Postby Nelis » Tue Jun 01, 2021 2:51 pm
Hi,
New to the forum, first post, was lurking around longer. Essentially had kind of the exact same dilemma as OP, and I too have a 10m Soul, so I thought I'd chime in here.
The Soul 10 is now kind of my one-kite quiver. I use it from lightwind on HF until I get blown off it, then throw HF aside and proceed on twintip. This is fine at my local beach since I'll windsurf in anything above say 22kts.
For my holidays I will be going with a plane instead of taking my van this year, so I need to travel light but need 1 kite extra to cover the upper end.
Ideally the Soul 6 would fit the bill perfectly in terms of performance I'm looking for. However, as I found out, there's real drawbacks to handling a foilkite above 20kts. Leave the bridle flapping for a couple of seconds too long (say, the time it takes to walk from your bar to the kite) and there's spaghetti ruining your sesh. I can perfectly self launch and land my Soul 10, but in higher winds clumsy/clueless helpers and foilkites don't go together well. The Soul is also quite slippery, have had one occasion with 25kts where the kite slipped out of the hands of the helper so I had to release kite mid-window on the beach, resulting once again in spaghetti.
The new kite should perform well in higher winds on the twintip, but it'd be nice if it works well on HF in 15-20kts.
I want foilkite performance; a kite that flies deep into the window, fast, floaty, stable. Which dictates I go look for a high aspect LEI, they only come in 5 strut design (I think downwind performance/drift on HF of these things is supposed to be bad) It sort of contradicts the single/no-strut trend for the hydrofoil part. My previous kites where Liquid Force Solo v2's 9 & 12m (the Soul 10m replaced those two and does everything better than those two). So this was my line of thought.
Size? I'm thinking 8m (Ten Velox, F-one Furtive, maybe Edge)
Anyone comments, other good ideas, or try talk me into another Soul?
Gr, Nelis