flysurfer sonic3, any news?

[fernmanus]

Kite shape has clear relationship to Soul, it looks like Sonic3 is like a high AR version of Soul. But of course there is not so much room for different shapes if kite has that high AR. Canopy curve looks nice. Airfoil is apparently quite thick for good lift and better usability for intended use, thicker wing is also structurally better

It may look like a high aspect version of the Soul, but it flies very differently than the Soul. The first thing you notice is that the kite pivots instead of swoops. It turns like a Sonic or a Speed. It also has less bar pressure. The 13m Sonic 3 in white and blue reminds of the original Silver Arrow Speed. I have good memories of that kite.

Today I used my 18er Sonic3 in Workum the first time.
10-12 knots and 17/18er gusts. My weight 75kg. 133x42 Zero-G Board.
I jumped a lot to get used to the timing, did some highspeed tests and tried to collapse the tips (like in the videos above) by driving towards the Kite and in parallel depower the bar... but it didn’t work!!
No idea what they did in the videos above...
The only thing I could Imagine is that this was prototypes!.

I flew a 13m Sonic 3 on the snow yesterday. Like the video, it was easy to collapse the tips by driving towards the kite and depowering the bar. I did find it easy to keep the tips from collapsing, but it did take more active management with the bar.

[kitexpert]

Per my view the 55 cells are definitely needed and it is good optimazitaion between weight and performance. If you consider that paragliders of AR 5.4-5.6 has generaly 59 cells, and paragliders with AR. 6.6-7-0 has 70-80 cells you can really see that 55 cell for 9.0 and 11M Sonic with AR 6.6 and 6.8 is really just the basic minimum. In paragliding design they try to maximize performance for the given aspect ratio. Just to get the understanding that how much perfomance gain can be gotten by raising the cell number just consider that Nova has a high perforamance intermediate paraglider with AR 5.19 and 99 cells called the Nova Phantom. Most successfull competition paraglider(Ozone Enzo 3) has 101 cells for AR 7.55. So this makes the 55 cells a very well balanced compromise.

55 cells is just one cell count number, it is a compromise between many things. It is a high value though and I'm not at all against having a lot of cells. But it leads to very expensive products because of complex and laborious structure of kite. However if your opinion is 55 cells is "basic minimum" for AR's 6.6 to 6.8 then you should think it is somewhat too little for AR 7.2.

This is the "issue" of having same cell count for different AR's. In Sonic3 case it goes in wrong direction, big sizes have a bit worse cell shape even though they would benefit more than small sizes for having it better. Not very significant things of course, but most other high end kites are really different size by size, not just "stretched" (I'm not saying there couldn't be some other differences in different size of Sonics).

It may look like a high aspect version of the Soul, but it flies very differently than the Soul. The first thing you notice is that the kite pivots instead of swoops. It turns like a Sonic or a Speed.

For sure, it has that much more AR and wingspan and short chord which allows effective back stall for "helicoptering" turns.

Yes, they all used the last generaton of prototypes named X9 and the feedback flow into the serial Sonic 3

That is very good to hear, wingtip behavior in some videos didn't look so good. I don't remember Sonic2 had much of those issues so Sonic3 shouldn't have them either, preferably less. Wingtips between those two kites are different in shape though, as anyone can see.

[foilholio]

Paragliders don't really have the weight effects kites do. You could have a paraglider weigh many KG and it would still perform fine. After all the total weight of a paraglider includes the pilot, his associated gear and then sometimes ballast.

I have strong doubts ballooning of the cells is that bad. I think it may even be good. It would increase airfoil thickness but you could just make the airfoil thinner to compensate.

[kitexpert]

Paragliders don't really have the weight effects kites do. You could have a paraglider weigh many KG and it would still perform fine. After all the total weight of a paraglider includes the pilot, his associated gear and then sometimes ballast.

I have strong doubts ballooning of the cells is that bad. I think it may even be good. It would increase airfoil thickness but you could just make the airfoil thinner to compensate.

Yes, it is different for kites and PG's but high L/D is almost always favorable and it makes exciting things possible. All bigger foil kites are slow behaving anyway, it is not possible to affect that very much by using light weight materials. If construction is simplified for lighter weight kite will perform much worse.

Thin airfoil with wide bulging cells is a bad idea. Ballooning distorts not only cell shape but starts to affect also kite shape itself because it isn't uniform phenomena by the chord. Kite becomes also less stiff, it is hard to say how it will behave in the air. And on the contrary, if you have thin high cells kite will be much more like the design of it is.

[foilholio]

I am not going to completely doubt you. There is so few examples of extreme or high ballooning, Minima only comes to mind. I think for the lightest weight we have single skin or extreme ballooning. We already know the L/D on single skins sucks, so would extreme ballooning be that bad that it couldn't still perform much better than a single skin?

[kitexpert]

It is not reasonable approach to make a foil kite which has wide cells and worse L/D because single skins have quite low L/D. Single skins have their own advantages, foil kites should have their own.

Cell shape or ballooning question is very difficult to master with limited resources. For sure I'd know it much more if I made several prototypes with different parameters and had them fabricated for me. I guess designers like Bölli or Harich don't spend say 500 hours behind the sewing machine if they want to make some experiments...

I've paid my learning costs fully, by the hard way. What comes to cell shapes, kite shapes or ballooning I use parameters which are probably quite conservative, which I know will not cause any problems.

[Regularkiter]

I flew a 13m Sonic 3 on the snow yesterday. Like the video, it was easy to collapse the tips by driving towards the kite and depowering the bar. I did find it easy to keep the tips from collapsing, but it did take more active management with the bar.

were you flying a brand new version or a prototype demo?

[fernmanus]

Brand new 13m Sonic 3, NOT a prototype. I flew it again today in stronger winds, 25 - 30 knots. I saw less tip collapse in wind that strong.

One big advantage of the Sonic 3 over the Soul is self-landing. The lower profile of the Sonic 3 means that it flaps on the ground much less and deflates quickly. I would have had tangled bridles for sure today if I were on my Soul 12 or 10, but no tangles with the Sonic 3.

After flying the Sonic 3 today, I was thinking that an ideal kite would be a kite that turns like the Soul and is a stable as the Soul, but has the quick inflation, thinner profile, and lighter bar pressure of the Sonic 3. Perhaps, that is a unicorn, but maybe some day...

[Adventure Logs]

Brand new 13m Sonic 3, NOT a prototype. I flew it again today in stronger winds, 25 - 30 knots. I saw less tip collapse in wind that strong.

One big advantage of the Sonic 3 over the Soul is self-landing. The lower profile of the Sonic 3 means that it flaps on the ground much less and deflates quickly. I would have had tangled bridles for sure today if I were on my Soul 12 or 10, but no tangles with the Sonic 3.

After flying the Sonic 3 today, I was thinking that an ideal kite would be a kite that turns like the Soul and is a stable as the Soul, but has the quick inflation, thinner profile, and lighter bar pressure of the Sonic 3. Perhaps, that is a unicorn, but maybe some day...

From my experience of the one landing with my 11m Sonic3, it was harder to self land but yes it flapped much less than on Soul once on the ground. I’m working on a custom carbon bar though and I don’t have the steering lines set the way I want. I do have to say it was easy to get out of the trouble I put it in though.

[haiku]

Hi, here's my first short session with the new Flysurfer Sonic 2020 15 m. Lift and hang time are simply Awesome and in terms of stability It represents a big step forward over the previous model . In the video below you can also see a water relaunch after a bad crash. I'm looking forward to riding again with It.



Cheers

Carlo