

[foilholio]

Certainly and then we also have the Peak4 which is steadily gathering a following,

11m 3.2lb

but 10 cloud would more compare to a 8m I think at 2.5lb

and then there is a variety of foil kites at near or less than clouds.

Those kites are different to inflatables and so too is the cloud in some ways. I would like they just smash the concept out and go strutless Aluula straight up. Diminishing returns for weight loss and a market largely served either through Cloud or something like Peak 4 sees maybe it is not best to go that route. I mean people already convinced to the benefits of a lighter kite have gone to these concepts in spite of any negatives. They are a small market and may not be swayed enough to buy an Aluula strutless. I mean against a foil kite or peak4 you still need to pump it and against the peak 4 it won't be anywhere near as durable, as single skins a practically indestructible. To offer a regular kite that is better and near to the weight benefits of these other kites seems a good idea. It brings a bigger market and likely when people feel the benefit of this lighter kite they will only want this type of kite and so you will gain from that larger market more.

From a pure cost benefit I would stick to something from Pansh. Maybe even try to get them to make an ultra ultra light kite, given how cheap they are.

[iriejohn]

Don’t forget that with Aluula we also get a very strong kite that holds crashes.
Drop a Cloud on a rock and see what happens.

I know there are good performing 20 Sqm kites, but safety wise I prefer a tube over a foil.
And I am not alone.