Unhooked foiling

[kit3surfer]

Hello,

I am just wondering if it is possible to ride entirely unhooked and if it makes sense?
I am especially thinking of riding unbroken swell unhooked. What do you think, any tips how to?

[jumptheshark]

It’s great, after years with no trim or chicken loop, I have a bar specifically for unhooking again. Have foiled unhooked with 5m and 7m Solo and 5m peak. Better on the peak, but great on tubes too. If you wanna fly the kite and try and go upwind it’s best in the lower half of the kites range. If you wanna drift the kite and surf downwind its better powered up. I see a lot more of it in my future.

[RichR2]

[kitenight11]

Lokks really nice and uncomplicated. But how do you have to trim your bar to riding the whole time completely powered - the kite willstall not? It should be better in depowerd mode - Long arms...

[jumptheshark]

Trim in to avoid stall. Mostly for playing around in one spot or carving downswell. Hook back in to make decent ground upwind.

[joriws]

I think Horst Sergio does it with less hassle bar trimmed properly and at full power just steering the kite..

[kitenight11]

Trim in to avoid stall. Mostly for playing around in one spot or carving downswell. Hook back in to make decent ground upwind.

How do I have to trim my kite to avoid stalling? I use slingshot bar and never did unhooked tricks or riding. Just unhooked once on the beach to see how kite behaves and kite did fall out of the sky...

[jumptheshark]

Sergio is flying downwind in that clip and still has to correct a stall now and then. The other guy is generally going downwind, but also sort of tooling around in place on a broader reach.

Bar trim is dependant somewhat on wind strength but mainly on what line wrt the wind you want to ride. For deep downwind wave riding you can have the kite more powered, for a broad reach or any kind of upwind line you will need to depower the kite. Even with peaks heading down wind, the goal is to have the kite just drift light in your hand. Powered up it will be pulling. Again, different in 10 knots than 15. As seen in both clips. You can recover the kite from a stall when it happens (kite gets too deep in the window) by pulling on the chicken loop. With some skill you can keep your relative position to the kite wrt the wind window workable without having to do any pulling on the front lines, but it takes a little practice and dictates your line. You really need to understand the basic dynamics of trimming for unhooking and riding that way before you try it foiling. Playing around with trim unhooked on wide open beaches or on snow is where to start. For those already skilled at unhooking, it’s not very hard to do foiling. I have 4 bars for foiling and "can" unhook on all of them, but only the one on the peak 5 and the chicken loop set up have trim cleats. IMHO you really need that cleat to have any fun unhooking.

* related, but not unhooking per say * The SS bar without CL is a light wind dedicated bar, longer lines, no cleat, set to full power without back stall. I ride that on a longer tether to the harness so at comfy arms length for working the kite in loops it is at full power, bar sheeted all the way in resting against the red release, more or less like being unhooked, the kite working as a static non depower kite. Definitely easier to waterstart on the low end when you have full power pre set and can't oversheet. Once up and riding there is plenty of depower in easy reach. Highly recommend this for maxing the low end fun on your Peak4.

I have swapped the board riding maui style push ball releases for these cabrinha mushroom cap push releases as they are much easier to hold onto unhooked and they prevent the pin from damaging the bar. Can unhook and generally hook back in with these while riding but it takes two hands and a table enough kite that you can let go of for a few seconds at a time. The stripped down chicken loop bar is much easier for unhooking in more demanding conditions.

[joekitetime]

I started winging a couple of weeks ago, and have been logging average 2 hr sessions daily. On Friday I rode in strong winds, low to mid 30s. Yesterday I did double 2 hr session. Admittedly I am a bit sore today.

But haven't donned a harness in 2 weeks...

[jumptheshark]

Time to change your username!~