Flysurfer POW Parawing Review | A New Standard for Parawings?

Flysurfer has been making foil kites for years, so you'd expect their entry into the parawing market to be something special. The POW, or "Pop Open Wing" is available now, and Tucker's been checking it out on the water. It does have some unique features, but how does that translate into performance?

Bar

Flysurfer's parawing bar incorporates a pistol grip, giving it an "L" shape. It's ergonomic and gives you a lot of control. The bar is light and narrow, which also helps make it very comfortable to use on the water. The ends are designed to let the bridles slide off rather than getting hung up, so when you redeploy your wing you shouldn't have any tangles.

Flysurfer has included a convenient feature for anyone who wants to attach a harness line. Unless you're tying your harness line onto your bar, you'll need to remove one end of the bridle from the bar to slide your line on, and that can be a pain. This bridle attaches with a pin that uses a flathead screwdriver to access, so you can be ready to go much easier and faster. A harness is great for relieving some pressure from your arms and getting your center of gravity lower, so it's nice that Flysurfer made that easy.

The bar is color coded, but with the tactile feedback of the pistol grip, you won't even need to look at your bar to make sure you're holding it the right way.

Bridle

The bridle uses a pulley to give you additional range and bar pressure adjustment. It's nice and close to the bar, so it doesn't get tangled in the bridle. The center line connects to the bar with an adjustable slide. Most of the time, Tucker rode with that right around the middle, but you may have your own preferences for your wind conditions, and it's nice to be able to customize that.

While most parawings have three sets of bridles, the pulley design gives the POW four sets. Still, the wing seemed to tangle less often than some others Tucker has tested, so it's a good design.

The bridles are all the same color, and while that shouldn't be a dealbreaker, it can make getting tangles out a little more time-consuming. Fortunately, that's an easy fix with a black permanent marker, if you prefer your lines to be different colors.

The lines are very high quality. They glide through your hands easily while you're pulling in your wing to stow it. There are no rough ends anywhere, so Flysurfer clearly took extra care with their splicing, and it gives it a premium feel with less wear and tear on your hands or gloves.

Canopy

The leading edge has a deep, efficient profile with some stiffening battens embedded. They do a great job giving the wing some shape as soon as you toss it in the air so it can fill up faster, but you do want to take a bit of care not to deform them when you pack the wing away after a session.

The design of the canopy is simple and efficient. It has just the right number of ribs to help keep the weight down. The material feels very durable, but on the scale it's still lightweight, so Flysurfer obviously knows how to pick sailcloth.

Tucker's Review

The POW comes in three sizes: a 1.7m, 2.5m and a 4m. Tucker is looking forward to getting out on the 4m on lighter days, but he's been having fun ripping around on the 2.5m in the windier spring weather. He has been able to use it in 30 knots and up. Parawings tend to have a lower upper end than wings, but the POW seems to handle it better than most. The ergonomic handle has helped a lot, too. The 2.5m also had an impressive low end of just 22 knots, which is really saying something with Tucker weighing in at around 90 kilos.

The POW goes upwind quite well. That upwind ability means Tucker can go out, ride downwind a mile, then ride back upwind without needing to commit a day to a downwinder and arrange for a pickup.

The POW gets two big thumbs-up from Tucker. It's got great range and ease-of-use. The only thing he'd change is to add color-coded bridles. It's not essential, but it does make life easier. Flysurfer is a brand known for listening and improving on their products, so maybe we'll see that later on. But overall, it's a very fun wing and is every bit as good as you'd expect from Flysurfer.

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