Holy Shmockers

[PonoBill]

Wingfoiled today at Luhr Jensen in Hood River. gusty and nasty early on, but smoking later. I made the stupid mistake of dropping both a wing size and a foil size. I'm going to get a tattoo that says "change ONE thing". So yeah, went back to my 4.0 wing and an M200 foil and FLEW across the river. Wow, that is so very cool. I still haven't got the switchfoot foil thing working, so coming back was a long sequence of faceplants. But then I turned around and became a golden god of wind foil surfing again. Apparently a port only god. I spent about two hours talking with Adrian who is the designer/ co-owner of Axis foils. So much fun. I learned more about foils in two hours than I've managed to put together in four years of studying them.

I think I'm going to be buying a lot of parts from them. I like my 1020 axis, but I need to get it going so fast to lift my fat ass off the water that it all feels a little sketchy. I have a bunch of new ideas from our conversation, including the basic idea that some of my foil designs are not totally stupid. I guess we'll see. Feels like a whole new opportunity to learn. What could be better?

[Beasho]

Great grom report.  STOKE! 

Would love to hear some of the foil insights. 

[PonoBill]

One thing is something you already know--use as small a tail as you can manage. Stabilizers drag a bit and reduce turning looseness. I think I'm still in the "needs all the stability I can get" category, but I will get some smaller ones, and fiddle with angle of attack.

I've kind of blanked out on details, sort of what the physicist Ralph Leighton said about attending a Richard Feynman lecture "it's like mental Chinese food, you leave the lecture thinking you understand but half an hour later you're stupid again".  My design for a gull-wing shape for foil wings might be useful. I thought some dihedral close to the mast would help turning and stability while turning the tips anhedral and adding a tiny bit of washout would keep the buggers from broaching too soon and reduce stalling. There might be something there, though it will be a challenging wing to build.