How short lines on 10m FS Soul (gen1)?

[MartinO]

I bought a Flysurfer Soul 10m about a year ago and since I am new with foil kites (been kiting with LEI:s only since 2001) I have only used it when I have a lot of room to launch. This means not at home for me, since all my home spots are very tight with trees and stones/rocks around you in the launch area. I now start to get better at doing controlled launches and I want to start using the Soul at my main home spot. To be able to do that I need to go as short as possible with lines. The 20m lines that I currently have basically doesn´t fit the spot, or atleast they make things VERY tricky since I cannot lay the lines out without having to climb over rocks and high thick grass and also have pass the lines through and over those rocks and the high grass to launch. It feels like only a matter of time before something goes really wrong. What´s your take on how short lines the Soul 10m can handle? I have a 10m lineset that I can try, but the spot is not really a place where you want to try things that turn out to not work since things can go very wrong very fast because of the close trees and rocks. I have been using LEI:s there for twenty years without issues, but with LEI:s I feel 100% comfortable and I know exactly what to do and not to do.

I have seen a guy on Youtube that uses 8m lines on a 6m Soul and that seems to work atleast. But I am guessing that the 10m will get stalled quite easily with shorter lines, but if it works, it will make it so much easier to launch the Soul in my home spot.

Anyone have some input?

[Ice101]

Guess it depends what you are using the kite for.

[MartinO]

Guess it depends what you are using the kite for.

Just general freeriding with both hydrofoil and twintip depending on wind strength. If the short line length reduces the power, well, I’ll just use the kite in stronger winds.

[edt]

10m is fine go for it. You don't want to go shorter than 10m because then it starts to pinch the kite too much

[thatwildtype]

What about 15m? Works for me on the 10m Soul. I do prefer 20m though, but have them shorter due to space constrains during launch and landing

[sflinux]

Drift launch?

[Adventure Logs]

I wouldn't go less 10/12m and remember to adjust your safety accordingly. She'll fly with short lines, the kite will feel more direct in steering as well. You'll lost some jump height and I can see you choking the kite easier. Should be interesting to see how it goes. The shortest I've flown my Souls on I think is 15m but now I'm averaging about 18m.

[MartinO]

Drift launch?

At the moment it´s not possible because of the amount of algaes and seaweed, but I will give that a try in springtime next year when there's normally are no weeds around. Hotlaunching is risky however, because of all the rocks on the bottom.

[MartinO]

Thanks a lot. I´ll give the 10m lineset a go then. I found a kit of 4m extensions too so then I have 10 and 14m lines without the need to buy something else. I tried to lay the kite out yesterday with 10m lines and they actually don´t feel that short with the Soul compared to when I tried them with a Naish Pivot, because of the long bridles on the Flysurfer. It barely fit the rigging area already with 10m so 14 will get a bit tricky space-wise, but better on the water. Still a lot better than the current 20m setup in terms of space needs.

[MartinO]

We had a windy weekend here so I tested some with line lengths and drift launching. Just to report, 10m was surprisingly neutral in feel. No problem what so ever in air. Like expected it didn´t feel nearly as extremely short like the same 10m on a LEI because of both the bridle length that adds quite a bit of total length and the more centered line connection to the kite. In air the kite felt big and close visually, but in terms of flying it was behaving as good as ever. With 4m extensions, so 14m lines, it started to feel close to a 18m line setup with a LEI kite, so it actually didn´t feel like a short line setup anymore. With 14m both the pop timing the bottom end was almost the same as with my main 18m line bar, but it also took up a bit too much space to fit the rigging area of my spot. A 12 m lineset would probably be a nice sweetspot with a compact footprint and close to full line length feel in the air.

Drift launching was surprisingly easy I must say. The initial impression when I rolled the kite up was "this is going to be a total mess and a night of untangling", but the kite just stick to the water while drifting and laying it out and it sorted it self out impressively ones it got under tension. I actually went to a spot where I so far only have windsurfed and the rigging area is about 3x4m and with a compact treeline all along the shore so it´s totally impossible to even pump a kite up and even less so lay a foil kite out. I cannot even fit the kite anywhere without lines. But now I just took the Soul, walked and swam out 30m maybe and did a drift launch. This opens up some nice possibilities around here to kite where the wind is good, but there is no way to get a rigged kite out through the treeline to the water.