now foil kiters are saying their kites drift better

[elguapo]

if your looking for the absolute best drift possible....


..nothing beats a wing surfer thing.

[mr_daruman]

My point of view. The biggest influence in light winds or even drift is just low body weight + good kite and foil control.
I can foil a 12m2 tube kite in around 5_10knots, while another rider is on his 16 ram air and wondering why he cant get going screaming is lungs out. He's around around 90kg. I weight 60.

[jumptheshark]

???? The biggest influence on drift is kite weight.

[slowboat]

Lots of comments about the pros and cons of kite types. The original topic was about DRIFT.

[Flyfish]

They do drift better. Unbelievably better.

Been saying that for years ridding surfboards. Nobody was listening till hydrofoils came along.
Most surfboard riders still believe tubes "drift" better because they are ridding in side to side off wind. Or more likely they are not fully drifting their kites while ridding down the line in side on wind. They are "banging" their kite around and actually still ridding with power while on the wave.

So, thank you to all the foil board riders' that have figured out that foil kites drift better. Now kite companies like Flysurfer and Ozone will actually realize this and devote resource to improving the drift even better in foils.

[cor]

My point of view. The biggest influence in light winds or even drift is just low body weight + good kite

There are two main factors that influence drift:
-Kite weight (that is why foilkites might be superior here...)
-Kite balance (no front or back stall even with lines slack)


Your body weight does not influence the kite's ability to drift at all.

[or6]

Well, somebody show me a movie of a foil kite performing well in the surf and I'll buy it.

Literally

[jumptheshark]

Well its a little more complex than one is simply better than the other.

High aspect foils.... You know, race foils (the ones that got all the development and hype for a good long while and brought foil kites out of the dark) drift terribly.

Slack the lines and you get all manner of squiggly weird happening. Seen them go down in gawd awful fashion for the slightest of misshaps.

Low aspect and weight, and yes balance are the key determinants. There are kites with tubes and without that excel at drift, and its more about what they have in common than what they have different.

Clouds are balanced and light and low aspect with the bonus of keeping a shape you can use to help recover when things go pear shaped.

[tomtom]

Mid aspect foil kites tend to drift better than wave LEI - somewhat better like 20-50% better. They also fly better on they own tend to recover better - with less BANG.

there is no upside downside debate about this - In drift they are better.


Anyway PEAK 4 - single skin kite drift approximately 300% better - to the point you can just do whatever you fucking want and kite just follow.
This kite had many downsides - doesnt jump, poor L/D = poor upwind - but in drift is Unbelievable better than anything else.

Reason why wave freeride foilers use PEAK 4 is that nothing require as much drift as wave HF. Nothing test kite drift like wave HF and we were constantly unhappy with "normal" kites. LEI were worst - mid aspect foil kites were better and PEAK is first really "ride board and forget kite" kite

[andylc]

Drift is all very well but for a good wave kite you also want (or at last I do) a fast responding kite with good positive bar feedback. When a foil kite comes out with all of that then maybe LEIs will have competition in waves. Not sure it’s gonna happen though.