Too stiff wings?

[Peter_Frank]

From the Duotone Unit DLab video, some testers said they found it was too stiff when low wind.

And letting some air out to make it softer made it have better pumping characteristics for low wind, they said.

Interesting, if so, the Aluula and similar is incredibly stiff.

BUT, it could also be, that the riders are used to pumping with softer wings (all other wings, even if pumped up hard), so their timing is off?

What do you users say about this?

I have a hard time believing this, as in my experience, and it goes for everything with no exception, stiffer means better and better power transformation without loss.
Soft is bad on all sailing craft, except for overpowered and ability to keep control and good aoa in gusts, but for low end and power, bad.
We probably all know, if we either have pumped our wing too soft, or have a puncture - it is absolutely impossible to start, not before hugely overpowered - as it spills out any pump attempt instead of converting to speed and lift
For low end, our "normal" wings should be pumped dead hard, we all know that.

Thats why it could also be experienced wingers not being able to change their habits to an even stiffer wing?

Or am I wrong here, and CAN a wing be too stiff for low end pumping?

Maybe a totally new set of dynamics get into the picture, above a certain stiffness - so not the same as we are used to.

Peter

[leepasty]

Defo technique
On the new Unit and especially the dlab you need to do short pumps.
I think the ones say too stiff are used to the flex in others wings where you do big pumps or even a circle motion.

[Foxi]

Hello Peter,

if I compare to a windsurfing rigg:

Replacing an alu mast by a similar stiff carbon mast usually improves the performance of a rigg as the flex characteristics of carbon are superior to alu unquestioned.
Weight savings being an add on (or part of the flex speed) and most sails are designed on the characteristics of the premium material anyway.

My take in this DLAB case is, that Aluula material simply replaces dacron based materials in an absolutely identical shape, makes the wing frame lighter and stiffer, but does cut off
the flex support dacron had in the original design. Therefore it makes sense, that testers partly arose the logic question why Duotone didn´t reduce the diameter of its DLAB units.
Releasing air is counterproductive in a sense that one big asset of Aluula - its stiffness - is simply given away to make it kind of dacron elastic. Like the design was built for.

I guess Duotone wanted to build a "premium Unit" issue as they do with their Team Edition boardwise, but at the end to utilise Aluula benefits in full scope, they needed an extra model to bring up.

[ronnie]

I'm going by the text translation, but it seemed to suggest they were saying that the lower pressure meant that people with less skill would get better results when pumping. They seemed to be saying that higher pressure required higher skill to get the best results?
It didn't seem to be saying that the higher pressure was less efficient.

[Foxi]

I'm going by the text translation, but it seemed to suggest they were saying that the lower pressure meant that people with less skill would get better results when pumping. They seemed to be saying that higher pressure required higher skill to get the best results?
It didn't seem to be saying that the higher pressure was less efficient.

I guess if you buy a full quiver you won´t have any problems after a short transition period, but if you want to add a light 6,5 eg to your standard Units,
you may have to turn your muscle memory into DLAB mode.
By the way: Gleiten.TV did not agree to the recommended pressures on the standard Units as well and found their low end/pumpability to be significantly better at 1-1.5 bar less.