downunder wrote: ↑Sun Jul 05, 2020 2:29 pm
Jimmi Petrov wrote: ↑Fri Jul 03, 2020 7:08 pm
Hi, Colin.
We met year and a half ago on Flag Beach ( Bulgarian guy) and I missed you this New Year on the Flag
I had almost same path with foil kites like you.
Hyperlink V1- 9 and 12 m. They were terrible for water relaunch( I often kite in irregular winds). 5 min in the water and they were both full of water. Later I tried HL V2 and it was little bit better, but not much.
Then i got Soul 15. Amazing. I had a case when I spent 50 min with kite in the water and with first puff i relaunched it. My friends can’t believe.
I
got 6,and 10 and used them for an year. All my Souls are super stable and give you huge confidence even in bad winds, as I know they will always relaunch. Zero swims in an year.
I had 2 problems with Souls - they have a lot of grunt( sit little deep in wind window) and when overpowered the downloop after the jibe was too violent. This limits the usefull range of the kite, as even you can depower and ride comfortable, you know you will explode after jibe foot change and down loop. You can try to minimise this, fully powering the kite just before the jibe and realy crank the kiteloop, but in realy overpowered condissions it doesnt helps.
This winter i got Sonic 3 and it is the best kite I ever flown.
Very sporty, goes upwind like hell, endless depower( you can’t believe what range the 9 has), fully controlable loops, enormous low end, jumps higher and loftier than Soul. It’s build by same material as Soul and relaunching is excelent. In my oppinion this is by far the best freeride foil kite on the market now. If you can, try 9 and/or 11. I sold my 10 and 15 Souls and kept only 6 for higher winds. Now my go on the water kite is Sonic 9. I use 11 only bellow 8 knots.
Cheers
Well,
Sorry to burst your bubble, but everyone on the beach yesterday could see 2 Souls, one 10 and one 15, took more water than there is water in the Ocean
I was on 10.
It is not that it does not relaunch. It does. Only when it does not. And that is when the line tension is gone, bow tie, drops, folds completely and stays like that for some time.
This happens to any foil tho.
As the result, 4 people needed to bring 15m out, with 500L or more water, dragging over sandy shallows.
Mine felt like 100-200L. 2 people needed to be safe and not rip the panels etc.
So, there u go. Sh.t happens. It happend with Ozone too.
PS
I also think my R1 shoots at least 10-15 degrees more than Soul on TT. It is 11m tho.
accepted and so true,
its a fact and one of the downsides of any foil kite, for this reason alone I will be so careful and weigh up the safety risks and possible outcomes of my behaviour when out at flag beach,
with luck the safety rescue boat will be on point every day, and my super wife will be on the beach with binoculars, and I always carry a pack of pains wessex mini rocket flares in a phone pouch to alert the rescue and super wife, small phone in pouch is also a main requirement.
if I did not have either the rescue boat or my lookout, then maybe I would stay inshore and avoid the more risky areas, and/or use a lei kite with a more floaty board.
In 3 years of going to flag beach for long holidays I have yet to call for rescue when using my foil kites, near 2 years now,
and have only dropped my foil kite once, inshore, and re launched within 5mins,
foil kiters have come back in on the boat, quite a few actually with race kites, who were pushing the low wind limits,
and a few free ride foilers who needed a lift back to shore, so I have been lucky, and careful. but s**t happens.
at least the soul probably has the largest margin of successful relaunches, and the simple "kite down mistakes" that happen the most are so easy to relaunch from on the soul.
the main thing that keeps my drop rate so low at flag is I can tell if the wind is about to fall light, it's a bit of a trick there, spotting the boats on anchor over near the island turning their bows towards the island signals a wind shadow about to descend over the Flag beach area, you only get around five or ten minutes to get out of the water before all kites fall from the sky, happens so often, Gunnar gave me this invaluable information a few years back.
I often rushed ashore with a few others who knew why I was going for the beach fast and straight,
its then when you look back out to sea and watch the kites drop one by one and you can spot the sad faces of the guys who avoided paying the rescue fees,
they then have to pay big cash for the one off rescue.