80 UHM - The perfect all-rounder.
prone / tow / downwind / wing - my one and only. No desires to buy another one so far -
You guys should come down to Wrightsville Beach Saturday and Sunday June 29-30. We a have strong foil community here who love trying new designs/ideas and tinkering with gear. The Foil Shop has just sent me a Silk 1050 to try and should be here Fridayā¦
Canāt this time but would love to at some future date. in the meantime glad Josh is getting you taken care of!
Thanks for bringing attention to your local, thatās how the OP happened!
Anyone else feel free to pm or reply here, we keep a list and weāll try to come visit yāall.
Well you should at least swing in to ride with us on your way into or out of town. Weāve got killer conditions and setups during the summer.
How long will you have the Silk to demo? Iād love to try it out, but Iām still healing from an Achilles rupture. Will be down in WB for two weeks at the end of July.
Do you mainly prone do? I donāt know if I have seen you winging?
Brian Hicks
Those guys at The Foil Shop are rad. They basically said try before you buy. If I donāt like it, they said to send it back. So if I decide to keep it, Iāll definitely still have it. I prone and wing. Apparently itās a swiss army knife. Iām stoked to get on it. If youāre feeling better when youāre down here, hit me up. DM me on Insta @JsunAndre
I ride SK8 1050/850 and am 82kg, if i was going to get just the 850/85 mast what 3 tails should i get, one for light wind, one wave, one speed/glide? And would it work?
I ride f one midlength rocket 90l and 65l amos sultan.
Would be nice to just ride one foil.
Mike
Id suggest 132 for wave, 152 for light and ha40 for glide. You could probably get away with just the 132 and ha40 though.
Adding my 2 cents review - first few times out on my Silk 1050 (hoping for a one foil quiver until I can save up some more doubloons). Been surfing all my life, 80kg (ish), competent intermediate rider, wing surfing whatever kind of swell I can find.
What a foil! Only a few sessions in and Iām already carving harder and breaching less. In my local choppy conditions, it is so much better behaved than the Axis PNG 1010 it is replacing - not that the Axis was really designed for winging in choppy waves.
I have got away with breaches that Iād have instantly stacked it previouslyā¦ not that I have been āstack-freeā so to speak, but far, far fewer. I always enjoy pushing my carves and often pay the price for taking things too far, so the Silkās manners in these situations has been really confidence-building.
Unsurprisingly it needs a bit more power to get going, but once up and riding I can just concentrate on finding the bumps rather than babysitting the foil.
Canāt say enough good things so far, looking forward to properly dialing it in and hopefully progressing my level too.
this is so good - iāve just had a proper tow session with the 650/132/80 comboā¦ There is nothing like it. So smooth, so much control and yet so much spark. My quads are absolutely cooked from carving.
One question though, and purely out of curiosity and not āneedāā¦ is there the possibility of a big-wave AFS foilā¦ say a Silk 500?! @foilATX
Did you get to tow at Uluās? Its pretty magic haha.
Thereās a possibility but no timeline. Generally if you look at the foil models itās all there so the new items will be sizes
Iāve requested this before as well !!
Well - about the stabs on the SILK
Iām 69-70Kg -
For the 850 Iāve found that definetly this is my small waves setup - I used it with the 132 and 142 stabs and decided to stay with the 132 since itās looser for me and more adequate for my weight - and gives me better bigger waves range to roll and control the foil with my weight - with the 142 I felt easily overpowered on the medium sized waves, and felt a little too much front foot pressure, not an issue, but when at top speed noticed it more and rolling got a little harder, the 132 gave me better control and roll at higher speeds.
Just tested yesterday the new HA38 (135) - It did felt more like the 132 but with better low end - smoother take off - improved foot pressure balance - and the GLIDE was nicely increased - pumping and keeping speed while pumping was noticeably better even than the 142 - Roll was not that much affected, although it was slower the change rail to rail, it felt really drivy and smooth and since the foot pressure balance was so nice, I was able to really lay hard on the rail and smoothly (slower) change rails -
Conclusion - both standard SILK and HA SILK stabs work really nice - depending on what you want to prioritize (roll or glide) go for each - and then according to your weight - you could go with the size - at 82Kg for you I would go 142 for surfing - HA40 for gliding winging - and perhaps HA43 if you want to improve even more low end.
Hope this helps!
A little recap on yesterdays sesh
Responding to this here: Flitelab who knows - #8 by FlyByFoil
I bought and rode a Silk 850 + 142 rear for 3 sessions and approximately 20 waves with a Cedrus Evolution. Came from riding Unifoil Progression 140 and 125 extensively, and a Lift Havoc 121 for about 3-4 sessions and probably an equal amount of waves on that. Also I only prone, no wing.
My experience opposes what most people here have said:
- It felt slow and draggy immediately, I found it difficult to clear sections and get on shoulders that I thought I wouldāve have been able to make on any of the above wings. For a wing with less area (850 vs 900 on the P140) I found this very surprising.
- The pumping was one of the worst Iāve ever felt, it did not feel like any of the power input resulted in pump output to me. Moved the mast around quite a bit trying to make it work but it just never did. The pump distance from one wave to another for me is usually about 50 yards minimum and I couldnāt get a single connection in those sessions. I didnāt expect it to pump well, but I did expect it to be doable, which for me it was not. I pumped the Lift Havoc 121 with more success than the Silk, and it is both smaller in area and span.
- The finish on the connection surface of wings is pretty poor, there are chipped off carbon pieces on the connection surfaces from however its sanded or machined down.
- Not being able to change fuse lengths for different preferences isnāt ideal, also unnecessarily difficult to travel with, and Iām not convinced that the molded fuselage makes any meaningful difference.
- The fuselage is totally flat. This means that when you bolt on the rear wing, it adds thickness on top of the fuse. AFS rears have a recess in their rear wings, so they bolt on seamlessly accounting for this. However trying to use other brands rears results in the bolt on rear creating an elevated surface on top. Some brands like Code and Uni have a small recessed cutout on the fuse with a flat area for the rear wing to attach, which results in the added rear wing being mostly uniform with the fuselage after. So these fuselages are not universally compatible with other brands rears without a drag penalty.
- The wave riding and carving felt smooth and good, as expected. But a wing with an 87 CM span only being 3 shorter than the P140, it still wasnāt low span enough to allow for as steep of a roll, especially for the trade-off of pumping and slowness I experienced. By comparison the Lift Havoc 121 74 span allows you to roll very hard, and trading off low pumping for that benefit was worthwhile to me.
I ended up selling the Silk after 3 sessions. Itās possible I gave up on it too fast, but after 3 sessions I had zero desire to ride it again as I felt like I was just wasting sessions. I started to think that the tubercles and winglets are gimmicks, adding unnecessary material = drag to the wing for no benefit. Seems like most people really like them but just didnāt feel good to me, and left me wanting to try the F One Sk8 and Flitelab Flux as alternatives.
Youāre on the Cedrus mast. It looks like most of the posts are gone now but I remember reading the Ultra+Cedrus combo as not being a good fit too.
Thanks for taking the time to share your experiences, much appreciated.
Yep, not on OEM mast. Take with that what you will. But I have no issues with Cedrus Evolution + Code or Unifoil. So I dont think its a mast thing. I think vibrations or bad fitment would be more obvious issues for an issue related to the mast compatibility. While I just didnt like how it felt overall, just wasnāt the wing for me. There is another Cedrus Evolution + AFS user on this forum that loves his AFS stuff.
I think you might be referring to me, but I skipped silk and bought walnutās afs adapter for the enduros. I was on K2 so figured I was in the general ballpark of silk, but Iād never progressed beyond the occasional connection in the prone realm. I had ridden armie ha once behind a boat and thought they were a world better at pumping, but hesitated due to what I thought was an unruly takeoff. Enduro pumps almost as well (I was immediately pumping as well or better with a Max sport battery as I was without fd and K2) but are also forgiving. The main difference is with my questionable technique the enduro accelerated, when k2 would have gradually slowed.
Do you guys have the same Cedrus mast?
I have the silk 850 and itās not a pump machine or anything but it definitely doesnāt seem draggy. It took me a while to figure out the pump but thatās not abnormally reported either. Just surprised to hear such a negative review.
Too bad you sold it. Maybe you just needed more time or a smaller tail.