Standup Zone Forum
The Foil Zone => Foil SUP => Topic started by: supfoo on August 27, 2019, 05:56:39 PM
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Sorry if this has been discussed.... I see people cutting Maliko tail wings down & or using Kai tail wing when looking for max lift. Am I doing myself a disservice not cutting the Maliko tail?
Can it be explained when you want to use
1 : Kai tail
2 : Maliko tail
3 : Cut Maliko tail
I mainly use the IWA wing & sometimes the Maliko 200, my main setup is IWA with Maliko tail. So few waves here I really dont want to be spending time experimenting.
Thanks
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Actually, let me add complexity. the new GL tail on any foil picks the speed up substantially and doesn't seem to have any negative effect. It feels the same with an M200 or 280 as the standard M200 tail does, but it goes faster and turns easier. My M200 tail is gathering dust in the truck.
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I gave the Iwa/Kai combo a try a couple times, and didn't like it either time. But I'm also on an "angledfoils" so it already turns really well, and I seemed to lose drive out of the turns, and it didn't pump as well with the Kai tail. So I put the Maliko tail back on, and that was that.
It was even worse when I threw the Kai on behind the M200...less than a half dozen waves, couldn't stand it, I paddled in, and couldn't get it off the fuselage fast enough.
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I'm interested in the cutting or mod the tail as I have both Kai and Maliko but maybe not as yet :D
I'm 80kg and my goto setup is IWA with Kai tail. I didn't like the feel when I combo the IWA with Maliko tail, has too much left and scary even on 1-2ft waves, maybe I'm doing it wrong.
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I'm interested in the cutting or mod the tail as I have both Kai and Maliko but maybe not as yet :D
I'm 80kg and my goto setup is IWA with Kai tail. I didn't like the feel when I combo the IWA with Maliko tail, has too much left and scary even on 1-2ft waves, maybe I'm doing it wrong.
Yeah, kinda sounds like it...Iwa w/ the Maliko tail is my go to setup to shoulder-head high...I'll run the Kai setup above that. I'm 84kg for comparison.
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Is there a specific Maliko tail wing or is it just the Iwa and the Kai tail wings?
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Is there a specific Maliko tail wing or is it just the Iwa and the Kai tail wings?
Should be one and the same. I am pretty sure the IWA ships with the Maliko tail wing which was so named due to it being the tail that came with the original Maliko 160. I think Bill just sold me on the new tail... now if only they are in stock.
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I think Big Winds still has a few. They are super spendy though. I think having the ability to shim the angle is the big deal. I'm going to 3D print a bunch of shims for front and back. I don't like the washer approach, though it works. It's a bit spooky with a tail that costs more per pound than a Ferrari.
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Smaller Kai Tail works great even with the big Maliko 200 front wing.
I was skeptical but then was using it all summer on the East coast. Here I am flying, turning pumping, taking off on non-breaking waves. Just takes getting used to.
Essentially out pitch control with our feet is TERRIBLE. After a while you can manage the subtleties necessary to control the 'lack' of rear stabilizer. Take the tail off entirely if you want. The rig will still fly. It's just SUPER pitchy.
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Beahso, what do you find that it does better than using the Iwa/Maliko or M200/Maliko tail setup? I could fly it, but it was draggy and slow, and didn't turn any better than the with the bigger tail...no acceleration or "pump" IOWs was all I found with it.
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I never tried the KAI tail. The cut MALIKO tail is about halfway between the two in size. I was personally very happy with the 420mm cut MALIKO tail combo with both the M200 and IWA. Pitch stability is a bit more touchy - which has good and bad. On the good side, its really easy to get it out of the water and to avoid overfoiling. On the other hand, you have to have your feet right and react fast.
A big thing you have to understand is that the MALIKO tail creates DOWNFORCE! That downforce is NOT lift - effectively it is like pitching moment pushing the nose up (and the tail down). The tail is negating some of the front wing lift, and on top of that creating drag. And the worst part is that it seems to be somewhat variable with speed. So if you take a steep drop at high speed you really have to work to keep the nose down, then when you slow down you need to shift weight to trim up the nose. With the cut down tail, I didn't feel any of that speed sensitivity - it was much more neutral and didn't require so much work to trim the nose.
The new GL tails seem to be much more neutrally tuned - I don't think they are setup stock to produce much if any downforce. I haven't tried the new tail with IWA or M200 because the GL wing is so fun as it is.
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Beasho, thanks for responding, you are half the reason I posted this, I noticed the Kai tail in your videos.
Pono Bill, would you suggest I go with new the wide, or narrow tail ? I guess i can get both...
Jondrums, thanks for explaining how it works.
Thanks for the help guys! On another note, I went out this evening & had a blast, FLkiter helped me dial in my mast placement & wow, did that make a difference. Front foot strap is a Godsend, but I'm glad I learned without it. Having the proper gear is so crucial.
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I have the wide one, and it seems fine.
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A big thing you have to understand is that the MALIKO tail creates DOWNFORCE! That downforce is NOT lift - effectively it is like pitching moment pushing the nose up (and the tail down). The tail is negating some of the front wing lift, and on top of that creating drag. And the worst part is that it seems to be somewhat variable with speed. So if you take a steep drop at high speed you really have to work to keep the nose down, then when you slow down you need to shift weight to trim up the nose. With the cut down tail, I didn't feel any of that speed sensitivity - it was much more neutral and didn't require so much work to trim the nose.
This is 100% TRUE.
No-one has been able to explain WHY there is so much downforce imparted by these big Maliko tails. I think it is a leftover from flying LONG foil SUP's with extended Noses that otherwise would never get air-borne.
These big tails also add STABILITY which is (maybe) great for learning but not so great when you want to start breaking out the moves.
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Would I get more lift out of the M200/M280 with the new 18Wide Tail instead of the Maliko tail?
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+1 on what jondrums and Beasho said...thats pretty much all of it right there
+1 on what pono said too AND once you get the new GL setup the whole discussion is moot cause you'll never want to run the old stuff again anyway...the GL stuff os too GOOD!
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Would I get more lift out of the M200/M280 with the new 18Wide Tail instead of the Maliko tail?
I'm absolutely certain you will. However it is a small factor and may not be detectable without back-to-back A/B testing. You would likely be able to feel the reduced drag (and increased top speed). I am also certain you would feel the difference in the "nose-up" pitching moment. Some might mistake this feeling for lift because it "lifts" up the nose, but it isn't lift - it is pitching moment.
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Would I get more lift out of the M200/M280 with the new 18Wide Tail instead of the Maliko tail?
I'm absolutely certain you will. However it is a small factor and may not be detectable without back-to-back A/B testing. You would likely be able to feel the reduced drag (and increased top speed). I am also certain you would feel the difference in the "nose-up" pitching moment. Some might mistake this feeling for lift because it "lifts" up the nose, but it isn't lift - it is pitching moment.
I guess I should have asked if it would give me more lift in the absolute worst, ultra-tiny-small, wind chop generated "waves". Seems like everyone who loves the GL wings uses them to surf real swells the likes of California and Hawaii. I'm trying to ride stuff in the armpit of the Florida panhandle and find it impossible to even make the M280 fly. There's just never enough push from the "waves" to get going. When the waves actually get bigger, it's because the wind is nuking and I might as well be kiting or windsurfing because paddling into a 20mph head wind is futile.
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Check out this guy. He has a good podcast about foiling too. He’s somewhere in Florida.
https://instagram.com/the.progression.project?igshid=1qwv25j5dop5y
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If you can't make an M280 work then a GL240 won't help. It's a little harder to get up on.
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A big thing you have to understand is that the MALIKO tail creates DOWNFORCE!
Hi John,
I was under the impression that they all were positive lift for the main foil and negative lift for the stabilizer. It looks like both our Kai and Iwa tails are set up for negative lift and it looks like our Axis 500 tail is the same. What alternate configurations are out there?
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There is no rule that says the tail has to create down-force. Can be neutral or lifting. folks that have played with adjustable tails know more than I do about this (I haven't messed with the GL tail shimming - looks neutral out of the box). KAI and MALIKO aren't adjustable of course, I'm not sure why they made them that way. I was thinking that maybe doing that helps lower the stall speed for high angle of attack.
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I picture this differently. I am seeing the front wing as "rightside up" and creating "up" lift. On all of our tails the wing is inverted or upside down. I would see that as always creating negative lift. I had pictured shims to the tail to alter the angle of that negative lift. Is that incorrect?
I think I have also heard of having both wings right side up and uplifting but is that done with these foils?
(http://code7700.com/images/stall_pitch_tendencies_low_tail_1.png)
(https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-0a0b8d02a16b6d0a0ea652070cbc3cb0.webp)
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I think principles here are very similar to aircraft.
If the tail area is appropriately sized in ratio to the wing and the distance between them - then the best lift/drag ratio (lowest drag, best glide, etc) should be achieved when the tail is trimmed somewhere between neutral and slight lift. In many planes, the tail is a lifting surface when the center of gravity is at the rearward end of the range (and vice-versa its a downforce surface when the CG is forward). Maximum glide/least drag occurs when the CG is slightly aft and the tail can be trimmed to neutral or just above. Big planes shuttle fuel around to optimize the CG and reduce drag / increase efficiency.
On a foil board, we can dynamically adjust fore-aft weight balance - so I see no reason why we should be using down-force rear wings.
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Just FYI, some early kite foils did have lifting rear wings. Gong was one of those. They don’t do this anymore.
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has anyone experimented with shimming a tail to create uplift? I guess I'll have to try it one of these days. Might have to learn the hard way why everyone has designed downforce in the tail.
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Theoretical No Dice on lifting tail:
"Yet the wing is invariably more efficient than the tail, producing its lift for a smaller relative drag penalty."
The most efficient wing is a long thin high aspect, glider wing, that would extend to infinity. Every wing tip has a drag (vortice) penalty aka NO Tail is better. Down force is also "Bad!"
This might be hard to build, and hard to control. Any deviation from this produces LESS LIFT.
But your wing might breach, break . . . .
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Here is where the wings should be going.
I was setting up the GoPro and caught a loon flying overhead. It is flying down screen note the leading edge of its wing is dead straight.
And NO or very little tail influence. All a result of a few billion more test cycles (including the failures).
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The most efficient wing is a long thin high aspect, glider wing, that would extend to infinity. Every wing tip has a drag (vortice) penalty aka NO Tail is better. Down force is also "Bad!"
Thank you for this! makes total sense. This suggests that a perfectly neutral tail (no upforce or downforce) should be the best setup for maximum GLIDE.
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has anyone experimented with shimming a tail to create uplift? I guess I'll have to try it one of these days. Might have to learn the hard way why everyone has designed downforce in the tail.
I think that you would need to de-invert the tail wing as well to create uplift. As long as it is inverted (all of these these cambered tail wings) I don't think it can create uplift regardless of angle.
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There are lots of near-zero lift tails around--most kite foils are damned close to that. I think the reason they have a foil at all is to keep them from being any sharper than they already are. I've slashed my canopy up enough with stabilizers. Roundness gives me another two seconds before the stabilizer penetrates and starts shredding. Of course, I usually use that to stare stupidly at the coming catastrophe...
Most of the really gruesome pictures of people with foil injuries are from trying to use kite foils to surf with. I think that's how Sam Pa'e got his head cut up. If you have a kite dragging you around it's less likely that you will fall on a foil. In surfing, most of the muscle reactions you've accumulated promote a lovely jackknife effect and drop you onto the foil. Rounded edges mean that causes spectacular bruises but rarely cuts.
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There are lots of near-zero lift tails around
Are there any examples of surf or SUP foils that do not have a front wing that is rightside up (convex up/concave down) and a rear wing that is inverted (concave up/convex down)?
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No. but there are plenty of kite wings that look like near-zero lift. Jet aircraft foils look like zero lift, they're generally symmetrical, it's angle of attack that makes them lift or not. That's one reason they fly well upside-down while slower aircraft with high-lift foils need to point their nose radically up to fly inverted.
You might think that wouldn't apply to hydrofoils since the speed is so much lower, but remember that water is a thousand times more dense than air, and lift is a function of density, foil coefficient, area, and velocity squared. In air the density is variable (altitude and velocity both vary density of the medium) and is at least a thousand times less while in water the density is fixed (water is incompressible at the pressures involved). Kiter foilers routinely go 15 to 40 mph while foil surfers go 5 to 15 (more in short bursts). That's about three times faster on average so nine times as much lift from the same wing.
Wing foilers are already starting to go a lot faster and the specialized foils will be different from what we are using now.
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My first foil was a Naish, had an adjustable rear wing, it made a big difference on being able to catch the wave.
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What are kiters using now? Is it two cambered wings in our configuration (inverted rear wing) or something else?
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This is pretty cool to consider in regards to changing/adjusting tail stabilizers.
(https://www.boldmethod.com/images/learn-to-fly/performance/what-affect-does-cg-have-on-your-plane/lift-weight.jpg)
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yes, that image comes from a pretty good decription of Center of Gravity vs. efficiency here:
https://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly/performance/how-does-cg-affect-aircraft-performance/
notable quote:
"while having an aft CG definitely improves performance, in most light aircraft, the difference in will be a few extra knots of airspeed, and a little better climb rate."
My conclusion from all this discussion is:
we should shift our feet and hips to achieve a center of gravity directly over the front wing center of lift and arrange the tail for a neutral position without lift or downforce in the nominal case.
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has anyone experimented with shimming a tail to create uplift? I guess I'll have to try it one of these days. Might have to learn the hard way why everyone has designed downforce in the tail.
a couple of years ago i made a tail wing that could be attached either way, upward or downward lift.
in my minimally educated opinion-
- awful pitch stability
- slight reduction in drag
- very even foot pressure, mast is almost in between your feet
- no drive in the pumps. i see it as a sort of triangulation of the water flow to create thrust. water is thrown down off the main wing and upward off the tail wing resulting in the board trying to pitch up sharply, which it cannot do if the rider is in control so the only other option for it is to go forward. you may notice in some flat water pumping vids little breaking waves being pushed up behind the foil as it goes along. this is the water being pushed up by the tail wing
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In regard to shimming, I believe that inverting a cambered wing or stabilizer will always lift downward. If you then angle an inverted wing enough it can create upforce by deflection. Kind of like Bernoulli and Newton arm wrestling :). That would, of course, be a super inefficient way of producing upforce.
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It's actually a common way. Almost any airplane can fly inverted but it flys nose up. Many can also fly knife edge if they have enough power.
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I found a really interesting article about that which I cannot find right now. They mentioned that early pilots with low poiwer and very heavily cambered wings were able to fly them upside down for short durations with enough angle. They switched to symmetrical wings for stunt use because they were so much more efficient when upside down. Of course, you wouldn't choose and inverted wing to be used primarily for upforce. I guess the point of that is that shimming an inverted tailwing on foils for our purposes makes sense to (but not past) a neutral position.
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I received my GL 210 today, after dark, & it was windy & wavey this evening! Had to go on the Maliko 200 but still had fun. Anyway, the tail is back ordered till next month. Has anyone tried the GL's with the old tails?? I'm wondering what to expect or if I should even try it at all.
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I received my GL 210 today, after dark, & it was windy & wavey this evening! Had to go on the Maliko 200 but still had fun. Anyway, the tail is back ordered till next month. Has anyone tried the GL's with the old tails?? I'm wondering what to expect or if I should even try it at all.
I just recieved my GL210 couple weeks ago as the GL rears were sold out, but finally tracked one down,and in mean time have been using it with the maliko tail and really like it in small waves,I just recieved my rear 1.5 18W tail but have not tried it yet waiting for a bit more swell to test it but with my weight 225lb the GL210 with the Maliko tail works great for me and it’s a stock Maliko not cut down, looking forward to trying the new 18W tail, but was pleasantly surprised how well it worked for me.
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Me too. I have the GL tail, but I tried the Maliko tail and liked the way it felt. I'm wing foiling, so this doesn't necessarily translate to surf foiling, but the Maliko tail felt more stable and I could get up on the foil more easily, the GL tail is less draggy, but I needed to power up the foil instead of being able to pump up. I find the same thing happens with the Axis using the 440 tail vs. the 500.
My pumping isn't very effective, but it helps in light wind. The 5M wing makes both wing pumping and foil pumping more effective--I can kind of hang on it and make my feet lighter.
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The cut MALIKO tail is about halfway between the two in size. I was personally very happy with the 420mm cut MALIKO tail combo with both the M200 and IWA. Pitch stability is a bit more touchy - which has good and bad. On the good side, its really easy to get it out of the water and to avoid overfoiling. On the other hand, you have to have your feet right and react fast.
A big thing you have to understand is that the MALIKO tail creates DOWNFORCE! That downforce is NOT lift - effectively it is like pitching moment pushing the nose up (and the tail down). The tail is negating some of the front wing lift, and on top of that creating drag. And the worst part is that it seems to be somewhat variable with speed. So if you take a steep drop at high speed you really have to work to keep the nose down, then when you slow down you need to shift weight to trim up the nose. With the cut down tail, I didn't feel any of that speed sensitivity - it was much more neutral and didn't require so much work to trim the nose.
The new GL tails seem to be much more neutrally tuned - I don't think they are setup stock to produce much if any downforce. I haven't tried the new tail with IWA or M200 because the GL wing is so fun as it is.
I am still with Jondrums on this tail issue. At first I thought the smaller tails DID NOT PUMP well. But then I used them more, as in 20+ sessions more, and they started to work. I then had to ask whether it was the equipment or the rider.
Pono - You were the one that suggested the reason a FLYING WING with NO TAIL may not be as effective as having a tail is because the wild, uncontrolled pitching up/down would actually reduce the efficiency of flying wing only.
The better we can manage the pitch the more efficiently we can fly without, or with smaller, tails.
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the new flat GL tail cost almost half the price of the front GL wing and thinking about modifying my maliko and keep the kai as standard.