windfreak74 wrote:It seems to me that foils are the light wind wepon of choice but i wonder what would be lost by loosing 20 cms of keel lenght. most foills are ridden in super flat wáter.
this question comes from seeing that most of the time foils are 30 cms in wáter and the other 60 cms on air.is this really needed?
torque wise the 90 cm length makes the keel more prone woble or breaking.
is this assumption correct?
Im want to build one from scrap and learn!
thanks for sharing.
Pedro
Why do you say/think most foils are ridden in super flat water ???
I've never ridden in flat water (and never super flat), but only in a couple of feet chop as the most flat, but more often big chop or even 3-5 foot waves also, sometimes breaking too.
So the 100cm keel I have is perfect IMO
I have seen Rush Randle, using super short keels on some test models a couple of years ago.
But as you DONT want the foil to reach the surface, as it will ventilate and you either crash or slow down, and you DONT want to touch the water with your board either - as this slows you down like hitting a brake - then it makes sense to have a keel of a certain length, in order to have some "room" for error and waves/chop
This is just for going straight.
When turning and jibing/tacking, "height" is really really important, as you need some room when you trip around/change feet or jump around on your board - so it wont get down on the surface and make a full stop
So lots of reasons why it has a certain lenght, typically between 85 and 100cm now.
Peter