It will ALWAYS be a mistake to think you have reached the limits of what is possible.

If there is one thing we as a species have consistently done it is to keep on evolving and developing our technologies.

Even technologies that we have stopped developing on has in most cases not reached the possibilities (from a technological perspective).

Indeed - we may have a lot more development to come than people realise - just need to have open minds.
Currently one of the smallest travel packages would be a kite and one of these unassembled. (I've seen a video of him riding in strong wind on a board just big enough to cover the spread of his feet)



For hand-luggage travelling, this Frenchman may have found a way to have a self-stabilised depth control for a foil. Sailrocket basically did 65 knots by towing a foil with a wing, so it might be possible to have the kiter in the air somewhere between this foil and the kite. (And you thought a board leash was dangerous? )



For lightwind travel with a better chance of self rescue if the wind drops, you could maybe add a 70cm wide aerofoil as a Wing In Ground-Effect inflated like a SUP, between the kiter and the towed foil.

very nice videos. One potential with the foil is that it really does not need much board once you know how to ride it. I would say that a skateboard would almost do it...a least a wakeskate.

It would be interesting to see how the split board could work. I have never considered it much, but i have a lot of friends that does travel..combo of strutless, and split board with a harness that is more foldable / flexible and a telescope bar?

Been a while since I've contributed to this forum because I feel the discussion to better when its by the less-bias. Have continued to monitor it out of interest for what's on rider's minds despite it often being hard to filter out the dishonesty from some with an agenda. Was so hurt this last week by posts so contrary to my personal experience and feedback I've received was considering a post to say that I'm closing my account and will try to not continue reading. But had some positive music playing while whipping up breakfast this morning and realized that there will always be injustice and that its my choice how I wrap my mind around it. Instead of feeling negative I'm back to feeling overwhelmingly thankful for all the stoke that's been sent my way. As I passed by the window to write this message of thanks saw an adult whale putting on a show. A second later a baby whale looked like it could be doing its first breaches. Amazing. Being positive is its own reward. Thank you to the positive musicians, whales, and positive riders.

Yup, never mind the bollocks!!!

http://youtu.be/TcVD-DXMjwA

dude
Zack here in Seattle let me
try the 17m cloud for 20 minutes in 12-16,
(before I pumped up my 17m FL)
super easy to fly and keep track of,
felt confident with it right away
tried like heck to get it to backstall during loops and hot landings,
several times
drifts like some sort of magic carpet
a lot of fun to carve off the wind with
goes upwind easily
has some seriously powerful traction when you throw a wide arc loop
this sheeting range is wild, a few inches and bam...depowered and super stable...wow
I'm not used to that...but it felt gooder the more I flew it
the power range felt very similar to the FL in this wind range

the cloud is a cool kite

Greg,

don´t get discouraged by the style and tone which sometimes happens on this forum (and on all other forums). That is just the internet and I guess one has to get some kind of thick skin. On the other hand this medium has so many advantages especially for a small company. I would not have come across BRM if you had not posted it here and would not be a Cloud owner by now (damn, still no chance to try it as winter came back and it is blowing strong. But the week of snowboarding was killer).

i'm very happy with my 17 cloud, had 6 session
lot of power easy go upwind
don't know about relaunch it never touch water

Looks like a 17m would fill my needs pretty well, is it pretty much plug and play with my cabrinha ids bar or will I have to tweak the lines a bit.

There are an almost infinite amount of combinations when kite designing and most know what is going on when you even work on more than one variable at a time, so there will continue to be advancements regardless of whether riders think something has met it's plateaux of performance.

Go hard.

I want get into more kite design (I taped sewed a 12m so far - it ) . What do I do - a masters in aerodynamics? Is that best?