Are they more fragile and wear out quicker? Worth the money?
Best ever. When I watched my foil tomahawk into the canopy and not cut it…. I was sold for life.
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That’s great I heard they were great but may be more fragile and sensitive to UV etc… maybe I heard wrong. do you find them to wear out any faster than non-aluula wings?
My 3m has almost 1000 miles on it and looks like new.
I take really good care of my gear. Never packed up wet. Never left baking in the sun. I don’t jump or ride in waves. I don’t ride overpowered. So, everything lasts longer for me than it does for people who hammer their stuff.
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Should we clarify, Aluula leading edge wings, not canopy. Only OR did Aluula canopies and they are gone.
Speaking of just the Aluula gold material, do a search. You’ll find youtube videos when the material was introduced to the market, showing it being near impossible to tear compared to dacron. That first year of production by OR, we saw lots of yellow film delaminating on all of them at my beach. Haven’t see this issue in recent years, so guessing improvements were made.
The added stiffness of the leading edge is believed to reduce canopy stretch seen on wings with darcon leading edges, as those flex out and pull on the canopy in ways not great.
I now ride Aluula wings. They just perform better.
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I think the only reason they’re not doing canopies any more is there’s no business case for selling a product that lasts longer. Much better to have more $$ = more performance and have them wear out and not poison your repeat customer business. All the kite companies are stoked to be selling 3x as many wings to the same number of people nobody wants to kill the golden goose.
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Actually it’s more about the difficulty of working the material. Aluula canopy shrinks instead of stretches. As such, the material has to be heavily crumpled/wrinkled before being cut and installed. Dyneema has issues too. So, it’s a manufacturing challenge and a quality control/warranty risk.
OR was working on aluula bladders at the time of shutdown. 1/2 the weight and essentially unpopable. Price tag made up for the loss of repeat sales.
Yep, I’m not very impressed. Industry pressured Aluula to shut down Ocean Rodeo and then nobody steps up to offer similar product. Sure, production is a challenge, but OR already solved it and Aluula has publicly said they’ll help anyone who wants to use the material with production techniques. So, state of the art takes a step backwards because disposable wings are more profitable.
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Ive got a two year old 5.5unit D Lab and the canopy has stretched less than any other wing that I’ve owned and I put that down to the Aluula air frame being so rigid .The only downside is a cosmetic issue as some of the gold is flaking off .
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I don’t think that’s purely cosmetic, Aluula gold is a composite fabric, the uhmwpe weave on its own is more elastic and less UV resistant than the laminate.
There is nothing sinister going on at the manufacturers. They do want more durable wings at prices the consumer is willing to pay. I get to test many prototypes each summer when I visit the Gorge. I again tested exotic canopies on wings. Still not ready for prime time. In the mean time, we are getting another better canopy than last seasons with the 2025 production ready prototypes I rode.
The gold is a protective coating but there is still a massive amount of life in those wings. I have a friend with the v1s that flaked badly. Tons of his gold has worn off and he’s still riding his to this day as one of his favorite wings with no performance issues.
I think part of it is the frame stiffness but the other is just a very tight canopy(which i guess is part stiffness part design) luffing(flapping) is cracking the fibers in the dacron breaking down the fabric. If the decron stays taught it lasts MUCH longer. It sound like thats whats happening there.
The OR aluula wings are/were great. I think there were some production issues with early aluula and it was delaminating prematurely but my understanding and experience is that it was fixed. I rode three OR aluula wings for two seasons and they held up better than anything else. One of them did delaminate OR replaced it very easily.
Not only does the rigidity of the Aluula stiffen the wing and prevent deformation that leads to bagging, but the leading edge is also very low profile so they are super efficient.
I have a 5m A series OR glide in very good condition (it was warranteed) that I would sell for a very reasonable price if anyone wants one. Comes with soft handles and one carbon handle that I used as a front handle. I’m guessing it has 15 sessions on it. DM if interested.
Unfortunately, Aluula really makes a difference.
Unfortunately, the additional selling price does not seem to be in a friendly correlation of the added production cost.
One Vendor told me that the additional product cost of Aluula for a given Wing is around 30 Euros. If this is true, the surcharge taken by the Vendors is not really user friendly, so to say…
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Hi Guys, I can chime in a bit here. I was the founding engineer at Aluula and remained a consulting material scientist there until recently when I was able to go full time with Omen Foils. I no longer represent Aluula in any capacity, so the below is just my opinion.
Regarding performance, the difference between woven polyester and an Aluula Gold Airframe is significant for two reasons. The first, and most easy to identify is the weight (Aluula GC-82 is about half the weight of most conventional leading edge materials) while the second and more important is the stiffness, with Aluula stretching around 5X less under load. Given the same design, this means the wing has more power when pumped and maintains its shape better under high load meaning faster speeds and less drag in overpowered conditions. In my experience this not only equates to better performance in the primary range of the wing but increases the range in both the high and low end.
The outer gold layer is a film which provides part of the laminate’s bias stability and stiffness as well as UV protection. The process for bonding this material to the fabric has been continuously improved. Ultimately, the material is susceptible to breakdown with prolonged contact to water and this process is accelerated under UV so those who dry out their wings and keep them out of the sun when not in use are going to see significantly improved product life. Woven Polyester does not “look” as damaged by UV since it only fades and crazes, however, it’s strength goes down significantly to the point it is nearly unusable due to low tear strength as many have no doubt experienced.
Wings with Aluula canopies have a performance boost for the same reasons, I’ve personally found this to less significant (but still noticeable) in practice. Some of the canopy materials like the “X” one on the OR AA wings have amazing tear resistance, order of magnitude more than polyester ripstop, so a big advantage there.
I can also attest to there being no conspiracy amongst the brands to make products that do not last or charge too much for Aluula wings. The Aluula wings are a lot more expensive simply because the Aluula material is very expensive, I can’t get into exact figures but way more than 30 Euros per wing. Similar situation with the canopy, certainly more brands could do it, but ultimately how much consumers are willing to pay for a wing will dictate if it becomes commonplace.
Personally, I think there is so much performance to gained in the airframe in terms of stiffer and lighter fabrics and bladder membranes, whereas the canopy gains seem to be more subtle but at a similar or greater $ cost increase in production. Everyone has their own budget but I’d say a high performance airframe is where the sweet spot is for most looking to optimize performance without completely breaking the bank. Perhaps the exception is if you are constantly sending your foil into the wing!
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Couple things-
-The delamination of the gold film has little effect on the allula inside. Its purpose is a bit of UV protection and a lot of product identification. Greg talked about that above.
-The allula bladders are a thing. That said they are not indestructable. I would know, i was a tester of three diff iterations of them.
-I have had an allula wing.with over 100 days of hard use. The Airframe retained about 80% of its stiffness by the end, which is still stiffer than the regular dacron wings
–the AA series aries-x canopy is remarkable. Its bascially a Delorian now. Ive launch my foil into the canopy a few times- no problems, no damage
Do not store allula wet!
Their patents are for a batch process, if that’s still how it’s made it can’t be cheap to produce. If it’s only a small benefit over the base UHMWPE cloth, I expect manufacturers would cut Aluula out of the supply chain and just use the unlaminated cloth.
I saw an aluula canopy wing (aa) yesterday and the canopy did not look taught at all. Is there any reason why the canopy would be more slack with aluula than with more conventional materials?
Designers are tuning canopy tension for better range, balance, and gust handling. So it’s not a case of tightest canopy wins anymore. As materials get better, they can’t just say…. make it super tight, because it’s going to blow out soon anyway.