For anyone who take the time to figure out how to get a cloud to catch wind, they are pretty easy to get back up in really light wind. I have reverse relaunched in deep water many times in winds that were just not enough to get the kite up on a wingtip.
For anyone who does not take the time to develop the understanding and patients to deal with a cloud that is flat on the water, they are probably not a good choice.
.. For anyone who does not take the time to develop the understanding and patients to deal with a cloud that is flat on the water, they are probably not a good choice.
Which is the dfficulty about the question. Also had good experience with strutless but even better impression from kites with trailing edge bridle as the big Boost², on the other hand for me this is one of the best and easiest relauncher, if someone is not completely afraid of foilkites at low winds:
For anyone who take the time to figure out how to get a cloud to catch wind, they are pretty easy to get back up in really light wind. I have reverse relaunched in deep water many times in winds that were just not enough to get the kite up on a wingtip.
For anyone who does not take the time to develop the understanding and patients to deal with a cloud that is flat on the water, they are probably not a good choice.
It's session over for me if the canopy of my Cloud catches water. How do you relaunch in that situation?
When a cloud gets water on the canopy or simply messed up in some other way, I pull in a couple meters of one rear line. When that tip becomes the most upwind part of the kite, wind will slowly begin to get under the canopy from that wingtip. Sometimes its pretty quick, sometimes its pretty slow, but it eventually will lift enough of the canopy off the water that you can let go of that line and let the kite drift to normal face down position. Sometimes you have to still be patient from here that the canopy fills properly and pushes the remaining water off the other tip, which will have a tendency to stick to the water. You can eventually relaunch normally by one rear line, rolling it up on a wingtip, or you can do a series of yanks on both rear lines to clear the last of the water and reverse relaunch. Even when the kite has flipped over and is completely flat on its back, I have found the one rear line move will get the kite to flip over face down and you go from there. In anything over 7 or 8 knots, I can usually get a cloud sorted from however it manages to end up.
Good luck. It takes a little practice. Pumping the kite pretty hard is helpful, but mostly patience and timing are the keys to reliable success rates.
Once you figure it out, its pretty easy to reproduce. I am using clouds to drift launch at certain spots and really like them for their easy slow drifting. With a little water intentionally put on the canopy and oriented right to the wind, they are very reliable drift launch kites, but it requires you know this key step of using one wing tip corner to begin catching wind and patiently clearing the canopy for launch.
I'm 100% with drift launching clouds over the last three years.
These users thanked the author jumptheshark for the post (total 2):
Huib (Mon Jun 03, 2019 8:27 am) • gigibianchi (Tue Jun 04, 2019 8:21 am)
only a foil will launch when the winds drop below 5 knots. I find the tube kites are much the same, has to be enough wind to get them up so it's better to never crash them in the first place. Once you know the inner center line outer rear line trick, it's more about how much the tube kite weighs than anything. If the wind actually goes to zero then swimming in with a foil kite sucks but if it's 5 knots or more you should be able to relaunch it as long as you don't have a pretzel.
These users thanked the author edt for the post (total 3):
Peter_Frank (Mon May 06, 2019 6:42 pm) • grigorib (Mon May 06, 2019 8:27 pm) • cor (Tue May 07, 2019 1:53 pm)