Agree, the Hybrid has a lot more "normal" feel regarding bar sheeting, meaning it does not stall on a supershort travel like with Peaks, so more difficult to backstall down yes.
I put the 7.5 on the side the last time, staked, it just stayed put and I could go to the kite and pack it down, or sand it for the next session.
Thanks Jason - in terms of difficulty, looks like it lands kind of between my Souls (difficult/tricky in high winds) and Peaks (super easy). Guess it's a fair tradeoff if I want better water relaunching
After reading the reviews, it sounds like the new Hybrid would fit my needs. Water relaunching would be nice backup.
I pretty much park and ride my Peaks (no pinwheeling tricks). I self launch/land in a tight spot and the Peaks are really easy to land by myself (usually pull back lines to park the kite between trees).
I wonder if the Hybrid would be as easy to land and would be as well behaved on the ground as Peaks during pack up.
I would say it's not as easy to land as the Peak if you backstall it down. If you anchor it, the Hybrid I think will act better and just sit there for you to go up and flag it out. Here's a quick clip of a self landing on the 7.5m at around 13kts when I discovered the butthole was still partially open.
Well another update...I have about 5 hours under the 7.5m and today I finally got to take the 2.5m and compare it directly to my 2.5 Peak5. It wasn't much of a test thought. It was only 15kts(forecast was calling for 30kts) but I still went out to try and see what was possible and see which of the two had the lower end. Both kites were used on the same bar(21m lines) and the hybrid was set at the middle knot. In this configuration I could not get up on foil with the 2.5 Hybrid. No matter how I tried, I just couldn't get a powerful enough loop out of it to get on foil. Took the Peak5 2.5m out and was able to get up on foil 3 times are ride(but not stay upwind). The Peak just has a better, stronger loop and that's what allows it to have the better lower end. Safe to say I was pretty disappointed but on a positive note, the Hybrid 2.5m will backstall and turn fast enough for my needs. I was even able to spiral it. Tomorrow is calling for another 30kt day so I'm hoping this time it will actually happen.
On the 7.5m today I was able to try around with the knots and also tried shortening the rear lines by about 15cm. Moving the knots definitely does make a difference but there are trade offs. I liked the handling more on the faster setting but then the kite looses a lot of it's grunt. The more powerful setting is great but then you have much higher bar pressure. Even with the rear lines shortened by 15cm, I still had a lot of difficulty getting it to backstall and spiral like I prefer.
The other day I went out in pretty light winds and it dropped down to about 5kts mid session. Only two kites up in the air was my Hybrid 7.5m and a Peak4 8m. While it was ridable, I decided to really try to relaunch and I was extremely impressed. It seemed like the kite took on some water at the wing tips once when it was sitting on the trailing edge but with patience I was able to relaunch it even then. It was a shame the wind died because I was gonna let the Peak4 rider give the Hybrid a shot to see what he thought.
More testing will be in progress and a video or two will come out sometime in the next month. I'm finally getting back to work after a year so currently my days are pretty filled with studying.
Is the faster setting gives you the same bar pressure as the Peak5?
No still higher bar pressure than the Peak5
seglarn98 wrote:
What bar lengths do you guys find work well? Short 43 I liked on the peak 4 (4m). Trying to find out what to try for the hybrid 5,5.
I’m using the Connect2 bar for both the 7.5 and 2.5 which is a 50cm bar. Seems to work fine on both kites and I’m actually impressed by the bar. FS hasn’t had the best track record on their bars. Sometime this week I’ll try the 7.5 on a larger bar to see if it makes a difference
So apparently the Hybrid might be as good of a self lander as the Peak. Today testing the 2.5m out in 25-30kts I did a self landing and was surprised by the results.
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Such well behaved kite! Does this work every time or will it disappear into the dunes every fifth time?
I don't know really. I did it accidently and was really surprised so I turned on the camera to do it again. You have to get it just right so it kinda wedges with the leading edge into the wind(you can see it took a couple attempts to get it right) but once it's in that spot it was no problem. The flapping at the end was because there was still too much tension on the opposite steering line from the weight of the harness. I was impressed.
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