Beginner Board Advice: Door vs Regular Large

[Da Yoda]

This is good advice if you have high or medium winds that are OCEAN CLEAN and steady. But inland, you absolutely need a door (or just a wide board) to keep up on a plane with only your momentum through the massive lulls. Also, big boards plane quicker and waste less energy getting onto plane. This is the other essential requirement of inland winds that often have 1 second turbulent gusts that you have to make into forward motion quickly.

+1
In northern California, longtime kiteboard designer Litewave Dave has refined his lightwind board over the years on an inland lake (100+ miles inland). It actually works really well when the chop comes up and isn't too bad to throw some tricks with. Personally I find it a bit big in size, but it's really popular with the bigger guys and as a quiver "session saver" board for beginner/intermediates of all sizes.

"Having the early planing corner allows Litewave Dave to design the Wing with more rocker than other lightwind kiteboards. This is what makes the board more playful and manageable in choppy conditions. Rocker lets the rider get over a wave much easier and also makes jumping and freestyle much more enjoyable.
The third design attribute of the Wing that really helps is the deeply concaved hull. The rider will feel a sense of smoother carving and less knee-bang in the chop from the added bottom concave that the Wing has."
https://www.litewavedesigns.com/latest- ... notes.html
https://www.litewavedesigns.com/home/ri ... dback.html

[galewarning]

Agreed. Wide boards require a lot of pressure to hold an edge. Learning to ride a TT is all about edging. Through an unusual set of circumstances, I acquired a Slingshot Glide. Not my intention to buy a 'door' type TT board, but I've come to appreciate the Glide's design of being long, straight and relatively narrow. You get more planing surface area thru length, not width. The longer of the two models is a 159, which I own, is only 40.X cm wide, about the same width of the 135 I normally ride. The shorter 149 cm Glide is actually a half cm wider than the 159. The long and straight edge of the Glide allows it point pretty high and doesn't require a huge amount of energy to hold an edge. The Glide is my fast-planing, lightwind session saver...

Im going to fly in the face of convention again.

Big boards suck to learn on. They get you planing allright! but kiting is almost never planing, its on the edge.
A 50cm lever is a hell of a thing for the new kiter to edge.

A big board will result in more faceplants during learning, absolutely. I would rather a student fall backwards ass first 10 times than one faceplant.
Forget the obsession with "getting up" that will come automatically.

You will land up going downwind uncontrollably fast on a big board, unable to edge-up and fly the kite low...

[hudstur]

LITEWAVE WING FOR SURE

[Matteo V]

Agreed. Wide boards require a lot of pressure to hold an edge. Learning to ride a TT is all about edging. Through an unusual set of circumstances, I acquired a Slingshot Glide. Not my intention to buy a 'door' type TT board, but I've come to appreciate the Glide's design of being long, straight and relatively narrow. You get more planing surface area thru length, not width. The longer of the two models is a 159, which I own, is only 40.X cm wide, about the same width of the 135 I normally ride. The shorter 149 cm Glide is actually a half cm wider than the 159. The long and straight edge of the Glide allows it point pretty high and doesn't require a huge amount of energy to hold an edge. The Glide is my fast-planing, lightwind session saver...

Im going to fly in the face of convention again.

Big boards suck to learn on. They get you planing allright! but kiting is almost never planing, its on the edge.
A 50cm lever is a hell of a thing for the new kiter to edge.

A big board will result in more faceplants during learning, absolutely. I would rather a student fall backwards ass first 10 times than one faceplant.
Forget the obsession with "getting up" that will come automatically.

You will land up going downwind uncontrollably fast on a big board, unable to edge-up and fly the kite low...

In clean steady winds, the kiter uses edging almost exclusively, and there is little need for flattening the board into what would be considered a flatter/pure planing interaction with the waters surface. Narrower boards plane (and hold kite power) better when not as flat (more on edge) and have a wider range of kite power they can handle because of the hard edging allowed by them. Unfortunately, a longer waterline is not conducive to overall efficiency at planing speeds. Longer waterlines create more drag than shorter ones at planing speeds, while the opposite is true for displacement hulls at less than planing speeds.

In dirty winds, with streaky or long lasting lulls, the kiter should attempt to maintain speed through the lull to make it to the next gust. Wider boards plane more efficiently when flat than narrower boards, but the edge is much more touchy with regards to a gust pulling you off of the narrower edging angle they can handle.


Planing requires a separate skill set from edging. Your "point of sail" becomes extremely important in planing, along with the Δ (change) in this angle appropriate for the change in kite power over time. Essentially, (gaining) more kite power means you should head upwind while planing and slightly edging more with the increase in kite power. When kite power is reducing due to a massive lull, you should be flattening the board to the surface of the water and "bearing off" wind. The latter allows you to maintain apparent wind speed via your speed/momentum, and at the same time, proceed through the lull to the next gust.

Wider boards plane better when flat (planing) because they are more efficient in maintaining speed when kite power is being reduced.
Wider boards are more sensitive to the edging angle - flatter means the ability to hold speed longer, but too little edging (or a sudden gust) means the kiter is pulled off that slight edge and is forced to head downwind.
Wider boards have a shorter tail, which fits in chop better and allows for easier/quicker fore/aft trim adjustments.

Narrower (longer) boards have less planing efficiency when losing kite power.
Narrower boards are not as sensitive to edging angle, making them better for beginners or those in areas where lulls are not as much of a problem - they can handle sudden gusts, or a riders lack of fine edging skill.
Narrower boards have a longer tail which makes the tail difficult to pressure due to the long lever arm.


My take on narrow (Slingshot "Glide") vs shorter/wider boards (Cabrinha "Plasma", Progressive "Manta", Ocean Rodeo "Origin", vintage Slingshot "Glide", pieces of "plywood") is: Narrow width is more controllable and requires less fine skill
Wider is better for maximum potential to handle lasting lulls, though it requires good kite AND board skills to exploit these capabilities.


I have to stop here as there is an apparent consensus on this forum that I should limit myself to a 500 word count post.

[jakemoore]

Unless you have really big chop, my bias is towards choosing the smaller door style board for a beginner. It will make a great light wind extender even as you get better. You will buy more kites and boards as time goes on.

If the winds are gusty as they often are on a lake, rigging a kite size for the gusts and a board size for the lulls can help smooth things out.

[grigorib]

One important note about the Glide - it doesn't work as a LW board and of all doors I've seen its the crappiest one. Not good at all. If you get one for free it can work till you buy a proper door.

A door board is not suitable for crazy pressure edging - you won't need to edge hard in LW, you'd keep the board fairly flat and that's why rocker on the tips helps a lot.

[Guttorm]

Buy the Libre 150 x 45 you can keep it for many years to come. I still use my SS Glide 149 x 46 from 2006 in ca 40% of my sessions because of to light wind conditions. A real lightwind board with close to no rocker makes a big difference over a regular board in light wind.
You will also need a smaller regular board later that is more fun in stronger winds. And a good 17m light wind kite with line extensions. More power is always more fun.

[AdroVempo]

Thanks for all your suggestions everyone.

Seems like I would certainly want to stick to the "wider" boards either way, because we do not always have those consistent winds on the lakes, especially MN lakes are surrounded by heavy trees.

So with all due respect, I would rule the Slingshot Glide out.

However, the LiteWave Wing seems really good (from my minimal understanding of things): coz it seems to have the corners stretched out for the surface area, and yet the board has some rocker and also some concave for chop and stuff. However, they seem to be too expensive for a first board, where, as someone pointed out, I would not even know what I want. The Liquid Force boards seem to be available for way cheaper (half the price or lesser).

This below video explaining the 'surface area' advantage of door board:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzpViLdWqYk

Given that he is stressing so much on that extra surface area because of the tips not being "cut off", I am leaning towards the Libre, but the thing is wayyy too flat, versus the Overdrive which seems to have that very minimal rocker.

So my simpler dilemma now is...Do I prefer the "little extra surface area" of the Libre? or the "little extra rocker" of the OverDrive !!!

[Guttorm]

The 149cm SS Glides of the first years have 46cm width and wery little rocker compared to almost all other Lightwind boards, change wery small fins for bigger ones on the heelside and ride it without fins on the toeside to make it faster, you will love it.
(The newer Glide is long and narrow with more rocker, I am wery sure the old one is better)

[FLandOBX]

The 149cm SS Glides of the first years have 46cm width and wery little rocker compared to almost all other Lightwind boards, change wery small fins for bigger ones on the heelside and ride it without fins on the toeside to make it faster, you will love it.
(The newer Glide is long and narrow with more rocker, I am wery sure the old one is better)

+1 Early 149 x 46 SS Glides (light blue, rounded corners, 1/2 inch fins) are great boards, if you can find one. I'm not a fan of the newer glides though.