First Session Tips - S3 & D Handle

BRM founder and designer Greg Drexler demonstrates the handling differences for your first sessions on the S3 and D Handle. Transcript: So, one thing for the S3 is the blue markers on the leading edge. The center is designated white, but there's two marks on either side. And the reason for those is if your wings kind of all tangled up in the water. The first thing I look for is a blue indicator. Try to figure out that's the left side of the wing. And you can kind of peel it out of the water. And if you just hold the two blue markers, you know you've got it. From there, what I do is I hold the bar in my right hand. So, I'm holding the blue marker. I'm going to let the blues, well, my right hand go first, my hand with the bar, and then a split second after that, the other side. So, that's going to look like that. And that's the easy launch. Also new, well, not new for the S3 is the front lines are still blue for easy identification, but on the bridal we have these two new orange lines. The reason for those is the rear orange line is sometimes helpful for pulling on the back of the wing to orient the leading edge downwind to cup the wind as it's already naturally doing. And then the front orange line is really convenient to speed and aid launching it off the water. Another situation in which I'll use that orange line is if I'm out in the water, the wind is completely died. It's hard to even keep the parawing up in the sky. Just putting a light tension on this front line pulls the angle attack entry to a lower angle and helps keep the wing up if it's just crazy light wind. This is already on the low side of power, but there's no trouble flying. So, it's really at sub riding power conditions. So, we've got our blue markers, our orange markers. What I'll describe next are different ways I'll hold the bar. Obviously, you can just hold the handle from the leading edge, but the disadvantage to that is the steering is really sloppy and difficult. So, what I'll normally do is put a couple fingers on the top of the bar, and that really makes the steering much easier. If I've got a taxi a really long ways, what I'll do is I'll slide my hand up and inside the handle. that puts it in a position the same as the harness line. So, it's just no effort to taxi a super long way with easy steering and you know, sort of a depowered but some power delivery. When it's time to get up on foil, I'm going to put my hand back here. I've got the two fingers on. And the one thing to notice is that after I stand up and I I'm having trouble with my balance, especially on smaller board, I grip the harness over onto that bar on the back to prevent me from accidentally hooking in while I'm pumping. So, here we go. Often times I'll be in this position. I'm waiting till I feel a little puff of wind. Not a lot of wind coming through today, but see what we got. All right, we're up. But what I'm next going to show is that the lines on the leading edge on the S3 are roughly the same length. And part of the reason for that is that when I take off on a wave or a bump and I retract the wing and I slide up those front lines, there isn't going to be a big bunch of canopy left still capturing wind. This is going to put away nice and clean. That looks like this. There's no big pillow of air. Voila. There's a light wind. Retract and deploy. Additional stuff I'll talk about here is the harness. do lots of things like the belt. Sometimes I can kind of scooch it up on my body changes the pull position, affects the effective length of the harness line and hook in total combination there. The positioning of the harness line is the mono harness line is really specific to the handle design to put it this just in just the right place. Fore and aft to have different effects. Hooking in and out is plenty easy. It's this guy is just rigid enough and it's crazy lightweight. So, it's just a matter of finding that hook. You don't don't need to use a hand, but you definitely can use a hand. I probably do that more often because a lot of times your hook will have slide out of position. The profile, well, maybe better described as the bridling, the bar input, the piloting option to the rider now. You see if I completely sheet out here, the whole canopy can shutter. The function of that is we are trying to reach as very much depower as possible. It's not that you actually fly it that way. You don't even really have steering. So the by the time you just put a light amount of tension with your hands, it's filling the canopy, it's shutting off that shutter that's giving you as much depower as possible, but it's also a function of its really flat profile shape, which gives this bugger crazy upwind drive. When I sheet in go, this goes in most riding conditions as high and in a lot of riding conditions, even higher than other categories.