2024 Eleveight GT1 Plus Wing Overview with Kevin Wade

Pat is with Kevin Wade at King of the Great Lakes Test Fest, checking out the new 2024 GT1+ Wing from Eleveight. What does the "Plus" mean, and is it right for you?

Kevin: We have the Plus Series now, including the RS+ kite and the Process and Master C+ twintips. We're building out a comprehensive upper echelon line to highlight which products have a little bit of extra special sauce and higher quality materials. If you're looking for the top of the top in terms of performance, the Plus line is what you'll go for.

The GT1 is going to be our first wing in the Plus line. Wing is a really popular category, and as the segment has grown, people have wanted more performance and more versatility, and that's what we've given them in the GT1+.

It has a rigid handle since a lot of people are going with rigid handles, but there's still that crowd that likes the ultimate weight reduction with the lightest wing possible, so we give the best of both worlds here. If the wing is deflated, you can remove the rigid handles and you'll have a padded soft handle that's integrated in there. If you're doing freestyle, freeriding, or heavy wind riding, having that rigidity in the handles is great, but if you have that perfect wind where you want to slack it and let it go behind you in a wave session, having that extra weight reduction and the softness of the handles is really nice.

Pat: It's great to have options. You've let the customer decide what they want. Give them both and let them figure it out on their end.

Kevin: Absolutely. It's especially nice when people are trying to figure out what they want to do in winging and how they want to approach it. It's still a relatively new sport, so having that versatility is really awesome.

We have the XTC TEX, which is our highest quality material for the leading edge and strut that doesn't venture into that Dyneema-based fabric. Once we go to something like the RS+ we take it up another step, but in terms of our Dacron-based materials, this is going to be top-of-the-line. It's relatively rigid, quite a bit more rigid than traditional Dacron, and you also have that weight reduction, but it's very resilient as well and still uses those same weaving methods, so if something is broken, you can still put a traditional patch on it.

We're still using the X4 ripstop, which is what we use across the line on all of our premium kites and wings, and then we have the micro battens for extra rigidity. We try to focus on canopy tension with all the kites and wings across the line. When that wind picks up, having a really tight canopy that's going to move with you as you're doing your tacks or your transitioning really helps with performance.

We have a little bit of a scalloped trailing edge so you're not worrying about dipping the wingtip, especially in the larger sizes or in those lighter winds. These wings are sized a bit smaller; for example our 7m is more around a 6.5m in terms of power, so that's something to be mindful of when you're picking the size. Other than that, this thing is a performance powerhouse. It's a really good value on that top end of the wing segment, and I'm really stoked about it.

Pat: It's good to hear that about the sizing. A lot of people in kiting know to size your kite based off of how it was designed, but in winging I feel like people don't quite understand that or don't take that factor into account yet, so that's good information to size up a half meter from what you normally would do.

Kevin: Yeah, absolutely. When we were doing demos, everybody said the wing's sick but they just didn't feel like they could get enough power. We realized that we needed to start educating people on that, and once that was in their mind it got people out in the right conditions on the right equipment, which gave them the best experience, which is what we want.

Pat: Awesome. Kevin, thanks for running us through it!

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