Agreed. From their advertising sounds like less upwind than the better ones such as the flow
The Neutra should go upwind just like the BRM,Ensis and Flow do.It just looks so similar in design to the other single skins.
If it does not then they really screwed up.
Weird marketing strategy IMHO.
A FlowDwing knockoff at 500 eur,dollars available in EU/USA would have been the market killer.
Anyway,by next year we will have 6 or 7 Gong lowkite models in normal plus Team limited versions
Got to fly Roger, BRM and Flow all together on beach and went out on BRM.
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Roger 3M- twitchy, sensitive, turns best, does weird ādog-earā thing when OPād, Thinner bridals are easier to slide up in hand when stowing, does not fly off front lines, needs to be kept in small sweetspot, stows easily and redeploys easily
BRM 4m- flys well, turns well, stows easy enough for a 4M, pretty sensitive to sweetspot but not as hard as Roger, worst attribute is its erratic behavior when OPād - thereās really nothing I could do except crash it into water. Couldnāt turn it off any way i tried - hooked in or not. Seems like a goodish all arounder until its OPād.
Flow 3M- Flys and turns nicely on beach, extremely stable with largest sweetspot, can sheet out to front lines but doesnāt steer at all when doing so, stows easily, excited to get on water with this one. So stable that it feels like i could pump it more than others to get on foil without it doing weird shit.
So, I feel like some of the attributes will be better or worse depending on given wind conditions. I am in gusty, mountainous wind which likely favors the Flow. If I was in steady ocean wind I think the BRM and Roger would behave nicer. I did have about 45 minutes of perfect power on the BRM and was able to get up easily and go upwind easily. Used harness and immediately realized that this is mandatory especially with my lobster gloves.
I donāt know if the Neutra will really go upwind, they seem to have made the profile quite weird with the trailing edge turned inwards. Perhaps to make it sit deeper in the wind window for easier power generation? Seems to be really inefficient for going upwind though. They market it as a replacement for the paddle and Patrice GuĆ©nolĆ© says in the tech talk video it goes upwind like when riding underpowered kiting with a twintip, which doesnāt seem worthwhile for upwind-downwind runs.
IMO they seem to have made 4 models which all miss the appeal of doing upwind-downwind runs. Would have been much better with just one model that went decently upwind and was stowable. Iām still happy I ordered Flow D-wings, no other brand has shown a product that seem nearly as refined.
Your assessment of the three brands seems pretty spot on from all Iāve read. Since I only own the Ensis though I canāt really compare. It should be mentioned though that comparing a 3M with a 4M, even of the same brand would be difficult. The larger Pwing is always going to react more slowly, even itās stall characteristics. The 3M Ensis seems small to me. I need at least 20Kn to get even my 8ā DW board up with a super HA 1075. Sounds like the Flow would be the easiest to learn on.
Has anyone actually ridden the flow overpowered and observed how it behaves? Every video showing it depower is in āeasyā conditions.
had one session in weak 13ish knots conditions on the On Kiteboarding 5.0 Makani. in comparison to BRM with OG bridle set up, behaves a lot better, easier to launch. got up a few times but didnt fly long. will still need to figure out the balance on the board and how to pump the board up. Maybe need to go more downwind on take off?
I just did. The Flow is easier to deal with in gusts but still a handful. It doesnāt steer when flying off front lines which either just hits water or I add back in just a touch of rear line pressure to get it to turn back up. This is all muscle memory shit and will get better with repetition. I brought 2 wings out on water with me today and switched mid session. Still couldnāt get back to where I started. I should have stayed on big foil. It was pretty windy so I threw on the fireball 1000(what I want to be on). It was harder to get enough boardspeed for liftoff. Got a couple reaches on foil. Not as good as I did the other day but crazier conditions today.
Sounds like the Flow has fairly steady pull even on the front lines. How much depower range would you say it has? Steady pull sounds good as long as itās manageable. The BRM can be a seriously erratic beast when overpowered. But you can kill most of the power if you fly it off the front lines.
Iām not in any rush to buy a quiver, gorge season is still a few months away!
I will personally be waiting for the Ozones & Five-O v2 to come out and get some reviews.
In the meantime keep the other reviews coming! People with deeper pockets than me are doing godās work
I got out on my 3.0 and 4.2 D-Wings on the weekend in 18g25 at 73 kg. I consider this to be overpowered for the 4.2 m but others might not.
- harder to pump up on foil than I expected
- more pull on the arms than I was hoping for
- worse upwind angles than I was hoping for
I could have easily been on my 3.1 m wing foiling around that entire day.
Overall Iām happy with the D-Wing as this was just my first session, but I was hoping it would be easier to use the 3m in 18 knots as I perfer to be underpowered than overpowered.
Hopefully with a few sessions practice Iāll be able to get near the 30Ā° upwind mark, I was only doing 15Ā° on the 3m and 22Ā° on the 4.2m this session.
Cross-posting this Gong tech talk from the other PW w/ Prone Board thread, I know itāll be of interest to folks following this one. Hat tip to @321-foiler.
Much as weād like itā¦ itās just not possible to have it all, there will be compromises. You just canāt tune a parawing to fly as far forward in the window as weād like for the best upwind angle and also have it fly with complete stability off just the front lines (doesnāt work for long anyway as you lose all steering). No magic there, the Flow is just tuned to a higher angle of attack with brakes off completely.
The biggest plus of this tuning is it will be a bit easier to learn on. Itās yet to be determined if the BRM and Ensis which are tuned to a lower angle of attack will actually go upwind any better in real world conditions cuzā how do we really measure this objectively? They will require a finer degree of control which may take some time to perfect.
if you release in the same timeframe as Gong you better be competitive on price. Otherwise the parawing scene will quickly become the gong show. For dw you donāt need the best, a simple design will work, and will be preferable as it will pack down smaller
How many people are having good success riding their bag for 3-4 tacks upwind then packing away and riding swell downwind or connecting waves and repeating? This is the use case Iām most interested in (and how I ride with my wing a lot of the time) and while Ive seen the videos of Greg from BRM riding it this way, it feels like most people are using these as a downwind start or a cross-wind tow to the windline. Looking for evidence from mere mortals (not Greg) to tell me this is a viable use case, but a lot of the anecdotes Iām hearing and the few cases Iāve actually seen these on the water would lead me to believe that the upwind-ability doesnāt really make it very suitable for this.
Thereās a guy at my local spot doing this on a BRM wing. Heās a good foiler but not quite a pro rider. The conditions are pretty shitty, with small bumps and gusty wind. Itās probably not as efficient going upwind as a normal wing, but he seems to be having a great time.
Dave West talks about this a bit in a recent video (i.e. best use of). Side onshore conditions could allow you to ride out at a close reach, then DW back directly with the swell direction. No talk about how one ultimately gets back to point A though.
Could work pretty well in my locale. Crosswind out to the start of a straight shot DW to goal. Still have to shuttle back but I do now anyway.
So far my limited use is telling me we donāt get the wind quality to use these like a wing for UW / DW. Hope Iām wrongā¦
Itās doable and not that hard, but the angles are poor compared to an inflatable wing. A friend and I had a session the other day, I was on 5.1 BRM, he was on the 4.0. We compared tracks after and I was tacking through ~127 degrees while he was between 139 and 130. I think I was pointing higher just due to being more powered up. On a normal wing I get 95-100 degrees, so a lot higher.