galewarning wrote: ↑Sat Mar 31, 2018 4:15 pm
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...
gilana wrote: ↑Fri Mar 30, 2018 6:04 pm
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...
Hi galeWarning and Gilana, thanks for your input.
From what I understand, the conflict here in this thread is that :
1. Pro-Big-Board guys: You need bigger wider board for the surface area to get going. But....
2. Anti-Big board guys: On the Contrary, the wider boards are tougher to edge.
But I noticed that on a lot of these wide boards, at least on the Liduid Force Libre board that I am considering, they seem to have made is specially with a "bias" for heel-side so that edging becomes easier. This is the explanation from their designers:
"
To achieve this, we gave the Libre a distinctly targeted asymmetrical shape. Basically, with this board, the meat is under your feet. Since it's designed to have a dedicated heel-side edge, the meat is concentrated on the heel-side of the board, tapering off on the toe-side edge. The same principle governs the asymmetrical placement of the bottom concave which runs from tip to tip off-center along the heel-side edge of the board. At the same time, the fins on the heel-side edge are placed close to the edge while the toe-side fins are positioned more toward the center of the board. Now, on the deck, the foot strap inserts are asymmetrically placed as well, completing the board's asymmetrical functionality."
Does this make it valid for wide board to be not-so-bad for edging, after all?
Btw, LF also has a pure-beginner heel-side-edge-biased board called LF Edge for even cheaper price, but I had used it in one of the classes and the thing is soo damn heavy. Even to carry it with one hand. But even in terms of ability, this Edge Board is so limited that you cannot use it past the very initial phase of learning. While If I go with the Libre, hopefully, at least it might stay as my LW board later on. Thoughts/suggestions/corrections on this is appreciated too.
Thanks