Just wondering why you see dio many vids with kitefoiling and a lot use foil kites instead of inflatable kites. Is there any advantage in having one in my quiver ?
Select to expand quotescotty100 said..
Just wondering why you see dio many vids with kitefoiling and a lot use foil kites instead of inflatable kites. Is there any advantage in having one in my quiver ?
You will need a foil kite for racing to be competitive, but for just general free ride, an LEI works fine.
Without putting crap on foil kites, I just found them too much hassle, (stretched bridles, broken bridles, tangled bridles, wet soppy sagging mess of weeds and bridle after swimming in etc etc).
I can hydrofoil on a LEI in around 8 knots up to 40 knots. I can drop my kite into the water in low wind and still swim in without too much bother (or re-launch after 20 minutes).
The race foils go better upwind and faster and generally hand in the air longer in light winds. 3 things that foilers like.
I have a 12m for light wind action. Then hook into lei's for the rest.
If you need to explore the low wind side of foiling where getting your kite wet means a swim in, then you may have to look that direction.
considering the light weight lei kites available for foiling that already can have you going in the drop it and swim wind range, you'd be looking a long way into the swimming abyss.
Hi Scotty
I agree with all the replies above. Another important point is that flying foil kites requires a different set of piloting skills, even for launching, landing and water relaunching. In other words you'll only become really competent at using a foil kite after a few seasons of regular practice.
Unless you want to get into racing as bigtone suggests there is no need for a foil kite.
If you ever have a chance to fly one, take that opportunity and see for yourself. They fly really fast and far forward in the window, however, they are incredibly slow in the large sizes and their upper wind range is very limited (you get overpowered very quickly even with the bar all the way out).
A very light and agile single strut kite like the Airush ultra gives similar if not better performance for general freeride foiling. Try to demo one if you can
Christian
