Longer Fuselage = Greater Stability?

[tkaraszewski]

Fair enough. How about this for a contribution:

1. The longer the fuse the less fun foiling

I used to own the original alpine set up (no one talks about alpine anymore? Do they still exist?) and it had one of the longest fuses of any foil. It was like riding on a railway track and about as fun.

Entirely subjective. Different people find different things fun.

2. Ride as small a fuse as your skill level allows

With bigger front wings a beginner can ride a short fuse easily and enjoy a much more lively and dynamic ride. Recommending anything else is to steer newbies in the wrong direction.

Ride what you enjoy. People are still going faster, higher and surfing better with stabilizers than without.

3. Yes a beginner can learn foiling on a T1

Nobody asked.

Sorry couldn’t resist. Please feel free to return to your discussion about how to make kite foiling as boring as possible by encouraging riding with long fuses. And we ask ourselves as a sport why winging is eating kiting’s lunch?

It's because people are winging without stabilizers, right? Oh, no it's not.

[TritonFoils]

Tough crowd Triton.


Keep up the great work and innovation.

Seriously eh! In all seriousness I don’t care what people ride as everyone has their own kink but the small “c” conservativism of many “foilers” on this forum is striking. I guess less people than one would think don’t really progress skill wise and hence the endless obsession with making kite foiling easier (which undoubtedly is responsible for the current exodus to winging). This is kind of weird in that in most sports people want to be challenged and learn new things. I bet at the end of the day it’s a question of age. I expect the average age of people posting on this thread is 50+ and at the half century mark your best days physical are behind u no if thans or buts. Hence the conservativism. Going back to what you know and the fear of the unknown,etc. Oh well. Enjoy guys. But if you are having a mid life crisis when it comes to your foiling try a monofoil. Spleene has one too so take your pick. I know it saved me from hitting a dead end with my foiling and feeling that the excitement was slipping away.

Best of luck!

Rudy@TritonFoils

[tkaraszewski]

Tough crowd Triton.


Keep up the great work and innovation.

Seriously eh! In all seriousness I don’t care what people ride as everyone has their own kink but the small “c” conservativism of many “foilers” on this forum is striking. I guess less people than one would think don’t really progress skill wise and hence the endless obsession with making kite foiling easier (which undoubtedly is responsible for the current exodus to winging). This is kind of weird in that in most sports people want to be challenged and learn new things. I bet at the end of the day it’s a question of age. I expect the average age of people posting on this thread is 50+ and at the half century mark your best days physical are behind u no if thans or buts. Hence the conservativism. Going back to what you know and the fear of the unknown,etc. Oh well. Enjoy guys. But if you are having a mid life crisis when it comes to your foiling try a monofoil. Spleene has one too so take your pick. I know it saved me from hitting a dead end with my foiling and feeling that the excitement was slipping away.

Best of luck!

Rudy@TritonFoils

Nobody is upset about your foil, people are annoyed by your inability to keep from saying, "Hey, your thing sucks and my thing is great, you should do my thing!" even in conversations that are specifically not about monofoils.

[IWantToFly]

Thanks to all for your contributions and great advice/insight. Peter's advice to try a different stab is something I had not thought of before and may consider buying a bigger one (my current stab is 48cm - not sure what the surface area is).

But for now I will continue to use the short fuse. It is a bit lively at times but I have been getting used to that. I definitely want to upgrade my kit once I get more skilled.

@Triton - you probably thought my post was related to kite foiling whereas my equipment is for wing foiling. As Consumer asked - are you considering making a larger foil for winging?

Along the lines of Peter’s comment, don’t spend too long on your huge foil. As my wife has been learning she’s gone from 2000 -> 1700 -> 1300 over the course of maybe 20 sessions. Once she understood the feel of the foil, the smaller foils actually served her better as they had so much less drag. They absolutely took some getting used to, but I’m not sure she would have continued improving as much had she stuck with the large foil trying to keep progressing.
That Infinity 99 is really big!

[Matty V]

Yes we have something very neat in the works for wingers re: a monofoil solution. Lots of prototyping and testing in 2022 and very happy with the result. Coming this Spring with news we will share on the forum likely next month re: specs, ride, pricing. Its been a fascinating learning experience re: the different lift characteristics you need for a winging foil vs. kiting. Much greater variance than first assumed. The result again is super frictionless ride for winging that you only get with a monofoil. If you are interested in getting the latest news on our winging monofoil go to our website and sign up for the newsletter. Thanks for your interest in riding "stabless"!

https://www.tritonfoils.com/contact.html

Rudy @TritonFoils

Eating kitesurfing’s lunch when there is a buck in it for you…

[consumer]

Thanks to all for your contributions and great advice/insight. Peter's advice to try a different stab is something I had not thought of before and may consider buying a bigger one (my current stab is 48cm - not sure what the surface area is).

But for now I will continue to use the short fuse. It is a bit lively at times but I have been getting used to that. I definitely want to upgrade my kit once I get more skilled.

@Triton - you probably thought my post was related to kite foiling whereas my equipment is for wing foiling. As Consumer asked - are you considering making a larger foil for winging?

Along the lines of Peter’s comment, don’t spend too long on your huge foil. As my wife has been learning she’s gone from 2000 -> 1700 -> 1300 over the course of maybe 20 sessions. Once she understood the feel of the foil, the smaller foils actually served her better as they had so much less drag. They absolutely took some getting used to, but I’m not sure she would have continued improving as much had she stuck with the large foil trying to keep progressing.
That Infinity 99 is really big!

One thing I don’t understand is the interplay between aspect, ratio, size and pumpability.

I find smaller foils are easier to pump, and now that people are wing on a smaller sized foils ~800 cm2 people are shifting from very high aspect, foils to medium aspect. What’s confusing though is that the dock start people have shown that bigger foils are key to maximize distance and foil time. I’ve seen a mix of aspect ratios for big doc start set ups.

I am pretty sure that shorter fuses with smaller stabilizers also make pumping much faster and easier. But I don’t know if that necessarily translates to being able to ride longer distances for the same amount if effort.

[bragnouff]

The specific thing about dock start is the initial speed, or lack thereof. Small foils do pump well, once you go fast enough, you can pump to maintain that speed. Works well with a wing or with a wave giving you that initial speed. If you slow down too much though, it'd be hard to recover with extra pumping.
The big wings for dockstarts lift and glide at walking speed, or slow running speed at least, allowing to pump and glide forever, provided your fitness is adequate.

Shorter fuses tend to affect the way you have to pump. Smaller amplitude/higher frequency. When averaged over a period of minute(s), not sure this is any easier on the body than fewer bigger pumping movements.

[kct]

One thing I don’t understand is the interplay between aspect, ratio, size and pumpability.

Don't forget shimming

Higher aspect ratios have more gradual lift and descent which requires more speed to be effective. But once you're flying they pay off with less drag and thus better pumping.

Bigger foils allow for lower stall speed but also slow you down and are hard to control in big waves.

I only prone foil. Aspect ratio is very important in my experience. I wasn't able to link waves until I replaced my old surfy foil with an axis 980.

[JakeFarley]

Thanks to all for your contributions and great advice/insight. Peter's advice to try a different stab is something I had not thought of before and may consider buying a bigger one (my current stab is 48cm - not sure what the surface area is).

But for now I will continue to use the short fuse. It is a bit lively at times but I have been getting used to that. I definitely want to upgrade my kit once I get more skilled.

Try moving the mast to the B position for more stability, if your board can tolerate having the mast back farther to compensate.

I moved the mast to the B position, but at first I only moved the mast back around 5". The lift was so much that I had my front foot in front of the deck pad to keep the board down. I came in and moved the mast to the back of the track and that worked great. Winds were 21-26 knots gusty which was a bit too much for my kit, but I had a great time.