Wing specific boards

[gulljammer]

The Sky Wing looks like a well thought out board. Handle top and bottom is a great move. I have ridden the F-One wing board with handle bottom and used small foil SUP with handle on top and thought it would be good to have both options. The design looks fairly progressive, concave deck, channel bottom and straps/strap inserts. My concern would be in the cost, the Sky Wing is at least a couple of hundred dollars less than other competitors in the same size range, but it offers more features. I believe the expression is strong, light, cheap pick two. What is being sacrificed to meet the price point?

[Admin]

I imagine everyone is testing the market for this new category.  SUP foil prices or Surf foil prices?  $1200 seems pretty substantial to me (especially for the 4'8 x 22 55 L).   You have Takoon, Gong, Etc selling wing specific boards at just under 1000.  Again I have no first hand info of what weight or durability will be but $1200.00  didn't surprise me for MSRP.

[Dwight (DW)]

What is being sacrificed to meet the price point?

Nothing is my guess.

There has always been a few European based brands that want our US dollars based off their Euro. So overpriced for our market. They never reach the top in the US.

While Boards and More, the owners of Fanatic/Duotone globally is based in Europe, they have never based pricing off the Euro converted to dollars. So they dominate the US market with competitive pricing.

I might be all wet, but that's my view of it.

[VB_Foil]

Last Friday I received my new 5'1" 74L FoilSurfMachine Wing Board (thanks Dwight).  I'm 65 Kgs (145 lbs) and have been learning on a 5'11" 105L FSM.  Here are my initial notes for anyone interested:

I took the 5M F-one, Armstrong 2400 wing and 74L FSM out in 12-18 MPH side-onshore wind with building wind chop in the knee plus range.  After a quickly figuring the center balance point for the knee-start, I was up and riding with ease!

The 1 hour session was my best to date in terms of distance covered, percentage of successful gybes (over foiled on maybe 2 or 3 total).  Just a joy to ride! Towing myself into knee high wind swell runners....Never thought it would be possible in the river by my house!  Almost nailed my only tack attempt too (ended up Touching Down).

I was worried about the lower volume for schlogging, but I was surprised to be able to maintain balance in the chop while waiting on gusts as the wind died towards the end of my session.  I fell off once or twice, after the nose went pretty far submerged by mistake.  I never lost complete power in the wing, so if it went dead flat, balance would have been more of an issue for sure.

The 'volume worry' turned to curiosity so I took the board out today in calm water for a paddle with my SUP Paddle.  In 15 minutes of messing around, I only fell in once! (About the same as my first session on the 5'11" months back).  I was about 75% there in terms of flat water starting with the straps installed.  I found it easier to paddle 'straight' than my 5'11" 105L board for some reason.  Maybe more room to paddle in towards the rail at an angle with less nose and width.  I'm going to give it a go in offshore conditions SUPing to see if the 105L gets the axe.

[Dwight (DW)]

[VB_Foil]

Here's a short vid from today's session on the 5'1" board in some of the most hectic conditions for me to date. Winds jumped to from 20-30 to 30-40 mph right when I launched. Wind meter on a dock 50 yards from launch site. Swing 3.5M

https://www.instagram.com/tv/B-0bUVMjMFc/?igshid=z3nuzzm34d6c

[liv2surf]

Interesting new video about new Armstrong wing foil SUP boards from Real Watersports.

Interesting shapes and use of dual carbon parabolic? stringers around affixing the foil boxes to the deck, bottom and innards of board. 

[Admin]

Interesting new video about new Armstrong wing foil SUP boards

It seems like they are still committed to having SUP crossover capability.  I wonder how optimized that is for Winging.  Those are among the largest tail and rail chops that I have seen.  Almost the opposite of what Fanatic is doing on their wing specific models (especially the 5'4).  You can really see the differences in each design.  Removing all that extra material is notable in the specs.

Armstrong 5'5:  5'5 x 26.75 at 80 Liters
Fanatic 5'4:       5'4 x 26.00 at 95 Liters

[Phils]

My guess is the Armie boards were originally designed for SUP and at some point as Winging came on, they did some minor tweaking and called it a SUP/Wing board.

[Dwight (DW)]

Yeah, give your money to Fanatic or Fone.....real wing boards.

[obxDave]

We actually had 6 wing boarders at our local spot yesterday. A record! Two new smaller Naish boards (95 L maybe?), two of Dwight's wing boards, my old Blue Planet Carver board (I sold to a friend), and one smaller Slingshot Outwit. Every board I think was under 6'. Everyone was up and riding (every rider here has a kite foiling background). Plenty of different foils and wing a dings present. It was way cool that we outnumbered the kites.  Just a few boards (not following the social distance rules!)  shown in the pic.

Hopefully moving into the ocean when things warm up a bit more

[cnski]

ObxDave- Which Axis front wing are you using. Do you guys ever swap out foils to test back to back?

[AGK]

ObxDave- Which Axis front wing are you using. Do you guys ever swap out foils to test back to back?

Hi Cnski --  That's my Axis in the pic -- straight beginner setup: 1020 front, 500 rear, short fuse, 76 cm mast.  It's has been great for an average (at best) kite foiler to learn on.  But I haven't foiled with any other wing over 1200 cm^2

[styleito]

ObxDave- Which Axis front wing are you using. Do you guys ever swap out foils to test back to back?

Hi Cnski --  That's my Axis in the pic -- straight beginner setup: 1020 front, 500 rear, short fuse, 76 cm mast.  It's has been great for an average (at best) kite foiler to learn on.  But I haven't foiled with any other wing over 1200 cm^2

And mine on Dave's old board. I have an Axis 92 with a short fuse and 400 rear wing. With 60 and 76 cm masts.
Dave uses Gong and Moses foils. Amongst the others in our group we have one using Lift, one using Naish, and one using Slingshot foils.

[VB_Foil]

Man, I want to make the trip down from SE/VA to session with you guys when this whole lockdown eases up!