You send it back to FS for the warranty.

If it is flat on it's back, you simply pull the middle line and it will launch, if it is flat on it's front you pull both brake lines and it will reverse launch, letting go of one line sends it to the side, if you have a look at the vid's on the FS website it really is exactly as simple and as easy as that. The valves slow down the water intake so it is not common to find them sinking, have you heard of many cases?
If the LE is down on the water you can either reverse launch as above or just pull one brake line and it will turn while still on the water... if the TE is down on the water(after you pull the safety) put the safety pin back back, hook in, depower, and off you go. It has a drain system so even if it takes some water on, it will drain quickely.
You say foils cost more but how many LEI's do you buy, 3? or 4? perhaps, 2 foils are good for wide range, with the speed you can problably get away with 1 kite in coastal area's where the wind is generally better. Still as a long term foils are okay, the initial cost is there, once you bought the first set you are okay, you get reasonable resell value out of them, although I think as they become more popular the resell will drop a little. So the next upgrade is on par with cheaper LEI's.

Thanks for a good honest answer.

About the warranty... you send it either directly to FS in Germany or to your importer/reseller in your country. It depends a bit on if the importer has the capability to repair the kite themselves.
In either way you should not have to pay for more then sending the kite back and forth from your importer.

About the relaunch.... I checked with Kitesurfineurope (Swedish/english pdf kite-mag) and the english version of the latest issue will be online within two weeks. The swedish already is online. In there you can read about the "relaunch-shootout" that they made between 5:th Element, Recon 2 and Flysurfer. Flysurfer won the test. Even after letting the kite stay in the water on purpose for a long time.

I own a couple of Flysurfers, they are good kites. But, they definetely don't go upwind as well as the top LEI's and they don't have anywhere close to the depower of Windwings or the RRD Wave. Hopefully the Speed will close the gap.

Which Flysurfers do you have?

I didn't want this to get lost after seven pages of posting. Pretty interesting info for someone who wants to kite in light winds. Here is an LEI producer basically saying that a foil will let you kite in lower wind than an LEI. Of course, he goes on to say that it won't be as much fun, but it still sounds more fun than not kiteboarding at all because the wind is too light. Keep in mind that I am the owner of LEI's and have never even tried a foil before, but this admission is news to me. I may need to get a foil for my biggest kite, just so that I can kite the maximum number of days in any given year, and keep my LEI's for the days when there is actually some wind.

Doubt it.......... This Armin guy hasnt even had anything to say for himself which speaks volumes for his confidence in his beloved foils.

Gumball has been pretty quiet . The Hellfish demo kites did not live up to the hype ! They sent 13 m kites all over the World,and nobody can get them going ,because they were expecting them to work in winds for 15 and 16m.

But I need to back off the Hellfish stuff a bit !

I mean,its like shootin' fish in a barrel ,isn't it?

In waveriding you need to be able to generate power fast (for exempel after loosing speed while passing a 2-3m wave creast...)
One way is to have a low AR kite (or a big kite) and just sheet in (fast and efficient).
Another way is to have a fast kite and make a fast bottom turn (a sign stroke) and as the speed and hf are (should be!) both very fast kites it may work quite good in ocean / wave riding...
however I don't know how well the speed generate power in the turns (my voodoo couldn't generate any power while turning it... the sheeting in technique worked however perfectly) the fs kites use mainly the very efficient wing profile to generate power from apparent wind. Thus to get max power you should not sign it (which will slow down the wing) but trying to stear it along a smoother path accross the wind window. I found that using a sig-saw path in the sky combined with aggressive sheeting in and out was the most efficient way to generate max power from the wing in light conditions.
So what would be really interesting to hear is if the extremely high AR of the speed makes it generate more power while turning as compared to the medium / low AR flysurfers? (my guess is that it should)

You need to back off trolling my posts gayper

Voodoo isn't the best example to use for upwind comparison though.
How is the lift and hangtime on the windwing or rrd wave?