Postby Foil » Wed Mar 28, 2018 3:04 am
At last I got to use the Onga 633 set up on the short 61 cm mast in the big lagoons we get here at low tide, started barely powered up on my 10 MTR, but then the front came in as forecast, but stronger, gusts, 20-31mph according to the local weather station, after a little practice I only needed water just over my waist to get going, as the lift from the wing was very strong and maintaining level flight across the shallow water became a lot easier and I did not have to think about it as I did on my last session with the little mast, and as confidence grew speed picked up and heelside upwind tracking was 100% better than on my Ist day on the 61,
Even as the chop and swell grew in size as the tide turned I was able to maintain a reasonable speed and navigate through at speed without ventilating, however gybing onto toe side overpowered became interesting and scary as I found myself flying too deep off wind to slow myself down and the speed off wind often forced me to switch back heelside as my confidence in keeping the wing under the surface was diminished, lots more practice required and a smaller kite!
I think the optional 71cm mast might have helped but then I would have been hitting the bottom more often,
What was fun was when I decided to see how far I could sail along the shoreline out of the lagoon where the depth is minimal around knee deep in many places but with a sandy bottom, tried it once on a long mast with my standard 548 wing and failed miserably, but this 633 wing allowed me to ride slowly and maintain level flight with the wing barey under the surface, I navigated out of the lagoon and along the massive shallow shoreline for ages untill I ran out of water,
Brilliant! But as the water was so shallow, less than knee deep I had a hell of a long walk back across the massive beach to the car park, so the Onga can take you to places longer masts and smaller wings will not allow.
Just to emphasize just how easy it is to maintain level flight on this wing there were a few times during the day when I had 2 full line twists after double kite loops, and a few times I sent the bar round the wrong way to unwind, but the wing just kept me up there nice and level as I was spinning the bar round one way then back again to sort them out, brilliant!