Duotone NOW Magazine No.03 2022

102 D R I V I N G F U T U R E I N N O V A T I O N S TO SKY SOLBACH – NEO D / LAB DEVELOPMENT Duotone Surfboard Designer and kite tester Sky Solbach is a Maui based developer icon and kite-surf team rider with a long history in the Duotone family dating back to 2004. Since 2016 Sky and Duotone kite designer KenWinner have been developing and fine tuning the Neo - Duotone’s dedicated surf-specific kite. SKY, HOWDID YOU IMPLEMENT THE D/LAB PHILOSOPHY IN THE DUOTONE NEO? The D/ LAB project started as a special project by our CEO Till to push his designers to basically go wild exploring different materials with a focus purely on achieving the maximum performance. When we started working with the Aluula leading edge material years ago, we were immediately blown away by the stiffness and light weight of the first Aluula protoype Neo. The kite was able to fly in the slightest breeze and had no problem hanging in the air and drifting when the lines went slack, which had obvious advantages for a wave kite. However, as it turns out, this was the beginning of a long road in learning to work with Aluulua. The leading edge closing seam had to be completely re-designed and relentlessly tested and we basically had to re-design the Neo from scratch due to the stiffness and behavior of the Aluula fabric. 5 QUESTIONS THE DUOTONE NEO AND THE NEO SLS ARE PRETTY PERFECT WAVE KITES. WHAT MAKES THE D/LAB SO DIFFERENT? The Neo and Neo SLS have been relentlessly tested and refined over the past few years to a point that they are very finely tuned machines and so much fun to ride. When a product reaches this kind of performance level, it starts to become tough to imagine making changes that can substantially change the performance in quantifiable ways beyond just giving them a slightly different sensation or improving the performance in some small way. However, the D/LAB with Aluula construction has really opened up a whole new realm of possibilities to make improvements that simply were not possible until now because of the incredible light weight and stiffness of the material. WHICH ADVANTAGES AND EXCITEMENT DO YOU SEE IN THE NEO D/LAB? The advantages of the Neo D / LAB are light wind performance, drift and the ability to fly up out of a turn in light or strong wind with very little line tension. In my opinion these are truly game-changing benefits for wave riding. Just imagine, when you have a 12m kite that can do an upstroke on the wave in light wind in the same way an 8m can do an upstroke in 20 knots, you’ve clearly broken into new territory. A lot of it comes down to simple physics and the fact that a bigger traditional kite is heavier. When the wind drops below a certain threshold, say 12 knots, a traditional dacron leading edge kite simply isn’t able to fly up and down as effectively to keep pace with you surfing a wave in side-shore wind in the same way a traditional dacron 7m kite in 25 knots can. The D / LAB Neo will allow you to ride a big, powerful kite that doesn’t require flawless kite handling to link turns on the wave in light wind because it flies just like your small kites in strong wind. Also, the Neo D / LAB’s ability to fly up on the upstroke with very little line tension means you can fit in more turns and go places on the wave you never could before because your kite simply wouldn’t let you go there. That’s all going to change with the D / LAB construction. HOWWOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE SPECIAL FEELING OF FLYING A D/LAB KITE? The first thing you notice when you launch the Neo D / LAB is how effortlessly it flies up overhead. Then you feel how quickly it re-directs in the sky when you turn it due to the light weight. When the 2023 Neo D / LAB is released, I think you will have to try it for yourself to believe it, but I guess one way to describe it is that it feels like your kite is inflated with helium. HOWDO YOU SEE THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DUOTONE D/LAB PRODUCTS? Product development is a process that is constantly unfolding in front of you. Of course, you have ideas of where you want it to go, but you never really know what’s possible until you get there and there are often unexpected surprises or challenges along the way. One thing I can say for sure is that I can’t remember any other time in the history of the brand that we’ve had so many different ground-breaking projects across different product lines all happening at the same time or at this accelerated pace, so I believe that our deep dive into new materials is the beginning of a new phase of development with completely new horizons. Making these kinds of leaps in performance is what excites me the most about kiteboarding these days, so I’m really looking forward to seeing how far we can take it. Photo  Toby Bromwich Photo  Toby Bromwich Photo  Fninga NEO D / LAB SNEAK PREVIEW 2023 S C I E N C E O F F A B R I C S 103 D R I V I N G F U T U R E I N N O V A T I O N S