lol, that’s a straight up copy. Clever though since if I recall BRM doesn’t ship to Europe.
BRM ships to Europe just fine. Arrives quickly too.
Ah, Greg must have changed his mind (or found a cost effective way). I seem to remember a couple years ago people in Europe posting that they wished they could try Cloud kites but couldn’t get them shipped there.
For light wind lines Can help.
Hère nasastar 7 sqm.
With a 4 sqm you Can do standing launch and let thé lines go . You Can get thé lines and kite back when you fly
I’ve dialed in my mono line harness a bit. Here is my 2nd iteration, consisting of a 4mm dyneema schock cord loop (from WestMarine). The ends are tied with a hunters bend knot. This knot just fits inside the brm attachment’s sleeve barely and allows the knot to be untied should adjustment be needed.
The harness on the left is my 3mm adjustable version. 4mm on the right.
With just two sessions in the local kiddie pool, I’ve noticed a lot of benefits of this stretchy harness line over my previous attempt with a fixed heavy duty monoline that I use for winging.
- Absorbs gusts - saves shoulders
- Stays hooked in unless you really want to unhook
- Can get on board and sit on board while hooked in flying the Pwing (nice while waiting on a gust)
- Can get going while hooked in.
- Can stay hooked in on gybes (haven’t tried tacks hooked in yet)
- Tension easily balanced between harness/lines and arms. Go full on relax mode or keep some tension for a workout.
- Very minimal so keeps tangles at bay
- Monoline/single attachment point is better than two attachment points as you can perfectly pick balance point and adjust while flying by sliding fore/aft.
Have you tried a piece of dyneema with shock cord embedded inside? I have some of the dyneema shock cord but haven’t tried it for a harness line (wing) just yet.
For winging, I have the kiteboarding.com adjustable dyneema harness line, which is a much thicker gauge and is overkill/too bulky for this purpose. Don’t be fooled, the white lines in my harness are dyneema lines with elastic cord inside. The break rate is 240 kgs for the 4mm. I’m only 68 kgs, so It has me covered!
Just enjoyed a North Shore run with the BRM Maliko 4 and a prone board from KT. Filmed it. I really like the parawing, but like everything in foiling, it all the pros come with cons. For me the biggest pro is a prone run with additional safety. The cons are many, but all in, its much safer than Prone and no wing.
Yup,GONG seems about ready to pounce…
I guess that is why BRM went so pricey from the start.
They knew it could not last long.
Not much to complain about too,no patent,not even a claim to being first to try this (AFAIK both honors go to Born Kites,they just were not in the right place,right time,right customer base).
Also the price squeeze was probably smart bizness wise but it has created a fair bit of antipathy IMHO.
I hear Ensis coming out with one soon too. I tried to go in the surf with a sinker board today and failed badly. I need that 60L I used in the video for surf sessions too. Perfect for this application.
Did you try chipping in on the sinker board and then deploying the Parawing?
We get a lot of shore runner days with side shore wind. I got the 4m and I’m hoping I can get to the point where I can chip in on a 36L board, ride some waves and then tack back upwind to my starting point.
That’s exactly what I wanted to do, but I had nothing to store the wing. I probably need to get the belt. Seems like that should be easy enough.
First hour with a BRM. 2.9, with a Dragonfly 95. The struggle is real, but it is so much fun to learn something new. Well done Greg @ Boardriding Maui.
To be totally honest, that was my second session. The first one was 10 min, with too weak wind. Got going, made 2 jibes, and then the wind died. Did not try to fly it on land before going in
I fell in quite a few times, mostly because I had never used this huge 1270 cm2 front wing in so much chop.
The upwind angles were not that great, but these will improve with practice I guess, I hope . First track is with a BRM 2.9, and the second one I made right after, just for a comparison, with a 3.0 wing, 750 cm2 front wing and a 60 L board. Quite a big difference I’d say, in the same wind as in the video clip below.
Definitely much worse angles, especially how you don’t sustain the upwind angle on any of the parawing tacks. You have a mix of okay upwind and bad upwind. On the wing you just lock in and hold your line upwind.
Much easier to compare them when you scale the wing track up to match the parawing track (yellow)
Big update from Greg at BRM. He just sent out an email to owners with an optional bridal arrangement upgrade/update, which takes the Maliko to the next level. Better upwind and more wind range per size. I’ve yet to do the upgrade, but the initial reports from other riders seem to be really really good. I watched the video and the changes look very straight forward. No cutting lines or retying knots needed.
Anyone try this yet?
Got to try it today.
My comment on the FB group:
THANK YOU!
I think the Parawing should be delivered in this set up.
What a difference. Gusty 12-20 knots. 4m. Flat water.
Way more stable esp in the gusts, WAY more upwind, whereas the last session I can just keep upwind, this session I was pointing higher than my experienced winger buddy.
Only draw back I felt was a tiny bit more tendency to drop on starting, really minor for all the advantages.
I was starting to have doubt, but this is a different product. Parawing 2.0
I made the bridal configuration upgrade and took it out to the bumps for the first time, at the spot I’ve had in mind this whole time. Basically a tide against wind spot. Here’s a snapshot of my best go, where I wasn’t blowing gybes or getting stuck in lulls:
You can see that it’s basically the same upwind performance as a wing and I wasn’t even switching stances. I’m super stoked on the upgrade to the configuration. I was crushing upwind through gusts, harnessed in like a champ.
I was on my 55L and 4M maliko with an Armie ha1080. If I saw some good texture on the water headed my way, I could get up easy. Otherwise I was sinking to knee plus deep and able to balance somehow in the waist high high swell. Wind was 11-19mph according to the meter just upwind. I woulda been on my 3.6 or 4.5M wing depending on foil selection.
For some reason I had a lot more issues with gybes where the PW was falling out of the sky and I kept running into it and getting tangled in my vaikobi jacket straps. Frustrating but I’m sure I’ll sort that out.
Here’s the complete session tracks for what it’s worth:
Why wasn’t it shipped in this configuration to begin with?
Will you ever use the stock configuration again?
Thanks so much for sharing. I’m two sessions in on the 4m Parawing and already stoked.
I have a bunch of years kite foiling, never really got into winging but I prone foil every chance I get.
I love the idea of tacking upwind, stowing the Parawing and riding shore runners back downwind with nothing in my hands.
Good question. Greg says the stock configuration is setup to fly as easy as possible. I’d say maybe he’s right about that. The stock config is hard to mess up with.