I have been testing out the Reach for about a week now. I am pretty impressed with it so far. I have 7m and 9m and have been mainly foiling with them. The first thing I noticed is how light and nimble they feel in the sky. The bar pressure is really nice. Light but not too light. You still get decent pullback from the kite in turns. I found that I could fly them pretty much blind immediately. The stability at the zenith is really good. The kite sits at 12 without trying to stall over me, even in really light winds. It also does not drop to one side very fast. I had an incident where I almost lost my watch, and had to dive for it with the kite at 12 and the kite was still over me after I came back up after at least 20 seconds. I was expecting the kite to have dropped to one side of the window.
Regarding the Bar. I for one like the finger bars the way they are. They are comfortable in my hands. The bar is also just very clean. The safety line being inside the depower line is great and I don't shred my fingers on it. The Click In Release works really well and I love that I can change out the loop without tools.
And as a foiler the coolest thing I found is that the Kite Bag has a hard grooved patch on the shoulder strap to protect your shoulder when you are carrying your assembled foil to the beach. It shows me a real foiler is involved in the bag design
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Gunnar
Hi Gunnar, have you had a chance to try also the Carve for foiling? I've tried an 8m the other day and really liked it, but wondering if the Reach is maybe even better?!
Anyone else?
I have been testing out the Reach for about a week now. I am pretty impressed with it so far. I have 7m and 9m and have been mainly foiling with them. The first thing I noticed is how light and nimble they feel in the sky. The bar pressure is really nice. Light but not too light. You still get decent pullback from the kite in turns. I found that I could fly them pretty much blind immediately. The stability at the zenith is really good. The kite sits at 12 without trying to stall over me, even in really light winds. It also does not drop to one side very fast. I had an incident where I almost lost my watch, and had to dive for it with the kite at 12 and the kite was still over me after I came back up after at least 20 seconds. I was expecting the kite to have dropped to one side of the window.
Regarding the Bar. I for one like the finger bars the way they are. They are comfortable in my hands. The bar is also just very clean. The safety line being inside the depower line is great and I don't shred my fingers on it. The Click In Release works really well and I love that I can change out the loop without tools.
And as a foiler the coolest thing I found is that the Kite Bag has a hard grooved patch on the shoulder strap to protect your shoulder when you are carrying your assembled foil to the beach. It shows me a real foiler is involved in the bag design
--
Gunnar
Hi Gunnar, have you had a chance to try also the Carve for foiling? I've tried an 8m the other day and really liked it, but wondering if the Reach is maybe even better?!
Anyone else?
I have been testing out the Reach for about a week now. I am pretty impressed with it so far. I have 7m and 9m and have been mainly foiling with them. The first thing I noticed is how light and nimble they feel in the sky. The bar pressure is really nice. Light but not too light. You still get decent pullback from the kite in turns. I found that I could fly them pretty much blind immediately. The stability at the zenith is really good. The kite sits at 12 without trying to stall over me, even in really light winds. It also does not drop to one side very fast. I had an incident where I almost lost my watch, and had to dive for it with the kite at 12 and the kite was still over me after I came back up after at least 20 seconds. I was expecting the kite to have dropped to one side of the window.
Regarding the Bar. I for one like the finger bars the way they are. They are comfortable in my hands. The bar is also just very clean. The safety line being inside the depower line is great and I don't shred my fingers on it. The Click In Release works really well and I love that I can change out the loop without tools.
And as a foiler the coolest thing I found is that the Kite Bag has a hard grooved patch on the shoulder strap to protect your shoulder when you are carrying your assembled foil to the beach. It shows me a real foiler is involved in the bag design
--
Gunnar
Hi Gunnar, have you had a chance to try also the Carve for foiling? I've tried an 8m the other day and really liked it, but wondering if the Reach is maybe even better?!
Anyone else?
Hi, I've ridden the Carve quite a lot for foiling and agreed it's a nice foil kite. The Reach is a lighter build than the Carve so will be a little easier to manage at the bottom of the wind range, but of course this becomes less important with smaller kites. I was liking my 6 and 8m Carves for foiling last year, the Reach is of course the shiny new toy right now.
The 12m Reach is my new toy since Friday last week.
Had a nice day yesterday on our local thermical spot yesterday. Wind was 9-15 knots gusting up to 17. It was a blast riding the 12m. By far the best 12m I had in my hands. I unhooked, did catchend kiteloops with front and backroll combinations, ultra stable. Tried to stall it on the water but no chance. Very fine tuned. No back- and frontstall at all. It is really fast (faster than 12m 2019 bandits and that are really fast too). Perfect bar feeling. It is light and playful but you feel the kite everywhere in the wind window. It’s a feeling we’re you can put a kite on a inch you want it to be.
Hangtime is very very good. I expected less than the Orbit. I am not sure if it less. Had 9.2 meters in around 15 knots for the first session. That’s quite good. Friend of mine is a really good jumper and had on the new 13m Sonic 10.2 meter. I am a little stoked now
Next try is foil in ultra lightwind including relaunch.
The 12m Reach is my new toy since Friday last week.
Had a nice day yesterday on our local thermical spot yesterday. Wind was 9-15 knots gusting up to 17. It was a blast riding the 12m. By far the best 12m I had in my hands. I unhooked, did catchend kiteloops with front and backroll combinations, ultra stable. Tried to stall it on the water but no chance. Very fine tuned. No back- and frontstall at all. It is really fast (faster than 12m 2019 bandits and that are really fast too). Perfect bar feeling. It is light and playful but you feel the kite everywhere in the wind window. It’s a feeling we’re you can put a kite on a inch you want it to be.
Hangtime is very very good. I expected less than the Orbit. I am not sure if it less. Had 9.2 meters in around 15 knots for the first session. That’s quite good. Friend of mine is a really good jumper and had on the new 13m Sonic 10.2 meter. I am a little stoked now
Next try is foil in ultra lightwind including relaunch.
Thanks for your commets. In terms of bar feeling, it's close to C bar feeling? Like Dice? Or more like Evo?
So I spent an hour on a 12m Reach foiling today. Moses 633/438 on 75cm mast, wind 10-15mph. Disclaimer I am a beginner with the foil and have been learning on an XR 9m since the 12m all ways ends up over powered.
Ok my take is this it is a good kite to foil with. It drifts really well. I was able to keep it drifting with barely any tension in the lines and just pumping the board. I did try my hardest to fully backstall the kite. I was all most able to get it to fall out of the sky but all I had to do was some minor changes to my tack angle and a little pumping of the bar and the kite was able to work it's way back to the edge. I had not been able to turn on my foil with a downloop with my XR's. I was shocked how easy it was to do them with the Reach. I know this is not an apples to apples comparison here I get that. I really enjoyed the time I spent foiling with this kite. I think If I had been learning from the start with the Reach I would be a lot further a long in my progression. But I'm sure I could say that about any kite that foils better than the XR. XR's are good at what they do and for what they are.
I took some time to test the relaunch this time. The only difficulty I had was messing around with the flag out system because it has been so long since I actually used one. The kite had a little trouble working its way back around from being flagged out but I would say it was more the light wind and not a design problem. Relaunch was easy for such light wind. I did try to reverse launch but I found it hard to do using the North bar due to the plastic that is on the leader lines. Again I am not a fan of the bar.
Overall I am very impressed with this kite. I am pretty sure this will be my next quiver in a 7,9 and 12. I want to try the Nexus2 before I commit and will have a chance to demo it tomorrow and ride it and the Reach back to back.
