I agree with airsurfer. My experience is with a takuma clone and a diy spitfire that is about halfway between spitfire and xlw in size. They are quite different rides, so which is preferable to you depends on what you want to do and also what your other options are. For example, if you already have a mid aspect freeride foil, then I think the spitfire doesn't really add much new capability. It's fun to ride, the rear foot surf-like turns feel really cool, but it isn't going to be getting you out into conditions that you can't already ride with what you have. In that case, the large surf wing would be a fun addition: you can ride it in small surf and really feel the waves. You can also attach it to a sup or surfboard if you want to try surf foiling without a kite.airsurfer wrote: ↑Sun Jan 28, 2018 7:38 pmI owned the MHL 150 and Takuma and tried the gofoil Kai. You're not going to like my answer but there is a good case to own both types of foils it really depends on the conditions you want/need to foil.
if you want to ride wind driven slow swell
open ocean swell and or clean small to medium waves the big wave wings provide a great feeling for that and give you that surfy feel. But when the waves are bigger and sloppy and you need to get through big white water and drop in fast and bail out of a wave before getting munched this is where the Spitfire shines . This is just my opinion with only 2 years of kite foiling others with much more experience may have different opinions.
If I had to choose just one of my foils I'd choose the Spitfire because it's the most versatile and reliable that can handle the widest range of conditions.
But if this is to be your only foil, then the spitfire would be a more versatile all-around option for riding under a kite. The large surf wing is a fun novelty, but only useful in certain conditions: very underpowered, little waves to play in. I don't know if you could even ride it powered or in larger waves, its top end speed is so slow (though I am still testing the takuma's boundaries). From all reports, the XLW is more user friendly and fun to play around with, as the foiling speed is supposed to be quite a bit less. That's the main knock on spitfire, have to be going fairly fast to get up, which takes away from the "surfy" feel if you want to play in small slow waves -- though of course it's fun to zip around in small waves.