Or how well would a tube kite with 1PSI pressure fly if it had a full bridle like a foil? That kind of thinking can make a person go straight to the "silly" farm

How about a self inflating tube? A FLAT TUBE!!!

I have gone to the launch forgot my pump and blown up my C kite to 0.5 PSI with lung power absolutely limp, and it flew fine. C kites don't depower that much so they can run on almost no psi.

I have also flown a C kite on 0 psi (tubes completely deflated) but it's tricky because you get frontal collapses too easily, and in order to keep the kite from dipping its front and rippling, you have to oversheet the kite so it's not very efficient, ended up not being able to kiteboard with it completely deflated.

The problem is that the most efficient kites you can build have a very low angle of attack, they are the fastest kites, they have the most lift and they go upwind the best. But if you provide no support for the kite in the terms of battens, tubes or a foil, this means that all of the structure of the kite is provided by the kite sitting deep in the wind window, and this gives it an awful angle of attack.

A full bridled kite is actually worse than a C kite because a fully bridled kite is made to operate at a very low angle of attack to go upwind efficiently and depower, all things which will give you a frontal collapse if you dont have enough air in the kite.

C kites can be made to fly with a single skin because they are typically designed to sit deep in the wind window . . .

I suppose you can design a bridled single skin foil kite that sits deep in the wind window, but remember if you try to depower the air will start to flow on top of the kite, in fact when a kite is fully depowered half the wind goes above the kite and half below the kite, and in a foil kite or inflated kite, the structure of the kite is intact, but in a single foil kite, the entire kite will collapse and fall to the ground since there is no force left in the wind keeping the structure of the kite intact.

So theoretically you can make a bridled single foil kite which will sit deep in the wind window and has zero depower, but the problem is . . . why bother designing a bridle at all, its an unnecessary complication, just make a C kite, since it already sits deep in the wind window and lacks depower without having to calculate your bridle attachments and lengths.

I think there are some interesting designs that can be made with single foil kites but there's not much interest because they will have two characteristics that aren't popular right now 1) no depower and 2) pulls directly downwind

and yes I have spent the entire last week thinking about this.

Woah Kamikuza, that 19 weighs less than a 12m speed 3 deluxe. There is potential there!

And 14: I will see your happy birthday and raise you a sad banana plus some bananas riding WTF?

I approve of the excess smilie usage!

YEAH IT DOES FLY GOOD
ZERO PRE-INFLATING + FASTEST SET-UP AND LAUNCH
FASTEST AND SMALLEST PACK DOWN

BUT FOR WATER USE WATCH OUT IF YOU DROP IT

Someone could design a ULW 21M tube kite with leading edge only (no struts) requiring only 2PSI
That kite could be as flat as a foil
Structure supported with ingenious bridle system

Apparently in Quebec they have these things called "paraskiflex" for snowkiting. They are single skin and it looks like they get support from carbon fiber tubes. Don't know if that counts as a single skin foil

http://www.paraskiflex.com

+1 Since IDK WUCS AND GMAB.