Peter_Frank wrote:....
Maybe small evolution details, but nothing that changes much - so the French has got it quite right with the earlier years evolution to get to this point, and even the first Carafino had the same principles, just with the exception most of ....todays foils are way superior in feel and performance, so extremely desirable....
Maybe something revolutionary will come one day, just like the Bow/SLE kites in 2005, you never know - but right now you dont have to wait for better gear IMO.
PF
Tone wrote:
I agree they haven't changed much however the work over the last decade by the French, almost silently brought the sport to a near peak without anyone noticing. Now the changes are all very subtle.
Now it may not be a design breakthrough, but making foils out of Aluminium and bringing the price point way down is a great bit of progression, it is getting more into the sport which is always good.
Tone
Hey PF,
At a first glance after reading your post I wondered about your argumentation that HF might have reached the end of revolution and only small evolution steps will prevail
.
Regretfully I came to the conclusion that it is quite a fact
.
The rationale comes from the energy efficiency point of view.
Even if there is a new "revolutionary" efficiency quantum leap, the relative gain will be small compared to the energy efficiency gain between a board vs a Hfoil set.
The current efficiency gain is about two to three times fold.
So even if another
two fold higher efficiency will be achieved, the relative gain will be negligible compared to the current situation (
Schei~~e !).
No doubt that price down will increase the popularity of Hfoiling.
Today any HFTF [HFoiling Techie Freak
© ] is able to make, change, tweak and test zillion of ideas thanks to 3D scanning and printing technologies (which was/is not practical for kites because of their size).
BTW you can even print carbon.
This probably will boost evolution rate