downunder wrote: ↑Tue Jul 14, 2020 1:42 pm
I said many times that Soul is not Lei
And not plug n play. It pulls like a train, even depowered. And this is scary in high winds.
But, 9m can be tuned for way better feel. And performance. Search shavethewhales post. He is local rider here who loops it hard. On 23m lines, I think.
D.
This above sums up my experience on the 9mtr soul very well, however I only sail on a foil board now so the bit about getting to that scary point was happening just to quickly,just far too scary as well, yikes I sail in straps, and have never had to sail on my tip toes with kite high and just daring me to even try and bear off to make a turn, my "yeeeharr" was more of an "arghhhhh Noooo" save me shout as the shore line was getting to close too fast.
on a sensitive foil set up, that feeling makes for a wild and loose off wind knightmare, this is disappointing for me and not what I was wanting from my kites, and there are so many soul users out there who love their souls, many are on Ttips some on skims and maybe a few on wave boards, although I have not seen that myself, yet.
I guess we all need to get easier access to test our kites before purchase, foil kites are not cheap, and I can tell you the financial loss when this happens as it has to me, is too big to forget in a hurry,
its my fault completely of course, as downunders post above gives the information i needed to know.
and taking advice from a few replies I did shorten my lines to see if that helped, removed 3mtrs with some simple splicing, and it made very little difference that I could say really helped, but worked great for my 11mtr Chrono in the same winds that made for that scary episode on the 9 soul, so not a waste of time at all.
but to put this in a bit of context the feeling that suits me the most for maximum fun is delivered from a snappy fast kite, which hunts for the edge of the window in the gusts which makes power surges/spikes more mellow, light bar pressure but always giving positive feedback no matter where the kite is and what its being asked to do, able to loop quickly and if asked to- at the top of the window, allowing a reverse loop to the opposite side which then can be repeated over and over as I love to do S bending down a few small wave lines, for example my 11 chrono v3 ul is not the best at delivering this feeling, its good but not super snappy, and my larger chrono kite can get too close to the water when asked to spin too often whilst driving downwind, making me aware of the need to calm down before I catch a tip, this fast snappy looping quality of course is easily replicated by using a good wave lei, my small reo kites for example were great for this, but no way would I change back from my foil kites,
and to confirm to myself this required feeling then yesterday, after using my 11mtr chrono for a while, and feeling I was missing out on the conditions available I raced back in to shore changed to my 9mtr hyperlink v2 and raced out again to find the little area of decent small waves and had a great time.
we are all different, looking for different feelings to make us smile and scream yeeharr.
so my new soul now needs a new home, I part exchanged it, so all is good, and now I can stop getting all stressed out carrying my various foil kites down to the water for back to back testing.
enjoy your souls as much as I enjoy my choice of foils, thank god we have choices, I just wish my choice was cheaper like the souls.