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Closed cell foil handling in light wind

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Slappysan
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Re: Closed cell foil handling in light wind

Postby Slappysan » Thu Apr 21, 2022 7:01 pm

nothing2seehere wrote:
Thu Apr 21, 2022 2:50 pm
(I'm talking 9-10knots average with maybe 6-7 knot lulls)
Sounds to me like you just need to be downlooping the kite to ensure you keep control.

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Re: Closed cell foil handling in light wind

Postby nothing2seehere » Fri Apr 22, 2022 10:34 am

Slappysan wrote:
Thu Apr 21, 2022 7:01 pm
nothing2seehere wrote:
Thu Apr 21, 2022 2:50 pm
(I'm talking 9-10knots average with maybe 6-7 knot lulls)
Sounds to me like you just need to be downlooping the kite to ensure you keep control.
Possibly? The question is how do you know when to downloop though (bearing in mind I'm often carrying a hydrofoil at the same time). My general experience is that when an LEI stalls it maintains shape so you can downloop to recover. When a soft kite stalls it loses all shape so a downloop is too late for recovery

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Re: Closed cell foil handling in light wind

Postby Herman » Fri Apr 22, 2022 11:37 am

If the kite is starting to luff it is usually the bottom tip that starts to back wind first and so you do have a little time to react before the curtain falls. Trouble is in these circumstances there is usually very little tension in the bottom line and so you don’t get much feedback from bar feel. Experience helps but if it is shifty as well as gusty………

Edt: I agree with generally not down looping. Sometimes I might twist the bar to get a little more sheet in from the horns or occasionally pull the leaders! Also liked edt’s busy hands approach!
Last edited by Herman on Fri Apr 22, 2022 2:13 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Closed cell foil handling in light wind

Postby Nelis » Fri Apr 22, 2022 12:32 pm

jakemoore wrote:
Thu Apr 21, 2022 6:13 pm

The recovery characteristic of the kite can be tuned with the PMA. I like to think of the PMA as affecting how the kite behaves with the bridle lines slack and the mixer affecting how the kite behaves with the bridle lines tight. You might try with one or all of the top skin PMA shortened by one knot. However I would mess with the PMA only after all other other options are completely exhausted. First practice with a salt free kite and tune line length and mixer.
I've done research on this past week on this forum, and came across some of your (Jake) posts as well. I found this post from Armin interesting as well: viewtopic.php?f=197&t=2399061&p=1033088 ... a#p1033088

Based on that research I did a long mixertest on my Soul 10m V1 and shortened three top sail PMAs in the wingtips, so 6 out of 10 in total. Turned out my mixer was out of tune too by the way.

My goal is to reduce overflying for example when I mess up a tack, and be able to practice moves and crash on the HF with less worry of a bowtie. Because I had the mother of all bowties just the other week which completely destroyed my confidence in the kite. It was around 10-11kts. Self rescued with a lot of water intake within just a few minutes. I still don't understand the marketing and bullshit claims of these kites being able to relaunch even in 20minutes on the water. It's just not true.

I still need to test the adjustments, will do asap and report back.

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Re: Closed cell foil handling in light wind

Postby Schietwedder » Fri Apr 22, 2022 12:55 pm

Downloop is the last thing I want to do with a large foilkite drifting in the water at light winds possibly letting the kite overshoot even more when gaining pull from the loop as well as trying to carry the foilboard 50m downwind with a lit of pull from the kite.

Other than for a tube kite a regain of line tension makes the kite steerable again in both directions as it's so light and there is no need for a loop.

Mostly the kite collapses but travels downwind and a regain of line tension before touching down brings it into the centre of the wind window anyways.
When parking overhead though the risk is bigger that the kite overshoots, frontstalls and flies against the wind even more behind your head until fully inverting. This usually ends with a packdown or at least furl in the lines until the kite untwisting it again in very light wind.
In more wind when it's just gusty with big lulls flying the curled up inverted kite several times onto the water surface onto leading or trailing edge helps to untwist the canopy but generally requires 10knots of wind or so at water level.
Sometimes when almost all hope for relaunch is lost releasing the kite onto the single front line safety and assembling again might help as its worth a try before swimming in.

When flying in gusty/light winds,
keeping load and speed on the kite as much as possible, meaning swimming as few as possible without tension on the lines.
Backstalling/braking the kite. Not fly it directly above your head in gusts. At 45° keeping tension on the upper steering line.
If swimming having the board already at your feet flying figure 8 although it might be to light for a waterstart at that time waiting for a gust to come but already have tension the whole time.
You might loose some height but that is quickly regained once up on foil.
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Re: Closed cell foil handling in light wind

Postby Jyoder » Fri Apr 22, 2022 1:22 pm

Foil kites are most unstable when the kite is perpendicular to the ground, especially when you are static and don’t have apparent wind. If you crash and the kite ends up sweeping across the window and ending up at the edge and starts to luff and maybe the bottom wingtip starts to curl in a lull, you have two options:

1. Very aggressively sheet in and stall turn the kite hard back into the window. If kite is stalling backwards, this is actually a good thing for stability in a bad lull. The wingtips will open as it nears the water. You may need to turn hard left and right with bar sheeted in to clear any minor tangled at tips and fully open the wingtips.

Or,

2. Sheet out all the way and very very gently pull top steering line, often by reaching the float or above the bar, and slowly slowly steer the kite back toward 12 o’clock. This works better for lighter kites than big Soul.

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Re: Closed cell foil handling in light wind

Postby jakemoore » Fri Apr 22, 2022 2:33 pm

Nelis wrote:
Fri Apr 22, 2022 12:32 pm
It was around 10-11kts. Self rescued with a lot of water intake within just a few minutes. I still don't understand the marketing and bullshit claims of these kites being able to relaunch even in 20minutes on the water. It's just not true.
10-11 knots is easy relaunch territory unless big waves are crashing over the kite, a strong current reduces the effective wind, or a wind gradient with no wind on the water level. The first thing is not to freak out and pull water into the kite.

If the water is calm as it should be in 10-11 knots you can go to the kite, reset it without the bowtie and drift launch. Watch some Horst Sergio videos where he does the drift launch.

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Re: Closed cell foil handling in light wind

Postby nothing2seehere » Fri Apr 22, 2022 2:58 pm

Thanks. It sounds like more lightwind practice will be the key and I'm not doing anything fundamentally wrong except I'm just reacting a little late as I haven't built up the skills yet.

As noted. Relaunch isn't so much of a worry (I did choose to packdown last session as I was only 20-30m away from standing depth and I was close to where I wanted to leave the water rather than drifting down the bay) but its the getting it dry again afterwards that's a pig. I may try and flush the kite at some point to see if that helps.

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Re: Closed cell foil handling in light wind

Postby Slappysan » Fri Apr 22, 2022 6:54 pm

nothing2seehere wrote:
Fri Apr 22, 2022 10:34 am
Possibly? The question is how do you know when to downloop though (bearing in mind I'm often carrying a hydrofoil at the same time). My general experience is that when an LEI stalls it maintains shape so you can downloop to recover. When a soft kite stalls it loses all shape so a downloop is too late for recovery
You've got the wrong mindset, you can't be waiting for your kite to stall and then recover. If the wind is that light or that shifty you have to be actively flying your kite or you give up control to the wind. So if it's light enough that you can downloop as you walk with your foil in your hands without it pulling you too much then you should probably be doing it.

I've never flown a Soul though, but have plenty of experience flying Peak 4's in 3 knots and LEI kites in 5 knots.

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Re: Closed cell foil handling in light wind

Postby Nelis » Fri Apr 29, 2022 10:43 am

I promised to report back;

As said, I did a long mixer tune as per Flysurfer instructions. I found the A and Z way off in the short mixer test, so made sure I used the 'two stakes' method to find the right orientation to line-up C and B to. They were definitely in need of adjustment. Shortened the three wing tip upper sheet PMA's (6 out of 10 total in the kite) so put it in 'more stability' mode.

I rode this in 10kts on the hydrofoil, with strong current in the same direction of the wind. I would classify this as the lowest as I would want to go with this setup (3'6 Micro Dwarfcraft, Levitaz Cruizer, 17m lines) and it now was very confidence inspiring again. Meaning good acceleration in the kite, rock solid overhead, good response to sheeting, oversheet etc. My session was fun again ;-) I am going to keep it in this trim, as these conditions is where I use the kite mostly in.
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