Steering is one reason for down sizing. The main one though in my experience is to reduce kite force by using a smaller kite.
Flat kites (not BOW, don't want any more trademark suits, right?), can be very substantially depowered. You can sacrifice steering as you say particularly when trying to use too large a kite with excessive depowering. Saw a guy doing this on Saturday. He had no understanding of how to trim his 14 m flat kite despite being out in 18 kt.+ winds.
Compounding things, he had no intention of getting in the water lacking sufficient skill but just wanted to practice on land with too large a kite. I wouldn't fly anything larger than a 5 m in moderate winds for land practice while developing skills. Anything larger is asking for problems.
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FKA, Inc.
transcribed by:
Rick Iossi
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