flowstate forum posts in last 60 days

I had the S3 5.3m out yesterday in 20-25 KTS and it is basically not ridable full depowered so really does not matter where harness line is. Just too much power and too hard to control. You're basically holding on for dear life. In comfortable condition this harness setup felt great. I ordered a BRM version to test against but seemed close enough to the sweet spot to work fine. FYI fully depowered you're holding the front of the shovel and not pulling in at all.

MidAtlanticFoil said..
After my first (overpowered) session with the 4.3M, I've been brainstorming around a good reverse harness hook solution for the S3 and the D handle. Hooking in at the shaft side of the handle means full on power, while hooking in to the front of the handle means full on depower.


I've yet to try this, but I used a 12" or so piece of dyneema and a clove hitch and a random hitch knot to make this small line that bridges the gap of the handle. I'm hoping that this makes the perfect catchers mitt for the hook to reside.

I almost always ride one handed, unless I'm really focusing on most efficient upwind angle.



Only downside I see is though can't fully put your hand inside the handle. That's a good thing in my opinion. In Jeremy's vid above, he showed one technique of putting your hand up inside the handle, but that could be pretty dangerous in a wipeout and could easily lead to a broken hand due to the lever moment of something (board/knee) hitting the end of the bar.

frappes said..
I've spent several hours riding the new wings this week, sizes 2.7 and 3.4.

My biggest takeaway is that the new model gets really close to the feel of an inflatable wing. Depower and "sheet-and-go" are very intuitive and much less twitchy than on previous generations. They are stable enough that you can actually pump them to get on foil.

The effective wind ranges are phenomenal. Towards the end of one of my sessions on the 3.4m I was feeling a bit overpowered so I took out my 2.9m Maliko v1 and it was completely unmanageable. On the low end, the ability to pump the wing like an inflatable opens up a few more knots of usability.

The new handle is certainly goofy looking, but feels amazing once you get used to it. I echo Urgulls sentiment that it feels really good to ride toeside. The harness line is nice: it naturally wants to sit stowed against the bar out of the way and you can use your thumb to flip it out to slide onto your harness hook. However, I didn't even feel the need to use it much because the handle feels so comfortable. One great advantage of the handle is that it makes it 100% obvious which side is the front when you've got the wing bundled up. I would leave the D part of the handle exposed in my bundle when dousing, and then to redeploy, just grab the handle and let the wing fall and catch the wind. Really easy!

There are lots more lines to contend with, but I got the dousing technique dialed within a few tries and it wasn't a problem. I had 2 tangles in ~7 hours of riding that required a minute or two of work to separate. I definitely would prefer it if there were less lines, but the tradeoffs seem worth it to me.

As others have said, jibing is more work. The wing wants to drift back into the window during the jibe, so you need to be fast and deliberate to keep it flying. This wing does not pivot in place in the window like previous models. This my biggest gripe with these wings.

Overall, I think this is a big step in the right direction for parawing design. I purchased the 3.4m S3 to replace my 2.9m gen 1 wing, but am sticking with my gen 2 (4m kanaha, 2.3m Ka'a) wings in other sizes for now. I'm really excited to see what the next iterations look like on this design.

CH3MTR4IL5 said..




I have had about twenty sessions on the 5'4 in all sorts of conditions. Its close to perfect, with a few minor caveats which you could resolve in a custom board. I have been meaning to post a review and rundown, I'll try to get that done soon.

Youngbreezy said..
Yeah super cool to see the first official world level parawing race. Definitely a good step forward for the sport. Parawing can bring the multi discipline nature of foiling into a race better than any other form of foiling.
I would have liked to see them do a full stow for the pumping section of the race. It seems like they all just flagged their wings and left them flopping around during the pumping section. Visually this looks sloppy and unappealing but I think it also misses the best part of parawinging, where the parawing disappears completely. I also think if the racers are required to do a full stow this could lead to more innovation in that area which would be cool.

georgsurfer said..
I learned to parawing on a KT SuperK2 83L (custom). I just had a chance to try their new parawing board in a similar size. At my 86kg the pw board is much more stable and much easier to pump up, allowing me to ride w a smaller parawing. My every day foil is the Nomad 830.

flowstate said..




bingo. thats where the extra AR went. Thanks @Meonash for the screengrabs

kook123 said..




It's interesting to so some folks moving to bigger prone boards that offer more length with less thickness for crossover use...wonder if that might become more of a (welcome to me) trend