I've been riding BRM Clouds for 18+ months now and loving these kites! So rad. The Clouds are simple, elegant, beautiful, light, fast, nimble, compact, well-made, and incredibly efficient. People ask, what's the downside? For me, there are none. I've tried kites with struts since then, and I've never been enticed to go back.
I love what Greg (BRM/Cloud founder/designer) says about the no struts? question: "Over the last two years of sharing the Cloud kite with riders and being asked 'why strutless' it occurs to me now that a good first step toward the answer is a willingness to ask 'why struts'?"
This seems to me to be an example of a sort of backwards evolution that happens when technical products mature. Early on in a technical cycle we add all sorts of bits of technology, trying to achieve certain performance characteristics without really understanding the underlying nature. As we learn, we are able to gradually thin out the technology and achieve the performance we seek by replacing our levers with those already present in nature. As our designs become more refined, they start to disappear. We know we have built something good when we can feel nature well through our tools. If our gear obscures what the world is trying to tell us, we know our gear still needs improving. I love flying Cloud kites most of all because I can feel exactly what the wind is doing, and I can transmit my thoughts to the kite with unconscious ease and delight!
Anyhow, the point of this post is more to share some videos that I've shot of foiling with the Clouds and my Alpinefoil in SF Bay. Most recently:
5m Cloud foiling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55ZiKDQ_Rrc
7m Cloud foiling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0xDjCeozrA
9m Cloud foiling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_ClXE5j2Vw
12m Cloud foiling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNtHp2yDQyc
Just sharing the stoke. I love my Clouds, and my foil. Of course, they work great with regular water-pusher board as well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hasJIqhdMOQ