state of the art wave kite foiling

[tomtom]

I laugh every time when term skatey about live and responsive foil is used couse if you dont ride surf-skate normal skateboard is WAY less responsive than my ONDA

So maybe we should update this skatey feel. Or ist from ice skating and not from skateboard?

[juandesooka]

I laugh every time when term skatey about live and responsive foil is used couse if you dont ride surf-skate normal skateboard is WAY less responsive than my ONDA

So maybe we should update this skatey feel. Or ist from ice skating and not from skateboard?

funny, never really thought about that before.
Ice skates have razor sharp edges to keep you going in a straight line, so that's arguably not very "skatey" either.
how about a wake skate? that's pretty loose.

I am guessing the term comes from skateboards with really loose trucks, easy carving potential.

[flying grandpa]

@slowboat
I prefer to have more control, also when riding down steep wave. Increased drag helps to stay in controllable speed. But at lowest speeds this drug become lower, than in standard setup. It switches on only at higher speeds.

@lebast
I often ride Baltic waves and like them a lot. They are short and quite steep.
And when steep wave is pushing me downhill, it become so scary to me that my muscles memory goes away and all ends with big crush. My setup reduces max speed to the level acceptable for my muscle memory control.

[jumptheshark]

I’m pretty sure the term is not supposed to evoke ice skates! Neither really work to describe foiling but I have always thought of skatey as easy to break out and slide, like tt without fins or easy to break out quads compared to gunny thrusters.

Doesn’t really work for foiling. We have zero drift. Loose vs stable works better.

[zerogee_ca]

This video has wave kite foiling that looks the most like wave kiting to me. It gets me excited about the potential of foiling in waves.


Other videos look more like longboarding to me. Not my style but still a great way to spend time in junk waves.

[foilholio]

Looks like wave kiting to me, fast turning, slashing hacks and most important NO waves.

[dragnfly]

This video has wave kite foiling that looks the most like wave kiting to me. It gets me excited about the potential of foiling in waves.


Other videos look more like longboarding to me. Not my style but still a great way to spend time in junk waves.

This is the first foiling i've seen that makes me want to really have a go! What board and foil is that he's using? Looks great fun.

[juandesooka]

Watching the video i thought you were maybe being sarcastic...but finally a few waves near the end.

The foil is a spitfire xlw (extra large). What's interesting about that is it's a canard, where both wings have lift and the larger wing is in back. The design allows for smaller wing area to give same lift and wing breaches should have less crashes. But the main thing is that the foot pressure is more on back foot than front foot,so it feels more like carving a normal surfboard ... Stomping turns vs steering through with front foot . I only experimented with one for l little while but the turning difference was really noticable.

Seemed to make a lot of sense to me and that it should be the big thing in surf focused foiling. But it never caught on in kiting much or surf sup foiling at all. I never have got a good answer why not...if there is something about the design that isn't optimal or some other reason.

[slowboat]

The video is in 2 parts. Second part is wave riding. Nice stuff on small waves.

[Horst Sergio]

Many kitefoil wave riding videos show guys in big waves also rideable with surfboards that on top are riden hooked in with a very powerful kite …

Even if I am not so long in kitefoil wave riding yet, to me it is pretty much different of that. I prever it much more close to Wingfoil riding: Having an as small as possible wing that, in the case of the kite gets you up with not less than 2 loops and brings you upwind. Then riding inbetween small wind waves and with the weight only on those waves not in the kite, the kite (or wing) will just be hold with one hand unhooked and 90% of the power comes from the waves and maybe some foil pumps inbetween. To give a visual impression what I mean (from my actual video cutting test of Peak4 3 m³ and Firefly 2,5 m²):

Same as classic wave surfers I have most time the arms wide spread to use its momentum for balancing. Being hooked with the bar close to the body this just wouldn't work for me.
Riding this way the bar is not more than a 300 gram, small balancing stick, most time when on a wave it wont make any difference if on this stick also a kite is attached or not.
One of the results of my wave kite test: 2,5 - 3 m² starts to be to big above 25 knts for my 62 kg, so I seriously looking for relevant smaller kites for what I prefer as wave kite foiling.