Bye Soul, hi UFO or Alpha maybe?

[JZB]

230 lbs

I sold my Soul 12 and 15 and took a chance on the DLab Juice 13. No sense in repeating the previous comments. Part of the change was due to spending more time winging than kite foiling and surfing. I had a full quiver of Souls and Neos and surf boards and foil boards (race and lite air floater). So I decided to simplify my life. I have Neo a 8 - 10 m and the 13 DLab. One kite board the Naish Combo Surf and Foil board. When it's a good wave day I Kitesurf and too lite to Wing I kite foil. The 13 m works great up to mid 20s kiting and a foiling low end of maybe 10-12 mph at my weight. Once had a single strut Airrush had amazing low end but was a mess in 20 plus so I had to have 2× 12 m LEIs.

Conclusions so far
> Dlab does not have grunt of 15 but flies fast and makes up for some of low down pull
>Much better high end than 15
>Upwind don't notice any difference
>Jybing low wind nothing in the kite to hold you up gotta loop
>Don't let kite back stall to water dump it Leading edge down then relaunch on gust. Kite tomb stones and no relaunch.
>Might miss some low low end foiling but then miss bow ties and swims. Tradeoffs... and if the wind is dying what's the difference?
>More care free less worries
>So far like having just 1 wing 1 kitesurf foil board and foil set up.
>Travel is super easy.

Don't think I am missing much opportunity with my set up and I am not racing just cruising

[nothing2seehere]

Not sure it you are trolling but I'd almost pay money to see someone reverse launch a trailing edge down LEI!

Seen it happen by accident a few times to foil kites when people are learning self landing and it normally results in a birds nest of lines to sort out.

No joking, or I'm not understanding your situation very well.

TE on water in light wind, you just wait for the kite reach the power zone, right downwind of you, and hot launch it by pulling the front lines together. Reverse launch makes no sense in this case as the kite is already pointing in the right direction. Usually, piece of cake to relaunch.

That's the situation. In real life what you find is the canopy sinks under the water and only the leading edge floats because you can't get enough line tension to keep it above the water and there isn't enough float to keep the canopy above the water. Once the canopy is flooded like that your only option is to wrap the lines and swim. If you are a long way out you can try and roll the kite over so its leading edge down and then unroll the lines. If you kite near the beach its sometimes better to self rescue back to the beach.

If you have a sand bank to stand on, give it a try. Even stood on firm ground, the weight of the water gets too heavy very quickly to relaunch when the canopy is covered trailing edge down. As I said, its a light wind problem. Once you get 15 knots or so, the kite doesn't sit long enough to sink and hot launches quickly. In 10-11 knots, it happens.

[Nelis]

I have a quiver of souls. Had the same challenges when learning to gybe. It seemed every time I tried my kite was behind me, slack lines, and dropped out of the sky. I think for 6 months every session i swam more than I kited.

weird... are you saying you're front stalling a foil kite? It's not a simple task...

It is super easy to "front stall" any kite when doing a jibe:
Only move the board in the new direction when jibing but not the kite.
I think the hard thing when jibing is that the kite timing changes with wind speed.
In general it goes like this:
1) in high winds the board goes first, then the kite
2) in medium winds both go about at the same time
3) in low winds the kite must go first and in very low winds it must also be looped

If you don't adhere to 3 you remove all tension from the lines with the jibe and the kite cannot be steered and will continue to go behind/upwind of you until it stalls.
I am reasonably sure that is what Aspiremr is describing.

Something like this got me into trouble a few times; actually the event which made me start this topic. As said I'm practicing to progress my footswitches, when switching from my heelside regular 'good' leg in front to toeside goofy 'bad' leg in front, sometimes to weight balance is not quite right, too much over my heels initially. In that case I'm racing downwind towards the kite, with not so much I can do about it exept 'abandon ship' asap.

I got a glorious 1,5hr session in on friday evening at 10-12kts on the Soul 10, and that happened again. But actually due to changing my mindset because of some comments in this topic, I had a couple of near-misses but avoided disaster. I focused more on enjoying being the only one out in beautiful weather after work and was being a bit safer on what moves I would practice. The Soul is staying.

Saturday I bought a green 8m Alpha V2, which I could get a very nice deal on. So I plan on doing the crash & burn practice sessions with repetitive falling and taking risks with that kite and 12kts+. Soooo to get back to the topic title; Hi Soul, Hi Alpha. Seems more gear is once again the answer for now. What a surprise.

There wasn't any wind in the weekend any more so went to work making a gorgeous minimalistic 45cm bar with 17m lines for it, with rope-based flag out, BTB clamcleat, new sk99 1.6mm powerlines and the Infexion QR interface. Did I mention more gear is the answer? I'll post a picture of kite and bar when I have the chance. Looking forward to test it VERY MUCH.

[Nelis]

Ok,

I ride both, Ultra 9 and Soul. Soul10 does bow tie, than its the end.

But, Soul can also float for 20-40mins no problem at all. And can relounch when the wind picks up. Reverse launch or hot one.

I don't understand how it can ever be relaunchable after that amount of time.

Mine was laying like a taco, so i was waiting on the upper tip to flip up and catch wind, but there was a couple of liter water in that upper wingtip within 3 minutes. Was not going anywhere, so self-resue decision had to be made within 5 mins.

[Nelis]

weird... are you saying you're front stalling a foil kite? It's not a simple task...

Soul's really have a tendency to overfly a little bit but the wind quickly blows the kite back to a more neutral position in the sky. If you're having a strong overfly tendency you can easily correct by trimming the kite or, if the last case, check your bridle (mixer test).

In very light wind these kites don't like to be sheeted in too much. You must fly them with some finesse and let them "breathe" (fly) freely. If you sheet in too much, it'll start to back stall. Sometimes it's desired since it produces a ton of pull when you back stall the kite and let it fly back to zenith (a water start technique for very light wind).

For gybes (in very light wind) it's easier to use downloops. Start with the kite at zenith, sheet in to produce some line tension and pull it hardly with the front hand. You can even pull straight from the lines to make the kite react faster (good for bigger sizes).

Good advice here.

Since my main use of the Soul is foil @ 10-12kts, I've adjusted the three outer PMA's (so 6 in total) in the wingtips one knot tighter in the top sail (black sail not on the rider's side). This influences the profile with unloaded bridle, counteracting wingtip fold and allowing the kite to float back into wind window better when overflown. I like this a lot so far.

Edit/ posted few photos of the bar in the Gear Builder section. viewtopic.php?f=107&t=2411390&p=1172218#top

[neokruncher]

I have the soul 6,8,10, the UFO 3,5,7,9, and Alpha 8,10,12.
It goes without saying that they are all very different with relative strengths.

A summary of my findings:

Soul - best option under 12kts, best tacking performance for intermediate person given lift at top of window. Relatively slow, relatively less suited for quick turns in swell and waves. Overall - best for flat water low wind mowing the lawn.

UFO - best option 12 - 20. 7m works well down to 12kts. 9m is a pig and only get you maybe another 3 kts. MUCH faster kite than soul and behaves like a wave kite. Can pivot deep in the window for snappy turns without down loop. Low aspect grunt means that 95% of time you can get up without looping it and still not be over powered once you are up. Sensitive to line slack steering but a little turn upwind becomes habit. Packs super small - I get all 4 kites in a single soul 12 bag. 3m > 20 is super fun! Doesn't flap like the larger ones when over powered (they don't flap in normal range) - don't need strutless in strong wind, but if only foiling packability is great. Relaunch is easy. Upturned tips catch wind so can dump water if canopy collapses. Only downside is the turned up tips make self landing slightly trickier as need sand on top to stay put - overall I use it exclusively for foiling and am selling my Souls as I find them relatively finicky and slow and hassle swimming.

ALPHA - a great overall kite for travel as it does a lot of what the UFO does foiling (not as well in low wind) but also can be used in waves and even twin tip. Faster than UFO in larger sizes - overall best one kite quiver for travel if space is tight. I love the kite but if not travelling neither here nor there.

If I was starting from scratch I would get a 5 and 7 UFO for foiling 12-20, and a couple wave kites for surf 15-30. Whole kit would fit in a bag.

[Jyoder]

6m Soul is a wonder-kite. Huge range and pairs really well with small fast foil. Small enough it doesn’t bow tie and has been 100% relaunchable for me.

I wish they made a 4m!

[SolarSet]

number of people that jump on soul/foil kites boat from all this hype 3-4 years ago now realising that awesome foil kite performance comes with a price that is too difficult to pay...
The old saying is if something works and it is simple its better to keep it that way instead going such a lengths over-engineer something for marginal gains. Kitesurfing is not a discipline of building spaceships where every gram matters.
With my soul 15m I would have like 9 awesome sessions in low wind with my TT and then one that would end up with bowtie or kite drinking so much water that I couldn't restart it and that previous 9 awesome session wouldn't matter. If I kept it probably ratio would be 20:1 of awesome vs bad sessions but who has time for this?