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George Hradil, owner/founder/designer/craftsman responsible for Delta Hydrofoil as well as the new Neil Pryde FRX one-design concept talking about the early days of the sport, how he got into the manufacturing game, and the direction he sees foiling going as people zero in on the most stable and fun to sail designs. This talk was intended to be about his ideas regarding passively controlled foiling monohull design, but there's a lot of mention of his company and how he and the Neil Pryde team came together to produce a high-performance mass-produced one-design (enough hyphens?!) class to bring more sailors and kiters into foil racing on an even playing field.

https://www.facebook.com/GreenHatKitebo ... yZDFGJpgq8

Very informative thanks for sharing.

thank you very much for sharing!

Read the full topic Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/groups/kiteboa ... 599635280/

My best quote for this topic comes from Markus Schwendtner (IKA) : "TTR in the youth olympic games on registered series production equipment (same principle as formula kite) with "bring your own" equipment (not one design) produced direct qualifiers from antigua, venezuela and dominican republic. in an event where there was only one place per continent and gender. havent seen that in any of the one design classes really... kiteboarding can become what snowboarding is for the winter olympics - why screw it up by another monopoly one design failure"

Percu.org wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 20, 2018 3:35 pm

Read the full topic Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/groups/kiteboa ... 599635280/

My best quote for this topic comes from Markus Schwendtner (IKA) : "TTR in the youth olympic games on registered series production equipment (same principle as formula kite) with "bring your own" equipment (not one design) produced direct qualifiers from antigua, venezuela and dominican republic. in an event where there was only one place per continent and gender. havent seen that in any of the one design classes really... kiteboarding can become what snowboarding is for the winter olympics - why screw it up by another monopoly one design failure"

Jeeze dude, troll somewhere else, this video has nothing to do with the Olympics discussion.

The video is about one design, no ?

And that has a lot to do with Olympic.

Great talk by George. And nice to see NP come out with a quality offering although I am not convinced that this is better than what you can already buy off the shelf now for similar or less money. But if we are worried about the cost of gear for Olympic racing then box rule has got to be the way to go. Restrict use of high modulus and set mimimums for strut thickness and kite and board weights to reduce the arms race and ensure the gear has a decent lifespan. Maybe add a length restriction for the strut. That’s it.

I'm not a fan of one-design as it takes away from innovation. So much opportunity for improvements in foil design and stability given how much variation that exists today between manufacturers and foils.

A small number of companies have made a name for themselves on the race circuit - MikesLab, Ozone, and f-One to name a few. One-Design essentially says, I can't complete with these manufacturers and products but by adopting one-design, competitors are now on the same (slow) page.

As for innovation, check out the latest on Super Cavitation that has started to be adapted to yachting but yet to be realized in kite foiling...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercavitation
http://www.marinepropulsors.com/proceed ... /MB2-3.pdf

bigcane wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 20, 2018 10:10 pm

Great talk by George. And nice to see NP come out with a quality offering although I am not convinced that this is better than what you can already buy off the shelf now for similar or less money. But if we are worried about the cost of gear for Olympic racing then box rule has got to be the way to go. Restrict use of high modulus and set mimimums for strut thickness and kite and board weights to reduce the arms race and ensure the gear has a decent lifespan. Maybe add a length restriction for the strut. That’s it.

You want to add in a few more restrictions too? Like rider size, nationality and having a ridiculously funded MNA, how about line length or material? No adjustable depower setups on bars, board size strut placement so you can’t tune the balance of the foil, stopping surface preperation on the mast and wings, no sanding or filling,

Even better let one brand sell you the gear outside of the normal retail channels and see how much grass roots benifit there is to kitesurfing as a sport. None.

You guys act like a one-design foil class would cancel open class racing. Can you imagine sailors having this conversation in real life? There are a ton of OD classes in sailing, and a bunch that are not, some are developmental rules and some are open. It doesn't cancel out the other forms of racing when a new format gets established. This is another, different form of racing.

BTW!!!!

This is not a thread about the Neil Pryde FRX class, this is a thread about passively stabilized sailboats and how the lessons learned from foil development apply to new ventures as materials improve.

If you guys want to bitch about Neil Pryde and the Olympics, start a different thread please.