Duotone Diversity Magazine No.02 2020

JUICE SERIES significant boost in performance at only about a 10% higher price. Maybe there will be different price points for kites in the future depending on the materials they’re made of. Like we already offer in our board range, differentiating between the normal construction and the Textreme. Everyone can then choose what’s best for them. RALF However, you also always have to make sure that the kites remain affordable. Kiting is such a fascinating sport, it just must not become too expensive or too elitist. For me as a designer, materials with special properties, yet ones that are not exorbitantly expensive, are by far more interesting than absolute high-end materials. Like, a kite that’s made of Aluula material, which is double the price of the normal version, is that the way to go? Personally, it’s more satisfying to know that through my work, as kites are getting lighter, kite schools can now run their courses in lighter winds and that means people are on the water earlier. Perfect, I’ve been meaning to ask you: What do you at Duotone think of Aluula, are you experimenting with it? TILL Aluula is an extremely exciting material. It has a superlight surface weight that we have never seen before – an absolute innovation. We are currently testing the material in terms of producibility and durability. Compared to classic materials, Aluula is many times more expensive, resulting in significantly more expensive kites. RALF Simultaneously we are currently researching other materials with a tensile strength that’s three times higher at 10% less weight and a significantly better stiffness. There are also a various accessory-materials from the ULW concept waiting to go into series production. All in all, I see a lot of potential here in the next few years. With the help of new technologies, I can rethink the diameter of the leading edge and change the bridle setting, which will in turn change how the kite flies through the wind window as it’s becoming lighter and stiffer. I have variables now to play with that weren’t available to me in the past. Right now is an extremely exciting time for the kite industry. In the last two years we’ve been seeing the biggest innovations of the last 20 years. The set of materials used hasn’t really changed at all in 18 years. It’s only in the last two that new materials emerge, enabling new concepts to evolve and new kites to be developed. The chances for a small evolution are pretty good at the moment. What do you see as the reasons for this big shift in kite-construction and emergence of newmaterials that’s happening right now? RALF Maybe it has to do with the fact that Aluula is a new player in the raw material manufacturers’ market that didn’t exist previously. It could have pushed the “old hands” in the fabric manufacturing industry to move forward with their innovations and development. TILL The most recent trends in kite- design were the bow kites and after that the delta kites. Over the last few years all possible variants of these two concepts have been explored. Each design has its pros and cons. In some instances, the characteristics were simply shifted or switched. Improving a kite’s turning characteristics might reduce its low- end slightly. Changing a design concept from five to three struts might reduce the top end of the kite. All the traditional, normal possibilities have been exhausted. Significant performance advances take place in increasingly smaller steps. That’s why technological progress in terms of materials suggested itself as a new topic. I agree with Ralf: The new materials will allow kite design to evolve incrementally once again. What exactly do you mean by that? TILL With a novel material Ralf has achieved really interesting results on the struts of his ULW concept. The struts in the wingtip area are made of a lighter material and can therefore be deformed in a specific, very targeted manner. This results in extremely positive developments in the overall turning performance of the kite. The Juice 2020 is the first kite with these Flex- Struts, which have made the kite much more lively in the turns. Can you please explain the technology behind that, Ralf? RALF Up till now Dacron struts were very stiff. We had to reinforce them to ensure durability for example when a kite is lying on the ground flapping. With the new material of the Flex-Struts, however, we skipped a few things and by that have made them more robust. The construction has been geared to the material. Although the struts have become lighter, there’s no need for reinforcement, yet their durability still has been improved. In terms of kite-design, Flex- Struts allow the kite to deform to a certain degree. Sheeting in or steering the kite, the front line transfers the power onto the kite via the back pigtail, where it then gets redistributed. With the Flex-Strut, the strut deforms in a certain way through a turn. That creates a higher resistance on one side and reduces the weight on the opposite side. The result is a beautiful pressure point on the kite bar. Overall this makes the kite livelier displaying different response characteristics. In automotive lingo you would say: the damper rate is different. The way the kite communicates with you has changed. Is the effect of this small step really such a momentous innovation? TILL Each kite that we have equipped with Flex-Struts for testing purposes turned faster and smoother, though, the bar feedback became softer. The Flex-Struts have the potential to build bridges and change the way we look at kite design. With them, a five-strut kite will become more responsive and smoother and feel more like a three-strut, without compromising any of its profile stability. That paves the road to new kite concepts with a larger range of use. Looking forward into 2021, I could imagine this development being one of the modules of the ULW concept that could go into series production. DIFFERENT WEIGHTS OF 13M2 KITES: ULW 1.95kg 2020Mono 2.89kg 2020 Juice 2.97kg 2019 Juice 3.35kg 2020 Evo 3.75kg T E C H N O L O G Y 84 85 T E C H N O L O G Y I N N O V A T I O N