It was 6 to 8 mph when I first went out.
Yea I know it's not a very good idea to get familiar with a new kite at the very bottom end of the wind range
Also a Flysurfer needs to be bedded in (sort of like running in a new engine) when new to tighten up all the bridle etc...... so at first the kite did not feel like a flysurfer should.
I set the kite as hard as I could a few times in the light wind and loading it up helped it bed in. This bedded in the kite more and it came alive.
First thing I found was that even in terrible lulls further from the beach the Lotus material kite just stayed in the air even without me doing anything in particular. Even off the board and letting my body not make resistance in the water the kite just stayed up there.
At all times I could stay up wind even in the lulls where I was barely moving. As soon as the wind picked up to an average of 10-11 mph I could gain a lot of ground. The kite goes upwind really well and really with not effort. It almost seems like it's natural way to fly is an upwind direction even in light wind 10-11mph
I tried the kite a little in the waves. For a huge kite it turns well, but you can't trow it back and forth like a 10m LEI and chase the kite down the line.
Waves were infrequent and it was a shore break... with rocks and houses so I only dabbled a bit with the waves.
So up the line (riding the wave upwind) the kite has good depower and floats well at about 2 o'clock. Any higher and the kite would give me too much lift to drop down the face freely enough.
Down the line is a bit more tricky. The real problem being that on a nice sized wave you will go down the face faster than the wind if the wind is 10-11 mph. So it means you need to cut back harder to get tension back in the lines. However I found that the Lotus 18m would hover well with rather slack lines, but I would have to cut back upwind for a beat to tension the lines and steer the kite.
I think with a little more practice this could be a viable 10-12 mph kite for waves. In particular I can see it being really fun on a big glassy south swell... significantly better than my Speed 3 19 was, even though the Speed 3 got me some epic glassy south swells.
LAnding and putting away the kite was comical..... The fabric is so light that when the wind turned around as I was packing the kite it totally wrapped around me and by that time it was dark........looked really silly.....
this kite is ultra light.
Oh and one last thing. The back pack is great. Nice and large making it really easy to just plonk the 18m kite in it.
Peter
