Thanks, I haven’t heard of the non-monos before!
Thinking about getting a non mono Silk 1050 for smaller days. What fuse do I choose to get closest to the original monoblock 1050 feeling?
Would it be too twitchy to combine it with the short fuselage + S142 stab? That’s what I already have here.
I would use it for low wind winging and trying to get into prone. I like the setup to be agile, but don’t do super sharp turns.
Merci!
Standard fuse, short position, is closest to the monoblock version. However, the monoblock has the shortest tail fuse of them all so you can’t perfectly replicate it. (On the 850 non-mono the tail of the standard fuse tail is a touch shorter than the tail of the 850 mono).
I think @TheFoilKook is going to test it on the short front fuse soon (or already has?). I wouldn’t expect it to be too twitchy, but I would expect that the very special feel of the silk foil would likely be changed into something else which is a bit of an unknown.
What is the difference in feel for the chopped silk ha 38 tail for Silk 850. Does it just make it turn better or there is other changes in behaviour. I kind of find it ok for 850 when waves aren’t that steep as I feel it does improve glide and feels a bit faster over 132 that I ride normally. How much do you normally chop it and does it loose low end and get more pitchy? Thanks for help in decision. I wouldn’t wanna ruin that stab.
I haven’t had waves the past few days sadly so still waiting to test out the short fuse but I’ve been loving standard fuse with silk 32 and UG41 stabs.
I don’t have a mono 1050 to compare but it looks like the standard fuse short stab mount is almost the same length as my 850 mono.
Hopefully will get to test it out this week!
Fwiw, I just had a go on the 75cm UHM skinny mast on a Silk 850 with silk stab.
Parawinging, it felt great, barely noticed the change.
Once stashed and pushing harder turns, it was noticeable and struggled a bit with breaches.
I will keep going and hopefully get a back to back before too long in the same conditions, but that was my first 1hr impression. Validates my ongoing theory that as an intermediate with power from a wing you can ride almost anything and not matter that much. 
Yeah I don’t think you’ll see as much benefit from the skinny with the 850. I love the 75cm UHM skinny, absolutely my favorite mast. That’s most specifically because of what it does for the 1050.
I’d love to know why, and I think this plays into my thoughts on mast stiffness vs component thickness but: Breaching the Silks with the 75cm UHM skinny while using the Silk tails is definitively more insecure than the 80cm UHM. I’ve always thought the 80 UHM was just amazing with how smooth the breaches were. The weird caveat though is breaching the Silks with the UG41 tail on the 75cm UHM Skinny. That tail is nowhere near as stiff as the Silk tails but I swear the breaching is better, stabilized. That is what has led me down the path of looking at how having a single vs multiple flexible components impacts the ride.
Testing the 85cm Skinny UHM right now with the Silks and sure enough, the stiffer UHM core fixes the breach burble that I feel on the 75cm. Unfortunately I’m not very good at riding an 85cm mast so I can’t push that thing as hard as I like.
I had a prone session in bigger 4ft 10s surf at local spot. Very funky wave with bad reverb and not really ideal testing, but a good place to see the worst of anything, I often come out of the water when this spot is working pretty unhappy with whatever I was riding
today 850s with 75 UHM mast and silk 142 tail (would like smaller)
Example wave through the top reverb section before it cleans up on the inside which gets easier to do turns
The good
The bad
My building impression is that I like this mast and feel like there is a lot to discover, and in the right conditions, with smaller foils and cleaner waves, or downwind in the right conditions it could be extremely interesting and fun. I would say it’s an amazing specialist mast, rather than a general purpose mast like the 80cm UHM.
@Wouzel I really don’t see how this mast will work with a bigger span foil than 850, but you seem to make it work with 1050 and 750, I’ll see, 750 could unlock the more glide which could be interesting.
Do you think this is a difference in ventilation at breach or purely the breach is more pronounced due to your muscle memory not expecting the breach as early in the rise?
Assume all the cons are due to more flex? What is the other mast you are comparing to (sorry if I missed it)?
I definitely feel more flex on the 75 uhm /skinny vs the 85 uhm and I know the 80 is stiffer than the 85.
I use the skinny mast for its added maneuverability, most specifically to larger span foils. Just as you said: “Roll and snappiness seems increased, more fun and playful at slower speeds. Very loose and pivoty which is a nice unlock.”
The smaller faster foils don’t benefit as much because they can’t spend as much time at slow speeds. With a smaller foil that has a more critical pump the stiffer mast options feel far more important to me. As you said: “Need to be very “straight down” with your pumps.”
I thought this was perhaps only related to chord depth but pumping the 650 back to back with the 75cm uhm skinny standard core vs the 85cm uhm skinny uhm core it’s clear that I can pump the new stiffer core better.
Tip breaching and whitewater is definitely better on the 80uhm. It’s dramatically stiffer and the deeper chord maintains tracking and stability through those scenarios.
I haven’t ridden or owned the 750 in quite a while. Not my flavor of turns on this mast in the long run.
Flex and chord from my experience. Having ridden the entire Silk quiver on 7 masts now and the Enduros on multiple masts as well that’s the repetitive theme that comes up. More mast flex is always the worst thing you can have and then decreased chord depth seems to enhance that issue.
Are you differentiating between the 75 uhm from last year and the 75 skinny this year? I thought they were the same? Is one stiffer?
Old vs new 75cm skinny is the same. The new 85 skinny has the upgraded core which a few months ago I thought was being added to the 75cm skinny as well but I confirmed the new ones have not been changed.
It’s entirely possible that it was because the mast is shorter.
I had one where it was just a normal tip breach through the turn and completely lost it. It might not be something mechanically different, but feeling and recovering from breaches easily is something I’ve associated with the Silk so to crash on an easy one was noticeable.
@Velocicraptor the UHM 80 (which I really like) vs UHM 75 skinny
@Wouzel yes that was what I guessed (make bigger foils more fun) but I’d be surprised if the tradeoff was net positive. I could try the E1300 for the sake of testing the limit but can’t imagine it being great at that size
I can be more specific:
I experience the skinny 75 uhm mast as being ideal for foils around the size of the Silk 1050 (span 916mm). As you go smaller and faster, the benefit seems lowered. When you go larger, the demand of the span overcomes the stiffness of the mast (I don’t recommend over 1k span with this mast and I don’t think AFS recommends it with larger foils either). So no, don’t go e1300 with it, I think that would be a poor experience and transfer too much demand on to the fuse, especially with the short version.
For spans over 1k I prefer the 115mm 80UHM for ideal stiffness and then you throw in the short fuse to enhance your turns instead of relying on the chord to assist them.
I’m looking forward to a 75cm UHM with full chord and an upgraded 75cm UHM skinny with UHM core in the future but I haven’t heard any plan for them, I just assume they will come one day.
Got it.
The Silks and smaller Enduros seem to breach incredibly well. Tip breaches almost even unnoticeable.
I assume from you are saying there is something different about the shape or geometry that is “grabbing” air.
The UHM 80 is my daily driver and the UHM 85 is what I generally use when wing foiling. I had wanted a 75 for smaller prone days where the 80 would just barely clip the sandbar, but thinking twice now.
I will try it with the 650 to see
I think this would be pretty interesting, it’s a niche need, but I’m compelled.
We covered this somewhere, with some back-to-back same foil/different mast testing where a stiffer mast made breaching better, in 3 different masts (NLv2, Axis HM, Proto) and the breaching on the Axis HM was so much better it was quite amazing.
I think it is due to the destabilising effect of a breach, and the stiffer the mast (and a nod to the thread on torsion vs bending, I would imagine it’s a bit of both) the less you as a rider feel other than a direct and linear loss of lift, with a bendy mast you get a delayed whip.. this is one theory.
The other theory on why this might be is that as the tip breaches, a stiffer mast might just track along with the tip out the water, whereas if the mast bends (not twists), it makes the breach flatter (foil relative to water) which makes the ventilation propogate more quickly down to the foil root, which makes it worse. Of these two theories I have no real idea which is more sound.
I would say that if the conditions are clean, and arent’ too turbulent with whitewater, then this could work really nicely. As I said, don’t make any buying decisions based on one session, this is just real time feelings, try it yourself if you can. I hope to get a back to back 75 vs 80 UHM before too long
There’s that, which is applicable on a hard turn especially with offset stances and wider boards. However, I think that is something that I was able to adapt to and incorporate into my riding.
Worse, the softest masts tend to feel like they are vibrating. Even the slightest amount of turbulence, whitewater, results in instability because the mast is so easy to bend. I don’t think the load is a smooth curve where it increases and decreases. I think it is more like a chatter where your body and mind struggles to prepare for/adapt to the input.
Last, you have to account for the fact that the short chord gives dramatically less stability. They simply don’t track through turbulence the same way so the expectation of what things will feel like in various circumstances has to change.
In an ideal world the test would be between two equally stiff masts with two different chord depths to be able to fully grasp the stability granted by the chord vs stability granted by stiffness.
Interesting that when the Silk first debuted AFS marketed that they had engineered flex into the tips of the foil as a benefit to its ride characteristics. Given the focus on stiffness, they definitely backed off of marketing that aspect beyond the initial launch, but I still wonder whether there can be some positive application of flex in the wingtips. If there is some flex engineered into it, nobody complains about how it rides.
I had to repair a broken wingtip on my 850 (have to imagine the repair impacted any deliberate flex characteristic) but I can’t really say I notice any difference before and after.
Nice point, I would imagine this quite likely to impact, maybe even all the impact. Notice my test below, the breach stability also directly corresponded to chord length. Axis HM is an absolute locked-in train track of a mast relative to the others and completely useless because of it for turns.
interesting I had no idea they pushed this angle, it’s certainly reasonable, I think they do this with planes where under load the wings will decrease lift reducing stall severity and propagation, doubtful of the ability to control like this with carbon layups alone but I guess probably not impossible