Great question, so up until this year all the brands of wings that we carry have always had soft handles with very minimal canopy tension. This Armstrong XPS flags out much different while riding downwind because of these new changes to wings. The tighter canopy means the wing is more effected by how you turn or carve riding downwind. While riding this wing on small bumps, the rider needs to be adapting to small movements in the wing. Older wings in general had much softer canopies, which resulted in a wing that was not as twitchy and more just park it and ride. As far as the handles go, soft handles absorb the gusts that can come through your wing and act a shock absorber. Rigid handles you can feel more the gusts hitting the wing. Not sure this helps you understand more of how the wing behaves while riding down wind. If you have already been riding with hard handles, then you're probably already use to the way they ride going downwind. Let me know if this helps you out at all, thanks again for watching the review KPS
Ethan, Thanks for the video review, and for the advice today on the phone about armstrong stuff.
what kind of retraining would you need while going downwind?
Great question, so up until this year all the brands of wings that we carry have always had soft handles with very minimal canopy tension.
This Armstrong XPS flags out much different while riding downwind because of these new changes to wings. The tighter canopy means the wing is more effected by how you turn or carve riding downwind. While riding this wing on small bumps, the rider needs to be adapting to small movements in the wing. Older wings in general had much softer canopies, which resulted in a wing that was not as twitchy and more just park it and ride.
As far as the handles go, soft handles absorb the gusts that can come through your wing and act a shock absorber. Rigid handles you can feel more the gusts hitting the wing. Not sure this helps you understand more of how the wing behaves while riding down wind. If you have already been riding with hard handles, then you're probably already use to the way they ride going downwind. Let me know if this helps you out at all, thanks again for watching the review
KPS
@@KitePaddleSurfgot it thanks! I'm coming from a '22 Duotone Unit so it sounds similar.