I´m working on a single skin as well. Will be sewn next winter for snowkiting season.
Yes, its easier to sew, easier to change once finished (which is quite important when doing prototypes, but more laboriuos to design at least with SP, maybe Paratailor/Single skin work better, I will give them a try as well before I print patterns, see what program is best to draw what I have in mind so I don´t have to do so much manual work.
Some Lessons learned with the 12m Foil:
After 4th time packing or so when i wanted to show it to some kiters on m local beach, already some glass fiber leading edge battens had snapped in two or cut through the end of their pockets, although I had reinforced them double with extra thick Dacron. They have to have quite a lot of tension to follow the form of the nose radius.
Maybe it has to be packed like a paraglider wing as well, but the cutting trough the pockets and breaking can also occur when crashing on the leading edge, which should not but can happen with a freeride foil.
I removed all battens now, and will test how the kite works without.
All the battens saved me 350g of weight at least.
I ordered some Nylon battens today, that are used in paragliders, from Kontest GmbH, a service Company for PG wings in North Germany. They are also used in most flysurfers and ozones. I hope its Nylon 6.6 which has better Spring Capacity and durability than Nylon 6
Then I can compare how the wing works with GF battens (not very practical but really nice tension and shape of the LE), without (light), and with nylon battens (not so much tension, but they dont break)
Here is an article in German about battens in PG wings, for kite design the aspects of dynamics in collapse situations maybe are not so important, but on A line positions, performance and stability in lulls there is some effect. I will see once I try the kite without. The 12m has the A lines on 10% chord which is quite standard. It could be a bit more backwards with stiff battens, maybe its a bit too far backwards without battens, and maybe a good position with the nylon rods, we will see. (Hard to tell though without other protos, or more connection points, on A and B at least. (Most Protos have couple of connection possibilities built in for good reason, I was too lazy though-or too stupid)
https://www.dhv.de/fileadmin/user_uploa ... ebchen.pdf