AFS Silk - Demo ride report

80 UHM - The perfect all-rounder.
prone / tow / downwind / wing - my one and only. No desires to buy another one so far -

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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€¦

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Canā€™t 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, thatā€™s how the OP happened!
Anyone else feel free to pm or reply here, we keep a list and weā€™ll try to come visit yā€™all.

Well you should at least swing in to ride with us on your way into or out of town. Weā€™ve got killer conditions and setups during the summer.

How long will you have the Silk to demo? Iā€™d love to try it out, but Iā€™m 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 donā€™t 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 donā€™t like it, they said to send it back. So if I decide to keep it, Iā€™ll definitely still have it. I prone and wing. Apparently itā€™s a swiss army knife. Iā€™m stoked to get on it. If youā€™re feeling better when youā€™re down here, hit me up. DM me on Insta @JsunAndre

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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.

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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 Iā€™m 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 Iā€™d have instantly stacked it previouslyā€¦ not that I have been ā€˜stack-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 Silkā€™s 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.

Canā€™t say enough good things so far, looking forward to properly dialing it in and hopefully progressing my level too. :call_me_hand: :call_me_hand: :call_me_hand: :call_me_hand: :ok_hand:

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this is so good - iā€™ve 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 ā€˜needā€™ā€¦ is there the possibility of a big-wave AFS foilā€¦ say a Silk 500?! @foilATX

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Did you get to tow at Uluā€™s? Its pretty magic haha.

Thereā€™s a possibility but no timeline. Generally if you look at the foil models itā€™s all there so the new items will be sizes

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Iā€™ve requested this before as well :rofl: !!

Well - about the stabs on the SILK
Iā€™m 69-70Kg -

For the 850 Iā€™ve 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 itā€™s 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

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